Kai Sotto may have already earned a slot in the Summer League, but it doesn’t mean that his road to becoming the first full-blooded Filipino to see action in the National Basketball Association will be easy.
The 7-foot-3 Sotto will be facing topnotch talents featuring a pair of former first-round draft picks and a handful of international players when he plays for the Orlando Magic in the Summer League starting Sunday (Manila time) at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.
The Magic will open their Summer League campaign against the Detroit Pistons, where Sotto will bang bodies with Jalen Duren and James Wiseman.
The 6-foot-11 Duren was taken by the Pistons with the 13th overall pick in 2022, the same year in which Sotto went undrafted, while the seven-foot Wiseman emerged as the second overall pick by the Golden State Warriors in 2020.
After Duren and Wiseman, Sotto will clash with 6-foot-9 Congolese Oscar Tshiebwe of the Indiana Pacers on Tuesday.
Like Sotto, the 23-year-old Tshiebwe also went undrafted and needs to prove himself as he is on a two-way contract with the Pacers and the Fort Wayne Mad Ants of the NBA G League.
The Magic will open their Summer League campaign against the Detroit Pistons, where Sotto will bang bodies with Jalen Duren and James Wiseman.
Sotto and the Magic will also face the New York Knicks on Thursday and the Portland Trail Blazers on Friday.
Against the Knicks, the 21-year-old Sotto will collide with 25-year-old Dmytro Skapintsev of Ukraine as well as 23-year-old Justyn Hamilton.
The seven-footer Skapintsev is looking to crack the Knicks’ frontcourt rotation after playing for the Westchester Knicks following an unsuccessful attempt at the 2020 NBA Draft, similar to the 6-foot-11 Hamilton who also went undrafted last year followed by a brief tour of duty in Switzerland.
Three more international players await Sotto when the Magic battle the Trail Blazers.
Portland will parade 7-foot-1 Ibou Badji of Senegal, 7-foot-4 Christ Koumadje of Chad, and 6-foot-11 Duop Reath of Australia as well as American John Butler.
Like Sotto, the 20-year-old Badji also competed for Senegal in the FIBA U19 World Cup in Greece in 2019 before going undrafted in 2022 and campaigning in Spain and the NBA G League while the 26-year-old Koumadje competed in Germany after going undrafted in the NBA in 2019.
The 27-year-old Reath, however, is the most seasoned among the players Sotto is expected to face as he was part of the Australian national team that won the bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympics together with NBA players Patty Mills and Joe Ingles.
Reath, who was born in South Sudan before moving to Brisbane when he was nine, also played Serbia, the G League and China before suiting up for Lebanese club Al Riyadi Beirut.
Now, he is looking to come up with a strong performance in the Summer League to realize his dream of playing in the most prestigious basketball league in the world.
