Daishen NIx
Daishen Nix is taking Alaska back to the NBA G League Finals.
Now that the NBA’s regular season has wrapped up, the prolific 20-year-old point guard with the Houston Rockets has been recalled to the team’s minor-league affiliate Rio Grande Valley Vipers for the G League Finals.
Rio Grande will face the Delaware Blue Coats tonight in Game 1 of the best-of-3 series, making Nix the first Alaskan to play in the G League Finals since Anchorage’s Ramon Harris in 2015.
Nix is back with Rio Grande after spending the last six weeks in the NBA, where he settled into the rotation with the Rockets and proved he belonged in the world’s greatest basketball league.
He played in 24 NBA games, logged season highs of 13 points and five dimes, and finished with 77 points, the fourth-highest total among rookies from Alaska.
MOST POINTS BY NBA ROOKIE FROM ALASKA
818 – Mario Chalmers, Miami Heat, 2008-2009
810 – Carlos Boozer, Cleveland Cavaliers, 2002-2003
209 – Trajan Langdon, Cleveland Cavaliers, 1999-2000
77 – Daishen Nix, Houston Rockets, 2021-2022
67 – JT Thor, Charlotte Hornets, 2021-2022
The Alaskan’s fingerprints are all over Rio Grande’s success this season as the team has gone 15-4 with Nix on the court, helping the Vipers earn the No. 1 seed out of the Western Conference.
Nix is a likely G League All-Star after he was the only player in the league during the regular season to average 20 points, 5 rebounds, 7 assists and 2 steals per game.
He looks to close out a magical season by winning a G League championship. You gotta think Nix really wants to win and reward the Rockets’ organization that took a chance on him after he went undrafted last summer.
Nix joined Rio Grande just in time for the end of the Western Conference Finals, pushing the Vipers to a clinching 125-114 victory Saturday night over the Agua Caliente Clippers with a 22-point, 6-rebound, 7-assist performance.
#Rockets rookie PG Daishen Nix with a TOUGH lay for the Vipers 😤 pic.twitter.com/6veUWyP2Ly
— Clutch City Entertainment (@ClutchCityENTX) April 10, 2022
This won’t be Nix’s first taste of the G League playoffs.
Last season, as a 19-year-old who turned pro straight out of high school, he helped the first-year Ignite snag the league’s eighth and final postseason berth.
In his playoff debut he produced 11 points on 5-of-8 shooting and added three rebounds, three assists and a steal in a 127-102 loss to top-seeded Raptors 905 in a single-game postseason format.
Nix is back this year, looking to join Harris as a G League champion.
Ramon Harris
Harris won a ring in 2014 and then went back to the Finals in 2015.
In 2014, he was part of a Fort Wayne Mad Ants team that swept the Santa Cruz Warriors in the best-of-3 series. The next year Santa Cruz returned the favor with a 2-0 sweep.
Harris was an absolute stud in Alaska, where he won four state titles (1 at Bartlett, 3 at West) and was named Gatorade Alaska Player of the Year in 2006. He went on to play at the University of Kentucky.
He didn’t play much of a role in the 2014 G League Finals, but he averaged 21 points during the 2015 Finals.
His shooting performance in Game 1 was epic, an all-timer, as he buried 8-of-13 3-pointers on his way to scoring a career-high 30 points in a 119-115 loss.
Heckuva performance from Ramon Harris last night in game one of the NBA D-League Finals, nailing eight 3-pointers: https://t.co/yoKl2oSYqV
— CoachCal.com (@CoachCalDotCom) April 24, 2015