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Well, its been just over two weeks since our draft on November 5th, and exactly a week until our season tips off on "Basketball Black Friday", Friday November 27th.  But it feels like we're already in full swing -- all of our teams are very busy evaluating players in training camps, selling tickets to those last minute season ticket buyers, and planning for the first few home games of the season.

As another example of the flurry of activity around the league, we've already had our first Gatorade Call-Up of the season, as Chris Hunter of the Fort Wayne Mad Ants just got the call from the Golden State Warriors! Congrats to Chris, for whom this is well-deserved, as he's been very close for a while -- he was called up to the Knicks last year and had a great summer and training camp this week.  That now makes three straight years that we've had a player called up directly out of our training camp.

We also launched our new website this week -- doesn't it look much sleeker and cleaner?  We certainly thought so.  Besides updating the look and feel, we wanted to emphasize all of the great video we will capture this season, as well as all of the activity that we're seeing on our Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and Flickr pages.  Even though our site's functionality will only continue to improve as we get farther into the season, please click around the site and if you think there's anything else we should consider doing, send me a comment below and we'll get right on it.  And if you're interested, you can start by checking out yours truly as I recount one of my favorite moments in NBA D-League history.  

Preseason games start tonight, and run all this weekend!  Click here for a list of this weekend's contests, and if you're near any of these arenas go check us out.

(NBA D-League fans, you can now also follow Dan on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nba_dleagueprez)

What a night!!  November 5th, 2009 will go down as a truly historic day not only for the NBA Development League, but also perhaps for the game of basketball.  I count three ways -- and I'll start with the two related to yesterday's 2009 NBA D-League Draft, and end with perhaps the biggest one of them all.

1) Latavious Williams became the first player to jump directly from high school to the NBA D-League. 

I enjoyed reading Dan Shanoff's article on Truehoop about this development.  This really isn't so surprising considering recent trends in basketball over the past few years (which have been well-documented), as well as our own track record.  Our league has proven to be extremely effective in helping to prepare players for the NBA -- last season alumni from our league made up 20% of all NBA players.  Our players compete against NBA-caliber talent, with NBA-level coaching, using NBA rules, in front of NBA scouts every night.  In fact, the odds of a player making it to the NBA level within a year of playing in our league is 1 in 5 -- pretty good!  So it should come as no surprise that a player with the ambition and ability to play in the NBA -- whether a top college player, a player with significant international experience, or a top high school prospect -- would choose to play with us, and yes our rules allow for this (and have since 2005).  Of course, preparing for NBA success is not just about how you develop on the court, and we provide a broad menu of off-the-court skill development, continuing education, and even work internship options for our players.  Latavious will not only get the benefit of world-class on-court training from the Tulsa 66ers (who are directly managed by the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder), but will have every opportunity to tap into these broader resources as well. 

2) Amara Sy became the 1st top international basketball prospect to turn down Europe to play in the NBA D-League. 

This one flew a little under the radar relative to my other two points, but I wanted to call it out.  Of course, he did this for many of the same reasons most of our top players turn down more money overseas to play with us -- since our inception we've produced four times more NBA players than any other pro basketball league around the world!  If your goal is to make the NBA and you're calculating your odds of reaching the NBA by playing in our league vs anywhere else, it's really a no-brainer (especially when you consider you have at least a 20% chance at tapping into NBA-level dollars at some point in the next year).  What's unique here is while domestic players make this decision all the time, the fact that a player born and raised in France would also leave the comforts of home and fly across the Atlantic to play in the NBA D-League is a very strong statement about our effectiveness in producing NBA players.  Whether it will become a broader trend is still unclear, but I do know many NBA teams are intrigued by Sy and will be looking at him very closely this season.

3) Last but CERTAINLY not least, Nancy Lieberman became the first female head coach of an NBA-affiliated team, and will surely become the first woman to coach NBA players on our newest team in Frisco (who will tip off in the 2010-11 season). 

