By John Askounis / info@eurohoops.net
In about a month, on August 18, he will be 28 years of age. He’s been playing professionally since 2012, but the course of his career hasn’t been like most would have imagined it. He may have won two Greek championships with Panathinaikos in the last two seasons and gotten to play in the NBA, but just four years ago he was playing in Italy’s third division with Omegna. Now, he’s back in Italy and the best Italian team in recent years.
The… leap to Vitoria
James started playing basketball at a very young age but he was 20 years old when he secured a spot on the roster of a college team in the first division of the NCAA at Lamar University. He was in the Cardinals from 2010 to 2012, and in his first season he was the team’s top scorer even though he was a starter in just two games. Among other things, he scored 52 points in a game with Louisiana on January 11, 2011.
His impressive progress didn’t get him selected in the 2012 NBA Draft, but got him a contract with KK Zagreb. He started out his professional career in the Croatian team and completed his debut season in Israel with Hapoel Gilboa Galil. He spent the 2013-14 season in Italy’s third division playing in the colors of Omegna.
In August of 2014 he signed a one-year contract with Kolossos, who, by acquiring James, continued their streak of successful transfer moves with regard to American players. With the team from Rhodes, James was something more than impressive. By scoring an average of 21 points, he secured a transfer to then Laboral Kutxa, now Baskonia, where he completed the 2013-14 season.
The… blastoff and the Final Four
The best, though, was yet to come. He made his EuroLeague debut in the 2014-15 season, but it was his second season in Europe’s top club competition that was his best in his career up to that point, with respect to his team’s course. After all, with the Basques he played in the Final Four in Berlin and won 4th place.
He played with the Greens in 2016-17 and the greatest part of 2017-18. In his first season he won his first titles, the Greek championship and Cup, while last season he was a Greek champion for the second season in a row. We don’t know whether in the future there will be a third return to the Greens, but what is certain is that, thanks mostly to his explosiveness and his passion on the court, he became particularly popular to the fans of Panathinaikos.
His performance in Panathinaikos:
| Season | Points | Assists | Rebounds |
| 2016-17 – EuroLeague | 13,1 | 3 | 2,2 |
| 2016-17 – Basket League | 12 | 2,9 | 2,7 |
| 2017-18 EuroLeague | 16,2 | 4,1 | 2,8 |
| 2017-18 Basket League | 13,6 | 3,4 | 2,6 |
The broken glass
It wasn’t all rosy with the Greens. His worst moment was not in a game, but the training session of October 8, 2016. That’s when he suffered a right-hand injury that needed surgery, and which kept him off the courts for two months. He got angry during the 5-on-5 practice game of that Saturday’s training session and on his way to the locker room he hit a glass partition behind the tunnel with force, breaking both the glass as well as his hand.
The NBA
He got his first taste of… the NBA in the summer of 2015, when he played for the Phoenix Suns in the Summer League, before returning to Baskonia to play in the EuroLeague’s Final Four. In the summer of 2017, after his first season in Panathinaikos, he got a contract from the Suns, this time a two-way contract, thanks to which he got to play in an official game of the best league in the world for the first time.
In 2017-18, James played in 32 games of the regular season in the NBA with the Suns, averaging 10.4 points, 3.8 rebounds and 2.8 assists. He became the first player in the history of the league to sign a guaranteed contract after a two-way contract, but he was released from the Arizona team in December of 2017. He played in another four games with the New Orleans Pelicans before returning to Greece for his second stint in Panathinaikos.