{"id":177190,"date":"2025-07-17T16:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T16:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/177190\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T16:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T16:05:10","slug":"trail-blazers-former-1st-round-pick-leaving-nba-to-sign-contract-in-japan-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/177190\/","title":{"rendered":"Trail Blazers’ former 1st-round pick leaving NBA to sign contract in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, Nassir Little was one of the top recruits in the country.<\/p>\n

He went to North Carolina with a lot of fanfare, and he showed enough promise to enter the NBA as a first-round pick of the Portland Trail Blazers.<\/p>\n

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But six years after that draft, Little is leaving the states. He’s heading to Japan.<\/p>\n

The Chiba Jets announced<\/a> they’ve signed Little to a one-year contract. It’s Little’s first time heading overseas to hoop.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited about the opportunity to help the Chiba Jets win a championship!\u201d\u00a0Little said in a statement from the club.\u00a0\u201cI know some of the players on the team and I\u2019ve been to Japan for vacation so I really look forward to this experience. I\u2019ve heard Chiba is a great club with a great new arena and great fans. I look forward to meeting everyone and I\u2019m excited to have a great season!\u201d<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0LeBron James trade, buyout rumors take 180-degree turn<\/a><\/p>\n

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Little was the No. 25 overall pick in 2019. He spent four seasons in Portland, a season with the Suns and this past winter with the G League’s Sioux Falls Skyforce.<\/p>\n

The small forward has played 237 NBA games, with averages of 5.5 points and 2.9 rebounds.<\/p>\n

Little is still just 25 years old.<\/p>\n

The Chiba Jets also feature Yuta Watanabe, who was Little’s teammate in his year in Phoenix.<\/p>\n

MORE NBA NEWS:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Once upon a time, Nassir Little was one of the top recruits in the country. He went to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3784],"tags":[7,601,32446,4298,26450,6,687,471,3967,604,1617,4299],"class_list":{"0":"post-177190","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-portland-trail-blazers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-blazers","10":"tag-chiba-jets","11":"tag-japan","12":"tag-nassir-little","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-portland","15":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","16":"tag-portlandtrailblazers","17":"tag-suns","18":"tag-trail-blazers","19":"tag-yuta-watanabe"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114869431506844816","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}