UConn men’s basketball’s Tyrese Martin ready for next step after NBA draft: ‘Proud of myself’

He attended a ceremony proclaiming June 24 “Tyrese Martin Day” in his hometown of Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Friday, will fly down to Atlanta on Sunday and head out to Las Vegas on July 5 to get started NBA Summer season League play.

Not bad for a man who didn’t get paid any postseason honors from his league this season.

“Only Major East dude drafted,” Martin pointed out, “and did not even make honorable point out. But that is all ideal.”

Certainly, Martin holds no grudges. His postseason snub may possibly have fueled him in the Large East Match (he was named to the all-tourney team), but he’s around it.

“It’s not that it bothers me,” he informed Hearst Connecticut Media on Saturday afternoon. “It just goes to demonstrate that individuals awards actually really don’t signify everything. Players are players, at the conclusion of the day.”

Martin certainly showed he was a player this past period at UConn, averaging 13.6 factors and 7.5 rebounds for each recreation even though taking pictures 43 p.c from 3-level array. He confirmed even a lot more at the Portstmouth Invitational, earning an invite to the NBA G League Elite Camp and was remarkable through a number of exercise sessions with NBA groups about the previous couple of months.

On Thursday night time, he understood Atlanta was 1 of 3 teams interested in drafting him, along with Orlando and San Antonio. When it was announced that Golden Point out was trading its choose at No. 51 to the Hawks, and reviews began circulating that Martin would be chosen, his close friends and family gathered at a local cafe, hid his cell cellular phone and held him absent from the information as substantially as attainable.

When Martin’s name was declared, a great deal of tricky function, from two several years at Rhode Island to the previous two at UConn, experienced eventually paid off.

“I’m pretty enthusiastic, I couldn’t be more very pleased of myself,” Martin pointed out. “But it doesn’t halt right here.”