While it would be easy for me to say this is yet another example of our league's commitment to innovation on behalf of the game, this is obviously very different than implementing a "choose-your-own-opponent" playoff format or any of the other innovative things we've done over the years.  The reality is that Nancy Lieberman is eminently qualified for this job -- her long list of accomplishments in the game of basketball at virtually every level and in every role speaks for itself.  In many ways it's a shame that this is viewed as an "innovation", but nonetheless I'm very proud that our league was able to play an important role in this historic moment.  The league approves all team coaching hires, and I can honestly say I was very pleased to make this particular call to Donnie Nelson, the owner of the Frisco team -- I started by asking if he was sitting down, and after I told him the good news he let out a whoop and said "Congratulations, you just made history."  Indeed Donnie, indeed! :)

The NBA D-Leaguers have been a big hit at the Asia Challenge. NBAE

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You might think I'm here for the enshrinement ceremony. Well, yes I will be there, but I'm here primarily because we have a ton of great NBA D-League events happening here this weekend, in support of our newest team and in conjunction with the NBA. The events here this weekend, along with our participation in the 2009 NBA Asia Challenge in Korea and the Philippines, represents some of the unique and fun things we can do as the only minor league that's so deeply integrated with its respective major league.

With the support of EA and the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, we're holding the first-ever NBA D-League Jam Session, which is a free event that will be open to the public from 10-4. Tons of fun interactive games and events, including the ability to sneak preview EA's NBA Live 10, and a special appearance from the Hall of Fame inductees as well as Armor head coach Dee Brown at a noon pep rally. Should be a lot of fun for the Springfield community, as well as current and future Armor fans!

We're also having a little bit of fun at our first annual NBA D-League Hall of Fame Fantasy Camp. 30 campers will participate in an NBA-style practice, led by Dee Brown, with the assistance of two of our esteemed NBA D-League alumni -- the New Jersey Nets' Bobby Simmons and the the Indiana Pacers' Dahntay Jones. The campers also get to attend the induction, hang out at an exclusive VIP party after the ceremony. Truly a unique experience for those campers, and one we're very happy to put on.

At the same time, halfway around the world, six NBA D-League players are playing alongside NBA Legends Dominique Wilkins, Tim Hardaway, Robert Horry, and Vlade Divac in a series of exhibition games called the Asia Basketball Challenge. Coached by Dakota Wizards head coach Rory White, as well as assistant coach Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the "NBA Generations" team has been barnstorming across Korea and the Philippines, not only playing games but doing some great work as well. For example, today the team ran a basketball clinic for 100 under-privileged kids from various communities in Manila, and participated in a renovation project in the Gawad Kalinga community. Tomorrow, the team plays the PBA All-Stars in their final game before coming back to the States. Big shout out to Russell Robinson (Reno Bighorns), Chris Ellis (Tulsa 66ers), Derrick Dial (Tulsa 66ers), Billy Thomas (Colorado 14ers), Lanny Smith (Idaho Stampede) and Marcus Hubbard (Rio Grande Valley Vipers) along with Coach White for representing the NBA D-League so well! And may I add, even overseas in the off-season these guys are making a case for a call-up -- for example, Billy Thomas went 12-for-12 and led the team in scoring with 27 points in the Generations' victory against the Incheon Etland Elephants, while Russell Robinson and Lanny Smith went for 17 and 15 points, respectively. Pretty good!

Bryan Gates is one of the latest NBA D-League coaches to join an NBA staff. Otto Kitsinger/Getty Images/NBAE

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I'm currently on my way to the annual NBA D-League Coaches Meeting, which is always an exciting event because it signals that a new season is upon us!

Every year we bring all of the head and assistant coaches together from around the league to review key rules and requirements, cover any new items for the upcoming season, and discuss this season's referee points of emphasis (always a very interesting discussion!). We also conduct the draft lottery right in front of the coaches, which always inspires a healthy amount of trash talk and brings out the competitiveness in all. Perhaps most importantly, the meetings provide an opportunity for the coaches and the folks from the league to all get to know each other better. Even though coaches compete intensely on the court, they often have to work with one another -- and obviously with the league -- off the court. Tensions can run high during the season, which makes it even more important to establish good, strong, face-to-face relationships right at the start.

