On the first trade deadline of his NBA career, Tyler Ennis was on the phone with his dad, Tony McIntyre, as the two monitored their Twitter feeds on separate screens. That’s when, like the rest of us, they saw this:
And then, two minutes later, this:
Soon after another call came through on Ennis’s phone, this one from his agent, to confirm that yes, he had in fact been traded to the Milwaukee Bucks—one of the record 37 players who changed addresses yesterday.
“I can’t say I saw it coming,” admits McIntyre, over the phone Thursday night from his home in Brampton, Ont.
When the Phoenix Suns drafted Ennis with the 18th pick in last year’s draft, it seemed like a good fit. The Suns had a solid history of developing point guards, coach Jeff Hornacek’s offence was tailored toward guard play, and Ennis had grown up watching Steve Nash string together MVP seasons in the mid-2000s. Oh, and after starring at Syracuse, Ennis had gotten used to wearing orange.
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But after Phoenix inked Eric Bledsoe to a long-term deal and then signed another point guard, Isaiah Thomas, in free agency last summer, it created a massive glut at the position, with five players (including Ennis, Goran Dragic and Archie Goodwin) to fill one spot.
It appeared minutes would be awfully hard to come by in his rookie year. And they were.
Less than two weeks into the season, Ennis was assigned to the Suns’ D-League affiliate in Bakersfield, CA, one of four separate stints in the NBA’s minor league, where he started every game and comfortably averaged 18.5 points, 4.5 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 2.0 steals per game while shooting over 47 percent from the field.
But each time he returned to the Suns, he’d find himself back on the bench, often accumulating DNP-CD’s. All told, Ennis appeared in only eight games with Phoenix, seeing a total of 58 minutes of action—mostly garbage time.
Something had to give.
“As a parent, you just hope he gets the opportunity to show what he can do,” says McIntyre, who co-founded the iconic Canadian AAU club CIA Bounce, where he coached his son along with Andrew Wiggins, Anthony Bennett and many other standout Canadians. “Whether that’s in Phoenix by moving some of their guards or somewhere else, you just hoped he’d land in a situation where he’d get playing time and be able to show his game.”
Ennis will get that opportunity in Milwaukee. He’s landed on a young, up-and-coming team loaded with intriguing talent and helmed by one of the greatest point guards to ever play the game, Jason Kidd, a player Ennis grew up idolizing.
“He’s learning from two of the best point guards and two guys he looked up to growing up,” McIntyre says, referencing both Kidd and Nash, who Ennis has had the chance to work with in Team Canada developmental camps (Nash is the GM of the senior men’s team, which Ennis is expected to be a part of).
The move to Milwaukee will also see Ennis joining forces with fellow ‘Cuse alumn Michael Carter-Williams, who moved to the Bucks on Thursday from Philadelphia as part of the deal.
The two guards were standouts in consecutive seasons with Syracuse, both parlaying their college success into a first-round NBA selection. During Ennis’s lone season with the Orange, Carter-Williams was working his way to the NBA’s Rookie of the Year title, but the two stayed in constant communication throughout the year. When it was Ennis’s turn to be drafted, Carter-Williams travelled to New York City, where the two sat beside each other at a pre-draft dinner party and Carter-Williams became a sounding board for any questions Ennis had about the process (there were many). On draft night, MCW was there with his father, seated beside the Ennis-McIntyre clan for support.
Carter-Williams, Ennis and Kidd all share the same agent.
Ironically, Carter-Williams’ decision to leave Syracuse after one season played a large factor in Ennis attending the college. It created an opportunity for Ennis to start as a freshman. Now he’ll have to take a place behind his friend on the Bucks’ depth chart, where he’ll have to work his way up and prove himself to see significant minutes this season.
But all that can wait. At least for one day.
For now, Ennis is experiencing his first trade—a rite of passage for every pro, made all the more daunting when it happens halfway through your rookie year.
“As a 20-year-old guy living in Phoenix and then all of a sudden finding out the news, getting off a bus, packing up your locker, rushing home to pack up clothes for the next couple of weeks and then heading to the airport to head to your new team for your game tomorrow,” says McIntyre. “that has got to be a little bit to handle, I would imagine.”
McIntyre, too, was busy making last-minute arrangements. He boarded a plane to Milwaukee this morning where, coincidentally, his son Dylan, a star at Villanova, is also playing tonight.
They may not have seen it coming, but Ennis and his family are welcoming the change of scenery with open arms.
“There’s that excitement there that it’s a new city, a new start with a great coach—and players that he knows,” says McIntyre. “It’s a great opportunity.”
