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La Salle's Zack reflects on Summer League experience

07/21/2015, 10:45pm EDT

By Ari Rosenfeld

Ari Rosenfeld (@realA_rosenfeld)
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There are currently 351 NCAA Division I basketball programs, each with 13 scholarships available each year.

By that math, there are 4,563 Division I basketball players. Only 60 players get selected in the NBA Draft each year. That makes room for just 1.31 percent of those in the Division I ranks, before even factoring in the bevy of international players that get chosen annually.

The other 98.69 percent are faced with a number of choices: they can pursue avenues outside of basketball, sign contracts in any one of the litany of overseas leagues, or continue to chase the dream that every player has of playing at the highest level, in the NBA.

Steve Zack has chosen the latter.

The recent 6-foot-11 La Salle grad went undrafted in the 2015 NBA Draft, as was almost unanimously expected. However, the quest to achieve his NBA dream didn’t stop there.

On June 30, the hometown Sixers announced their rosters for both the inaugural Utah Jazz Summer League and the annual Las Vegas Summer League, and much to the delight of Explorers’ fans, Zack’s name was found on the Vegas roster.

In four games with the so-called “Summer Sixers”, three of them starts, Zack put up solid numbers of 5.8 points per game to go along with 5.2 rebounds. Those numbers, however, include the team’s first game in which he only played eight minutes and didn’t score; in the other three contests, his averages were 7.6 points and six rebounds, as well as 1.3 blocks per game.

“It was a great experience. I met a lot of guys. I came in with a veteran coaching staff and I learned a lot, not just on the court but off the court, playing and at practices,” Zack said after his 20th & Olney squad lost a nail-biter in second round of The Basketball Tournament. “I just learned a lot about the game, more about the game. I thought I knew a lot of things, but there’s a lot of little things, a lot of details, that I learned that I could take away from it.”

Most players participating in Summer League aren’t under contract with NBA teams, and those that are are generally rookies or second-year players. The rest of the rosters are composed primarily of players like Zack, undrafted free agents trying to showcase their talents for prospective teams both in the United States and abroad.

While it doesn’t feature the same talent pool that makes up the NBA, the Vegas Summer League certainly provided Zack a step up in competition from what he was used to in the Atlantic 10.

“Every guy that you play against is very, very talented. You can’t take a second off because if you do you’re gonna get beat,” Zack said. “You really have to focus like that. it’s really more of a mental game really, being mentally prepared because everybody’s good. You can’t just go out there and play your minutes and just do nothing, because you will get exposed quickly.”

By the end of his La Salle career, it was clear Zack would have several professional basketball opportunities. At its inception, however, it looked like Zack might never reach this point.

Coming out of Red Land High School in New Cumberland, located about an hour and a half outside of Philadelphia, Zack chose the Explorers over other mid-majors such as George Mason, Bucknell, Penn, and Cornell.

Upon arriving in the West Olney section of Philadelphia in 2011, he struggled as a freshman, averaging just 1.4 points and 2.3 rebounds per game, never seeing more than 21 minutes of action.

Nevertheless, as Zack puts it, his mind was always on his ultimate goal, even whilst struggling to earn minutes amidst a lack of production in his early time at La Salle.

That mentality paid off, as in his upperclassmen seasons, Zack put up near double-double numbers, averaging over eight points and nine rebounds in both years, as well as just shy of two blocks per game.

“Everybody’s career has to start somewhere. It’s all about growth. If you set that goal that ‘I’m gonna make a summer league team,’ then yeah, you’re gonna grow,” Zack said. “I didn’t come to college basketball just to play for four years and not make anything out of it, so that was my goal to work for. It took me a little bit, but I got it done.”

Right now, Zack isn’t exactly sure what the next step is of his career, or where in the world that step will take him. He’ll wait for the Sixers’ brass to complete an evaluation period of everyone on their Summer League rosters, at which point they’ll get back to him with feedback on his performance.

If he does get lucky enough to join the roughly one percent of D-I players who get drafted, you can be sure that Zack will bring with him the same intensity that he brought to La Salle, the very same intensity that allowed him to even reach this point even when it looked four years ago like he never could.

“Just another opportunity to work,” he said of a potential NBA deal. “I’m not sure if I’m there yet, but if it’s there, it’s just another opportunity.”