There are a lot of new faces in this year's coaches meeting, and a big reason for that is that we keep promoting coaches to the NBA! Once again this year we had three coaches get the "call-up" -- our two-time Dennis Johnson Coach of the Year Bryan Gates (Idaho Stampede) is now an assistant coach with the Sacramento Kings, Scott Roth from the Bakersfield Jam is now an assistant with the Golden State Warriors, and former Rio Grande Valley Vipers assistant coach Robert Pack now holds the same position with the New Orleans Hornets. That makes 22 NBA coaches in total that have been "called up" from the NBA D-League, and surely there will be many more from the extremely strong crop of coaches who will be working this year in the league -- as far as I'm concerned, they're among the best anywhere outside the NBA.

NBA D-League coaches have an unusually difficult job. Like all coaches, their employers expect them to win. However, since we are the "Development" League, we also hold coaches equally accountable for accelerating the basketball development of the top NBA prospects playing in the NBA D-League. NBA teams, when sending a player on assignment, typically expect the coach to be able to execute a specific development plan for that player -- which the NBA D-League coach has to balance with not only winning games, and the development of his other players. The ideal outcome of the "development" side of our coaches' job is a player call-up to the NBA...however, typically, losing one's best player is not necessarily the best formula to win a lot of games. A difficult job, to say the least, but those who have made the jump to the NBA tell me it's perhaps the best possible preparation for the job at the next level.

Our coaches are the key element in our development system, and as such, we're always looking for ways to invest in their own development. This year we will once again employ a "coaches consultant" to work hand-in-hand with all of our coaches -- and this season, 3-time NBA Coach of the Month Bob Hill will likely play this role once again. We will also provide a specific "big man" and "shooting" coach who will not only work directly with our players, but will surely enable our coaches to pick up some new tricks of the trade. We also work to provide our coaches with new technology that will aid them both now and in the future. For example, last season we worked with a company called Fast Draw to provide our coaches with access to their software, which allows coaches to design, store, and share plays electronically. Our coaches used it not only for their own play-calling, but also found it useful for advanced scouting purposes. This is cutting-edge stuff that's now in use at the majority of NBA teams as well as many top college programs, and we wanted to be ahead of the curve to help our coaches development and help them prepare for the next level.

Get ready, the season will soon be upon us!

The NBA D-League Select Team is creating a buzz in Las Vegas. Garrett Ellwood/Getty Images/NBAE

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One, the buzz around this team at the summer league in Vegas is palpable -- our team is really opening people's eyes as to the sheer depth and quality of basketball talent in the NBA D-League. Most of the people who have scouted the league heavily aren't all that surprised, but a lot of people are getting into it, and getting to know up-and-coming prospects like Othyus Jeffers, Gary Forbes, Trey Johnson, and Walker Russell Jr much better. Personally I've received a lot of questions about some specific players on our team, and it's clear that several players are playing well and positioning themselves very nicely for the "two-step call-up".

Two, our players have the right attitude. I couldn't say it any better than Trey Johnson's quote after the game last night:

“This experience has been great,” said Johnson of the Select Team’s time in Las Vegas. “We have a great group of guys who want to play and want to win first and foremost - we all know winning’s more important than anything and I think that says volumes about how good of basketball players we are.”

They play like a team, and they're getting more attention for their individual talents because they're WINNING.

Three, as good as the talent is, our coaching staff -- head coach Scott Roth, assistants Dale Osbourne and Jason Glover, and trainer Michael Douglas -- are doing a masterful job. They're showing that the great talent in the NBA D-League isn't only on the court, its also on the sidelines.

Four, I had a blast watching the game. I've worked at the league level (either NBA or NBA D-League) for 5 years now, and of course at the league you don't take an active rooting interest in any particular team. Well, in this case I was able to cut loose and root for "my" team, and it was fun!

Game 3 is on Friday -- click here to find out how you can watch it online (as well as watch alll of the other players from the NBA D-League -- for example the game I watched afterward featured Will Conroy, James White, Joey Dorsey, and Rod Benson on the Houston Rockets). Enjoy!