Twenty three year old Sim Bhullar, a Canadian professional basketball player, currently playing for the Raptors 905 of the NBA Development League, is photographed taping promotional video after a media event at the Mississauga Sports Complex.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Sim Bhullar is from Toronto, measures an extraordinary 7 foot 5 and 362 pounds, and he's the first player of Indian descent to play a game in the NBA. So when reporters met the newest acquisition of the Toronto Raptors' D-League franchise, it wasn't long before he was asked to react to the suggestion that this could be little more than a publicity stunt.
"Well, I've just got to go out and show the critics I can play hard and produce," Bhullar said at Raptors 905 media day in Mississauga. "Just like I did last year in Reno."
The 22-year-old made three brief appearances for the Sacramento Kings last season after they were eliminated from a playoff spot. He spent most of the season with their D-League team, the Reno Bighorns, where he averaged a respectable 10.3 points, 8.8 rebounds and 3.9 blocks in 25 minutes a game.
He appeared on The Late Late Show. Newsweek wrote about him. The NBA did a summer media tour with him in India, where hundreds met them at the airport and he saw new outdoor basketball courts in places he had never seen in past family trips to his native country.
"I want to show GMs I can play, I can get up and down the court and play at an NBA level and that I've developed," Bhullar said. "They consider me a pioneer for the game in India, and I want to live up to that every day."
The Raptors 905, about to begin their inaugural season, acquired Bhullar's rights last week from Reno, in exchange for the rights to guard Ricky Ledo.
The Raptors have tracked Bhullar for years. He grew up playing for Toronto-area powerhouse CIA Bounce and starred for two years at New Mexico State. He was a two-time Western Athletic Conference MVP and was teammates with his younger brother, 7-foot-3 Tanveer. He left college early, declaring for the 2014 NBA Draft, but was never selected.
He did a predraft workout for the Raptors back then, and Raptors 905 general manager Dan Tolzman says the difference in Bhullar then and now is "like night and day.
"He wasn't in NBA shape, and he got very worn out in that predraft workout, and we thought clearly he has a lot of the pieces, but has a lot of work to do," said Tolzman, who is also the Raptors' director of scouting.
"We kept watching him, saw him again this summer at the Pan Am Games and thought he played really well and showed lots of progress. He still has a long way to go, but we knew that if we could bring him in, continue the work, stay on the conditioning, and if we could have a hand in it, he would be a very exciting project for us."
Bhullar could stir excitement for the 905 in Peel Region, which reports to having a South Asian population of some 27 per cent. The knock on him has often been his mobility and fitness. Tolzman says Bhullar is putting in the work with diet and conditioning. His upsides are obviously clogging the paint, scoring easy baskets, blocking and rebounding.
Bhullar won a Pan American Games silver medal in Toronto, but was left off the Canadian men's team that made the trip to Mexico City in August to play in the Olympic qualifying tournament. Bhullar says it was a family situation that prevented him from going to Mexico, and believes he'll be back in the mix for a roster spot when the men try again to qualify for the Rio Olympics.
"Our goal is to turn him into an NBA player, hopefully with the Raptors, but the longevity of his career is the most important," Tolzman said. "You can see he's definitely driven to be an NBA player. Given a little taste of it in Sacramento last year, I believe he wants to make that an everyday thing. His goal isn't just to play at home in the D-League, it's to play in the NBA for the Raptors, and I think he knows what it's going to take."