The majority of players from the Golden State Warriors have already made their way into the weight room of their downtown Oakland practice facility. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” blares from inside the room and the player’s laughter fills the air.

Aside from a sweating Baron Davis shooting free-throws at the far end of the facility, CJ Watson and Kelenna Azubuike are the only players still on the glossy basketball court. For the past half-hour the two have been struggling to finish a shooting drill, and frustration begins to show in their faces.
“Let’s go, baby!” yells Watson. The two players finally get into their groove and Azubuike begins to build a rhythm with the music. His fingers snap, and he gives his best Michael Jackson impersonation each time he strikes a three-pointer.

These two may relish moments like this more than other Warriors players, because they both had to work their way through the NBA’s Developmental League (D-League) before finally making it into basketball’s upper echelon.

Players that are serious about playing with the cream-of-the-crop in the NBA often compete in smaller professional leagues like the D-League as a way to gain exposure. Others go overseas where there are hundreds of leagues and opportunities. The reality for each of these hopefuls is that the NBA only makes room for about four-hundred players.

“It’s not easy because every player has the dream,” says Devougn Lamont, who played for the San Francisco Rumble, a team within the American Basketball Association (ABA).

Lamont, a six-foot-ten center who led the team in points and rebounds, says he wants to play in the NBA but isn’t going to get his hopes up. “I have to be realistic,” he says. “There’s so many players nowadays. There are players from the NCAA, the ABA, overseas, everywhere. It’s a really tough league to get into.”
It is so difficult to break into that the National Collegiate Athletic Association estimates NBA teams will only draft 1.2 percent of male college seniors playing NCAA basketball. Even more intimidating, NBA teams will draft just three high school senior players out of every ten thousand.

Having a chance against these ratios involves more than just being a skilled player and a little luck. “There are so many variables,” says Damone Hale, owner of the Rumble. “There’s some that certainly have the ability, but whether or not they meet the right person, or they have the right breaks and opportunities, only time will tell.”

Because odds are daunting, many players look to establish careers in smaller leagues. Unfortunately, U.S. leagues are infamous for underpaying athletes. Most players on the Rumble, for example, make just one-hundred dollars per game in a thirty-five game season.

Olalekan Esho, a twenty-eight-year-old player on the Rumble, says most leagues in America don’t have the proper funding to pay their players. “All the amateur leagues are the same,” he says. “You get paid at first, but if you’re not filling seats you don’t get paid.” Esho says he was only paid for two games last season and had to live with the Rumble’s head coach Fulton Mitchell to survive.

The Rumble’s season was an enormous growing pain, because the club was created just four months prior to the season and Hale was holding the reigns of a professional team for the first time. Ticket sales and other home game revenue were lacking as well the team played only five home games of the scheduled eighteen. This culminated to cutbacks that Hale says were out of his control. “What we pay individual players is like any business plan. You have to adjust to what your realities are,” Hale says.

The disappointing profit even produced a moment when the freshly appointed owner thought he might have to cut the team’s cord. “I could have easily said ‘You know what, we’re just gonna stop,’ but then the players wouldn’t have had the opportunity they had,” says Hale.

Curtis Hill, a forward on the Rumble, says he doesn’t mind the pay, or lack thereof, because the league offers him an opportunity to make a name for himself. “It’s not much, but it’s a minor league and this is basically a stepping stone to play at a higher level,” he says. “I would do it for free. I just want a chance to keep playing.”

There are opportunities for better pay overseas, especially in Germany, France, and Italy. The pay, sometimes up to twenty-thousand dollars a month, is enough for most players to live comfortably, but relocation comes with sacrifices. Being away from loved ones and experiencing language barriers is difficult.
The D-League compensates players better than any American league, usually paying between twenty-five thousand and thirty-five thousand dollars a season, because the NBA owns and finances the league. It was started in 2001 to act as a farm league for the NBA in which players could easily be picked up from or demoted to, and is a place to keep an eye on talent until it’s ripe enough to utilize.

Azubuike appeared primed for the NBA when he declared for the league’s 2005 draft after three seasons at the University of Kentucky. He led the team in scoring his junior year and was named an All-SEC second-team performer but went unselected after suffering an injury prior to the draft.

The muscular six-foot-five guard was forced to play for the Fort Worth Flyers of the D-League to prove the injury wouldn’t keep him from being fundamental to the NBA. “The hardest part was just being in the D-league trying to accept the fact that I was there and keeping the right attitude,” he says. The attitude paid off for Azubuike when the Warriors picked him up in January of 2007. But not every player will be so lucky.
“There are folks that have the caliber and the talent to play at the next level, but they’re all trying to get seen,” says Hale. “They’re all trying to get discovered.”