Thunder’s Bazley, Ferguson discuss skipping college to play in NBA on Instagram Live

With the NBA season currently suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Oklahoma City Thunder players Darius Bazley and Terrance Ferguson took some time out of their day to talk to fans on Instagram Live about a bevy of topics.

One of those topics was their decision to skip college to play in the NBA.

Bazley discussed that his path first started when he was working out with someone in high school, who contacted an agent to come to see him play.

From there, Forbes reported, he went to Cleveland to meet the agent.

There they discussed him not playing for Syracuse, which he had already committed to, and instead of going straight to the NBA G-League or playing at a different school.

Bazley said he weighed out three options: playing at Syracuse, playing overseas, or playing in the G-League.

Bazley told Ferguson, who agreed with him that the idea of skipping on playing college ball and instead of playing in the G-League didn’t feel right. So, Bazley changed agents, and his new agent gave him another option: sitting out for a year, train, and then enter the 2019 NBA Draft, which ended up happening. OKC drafted Bazley with the No. 23 pick.

As for Ferguson, he decided not to play ball for the University of Arizona. He instead headed to Australia to play ball for the NBL’s Adelaide 36ers during their 2016-17 season.

“I had a hell of a time over there, though. Australia was dope. The people over there are super dope. It was a great time...,” Ferguson said in the IG Live video. “Going overseas though, that’s different bro. That’s different. Especially when I got up there, I was 18 at the time. I just turned 18. So I turned 18, and probably 15 days later, I had to fly to Australia and begin training.”

The Thunder selected Ferguson with the No. 21 pick in the 2017 NBA Draft.