Carl English: From the NCAA to the ACB

ESPN published this story yesterday about Renardo Sidney and his failed attempts to make the NBA. The main point of the story was that most of the great college players that end up failing to make the NBA usually disappear in plain sight and are never heard from again.

While this may be true in some cases, I don’t think ESPN was right to generalize such an idea. Sure some players may end up quitting basketball and never being heard from again but a lot of them go one to write their own stories away from the bright lights of the NBA.

Carl English is one of those players. Born in St John’s, Newfoundland, English was one of the first players in the rise of recent star Canadian players at the college level. From early on in his life, English faced adversity as he lost both of his parents to a house fire at the age of five. After that tragic event, English went to live with his aunt and uncle in the small area known as Patrick’s Cove-Angels Cove, which is where he really started focusing on basketball.

As he was improving rapidly, he moved to Toronto in order to attract more attention from college scouts. Though he was not highly recruited, he still managed to pull in a few scholarship offers and ultimately agreed to attend the university of Hawaii.

At Hawaii, English became a basketball scoring force. After having surgery and losing most of his freshman year, he went on to become the locker room leader for the Rainbow Warriors his next three years. With English, Hawaii made the NCAA tournament two out of his three years playing heavy minutes. Because of his great performance, he was expected to go late in the first round if he was to declare for the draft after his junior season. English decided to do just that and hired an agent, Harold Cipin, and forewent his last year of college eligibility.

That’s when it all spiraled downwards for English, NBA teams were concerned that he wasn’t good enough to be a point guard and too slow to be a shooting guard. He went undrafted in the 2003 draft, which was made even more terrible with the fact that his agent had arranged a media party for English once he would be drafted. He was forced to face his failure in front of multiple dozens of news outlets and reporters.

Thankfully for English, the Indiana Pacers liked his game and invited him to their camp. He would have been well suited to make the team had his agent not opened his mouth to proclaim that the Pacers had signed him to a 2 year contract worth a million dollars and that “Larry Bird had fallen in love with his game”. The Pacers quickly released English after that incredibly stupid statement by his agent.

That was the closest English would get to the NBA, he bounced around the D League and some leagues in Europe for a while, not really making much of an impact. It took until this last year for English to find himself a spot in the basketball world. He signed with Asefa Estudiantes of the ACB, one of the best leagues in the world, a league that includes or has included players like Juan Carlos Navarro, Marc Gasol, Tiago Splitter and Rudy Fernandez. With Asefa Estudiantes, English exploded.

He lead the entire ACB in scoring, became a real team leader and amassed a massive following of fans across Europe. He played in games with stadiums filled with people chanting “M-V-P” at him like he was Kobe Bryant. In the ACB, English became a star and a household name. Though his team did not have as much success as it would have liked, English himself experienced the best year of his career by far and proved that he was not done with basketball the way some might have thought he was.

So no, English may never have a chance at playing in the NBA, that opportunity may have sailed almost a decade ago. That being said, he has not disappeared into nothingness like ESPN would like to suggest college players do after failing to make the NBA. He has written his own story and created his own legend in another league, he is appreciated, loved and treated like a star. English’s story is not unique, there are many other ex-NCAA players making their own fortunes in leagues that aren’t the NBA. The fact that ESPN didn’t go and look for them does not mean that they suddenly mean nothing to the fans of those teams.