Golden State was one of 13 NBA teams Ike worked out for during the lead-up to the NBA draft. The Warriors used their 11th overall pick on national championship-winning Michigan forward Yaxel Lendeborg, who had 20 points and 11 rebounds against Ike and the Zags during the Wolverines\u2019 101-61 victory last November in the championship game of the Players Era Festival. Golden State then chose a guard\/wing with the 54th overall pick, drafting Florida State\u2019s Lajae Jones.<\/p>\n
Gonzaga has multiple ties to Golden State\u2019s coaching staff and front office, including Mark Few\u2019s longstanding relationship with the Warriors\u2019 Steve Kerr, who tabbed the GU coach to work on his staff during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.<\/p>\n
Additionally, Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. played with top Gonzaga assistant Brian Michaelson at Portland\u2019s Jesuit High School in the late 1990s\/early 2000s. Gonzaga assistant Zach Norvell Jr. is also familiar with Golden State, playing three games with the Warriors during the 2019-20 season and a handful more with the G League team in Santa Cruz.<\/p>\n
Ike left Spokane as college basketball\u2019s active career scoring and rebounding leader, with 2,575 points and 1,144 rebounds over five seasons and 146 games at Gonzaga and Wyoming. The 6-foot-9 forward averaged 19.9 points on 56.3% shooting and hauled down 8.0 rebounds per game as a senior, earning West Coast Conference Player of the Year and third-team Associated Press All-American honors.<\/p>\n
The accomplished Gonzaga forward faces an uphill battle to earn playing time on Golden State\u2019s roster, which includes veteran frontcourt players like Draymond Green, Kristaps Porzingis and Al Horford, along with younger rotation members Gui Santos and Quinten Post. Lendeborg is expected to compete for immediate playing time coming off a championship and consensus first-team All-American honors at Michigan.<\/p>\n
Gonzaga didn\u2019t have any players selected, but former GU signee Jack Kayil found a home on the second day of the draft, going No. 39 overall to the recently crowned NBA champion New York Knicks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Golden State was one of 13 NBA teams Ike worked out for during the lead-up to the NBA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":770945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3786],"tags":[7,479,164,4025,4024,17634,6,255],"class_list":["post-770944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golden-state-warriors","tag-basketball","tag-golden-state","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-goldenstate","tag-goldenstatewarriors","tag-gonzaga-basketball","tag-nba","tag-warriors"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116815677472643037","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770944","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=770944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}