LAS VEGAS – In the early 1990s, Jay Triano famously made a recruiting push to sign one of the top young point guards in Canada. The player rode three hours by ferry and car from Victoria, B.C., to Vancouver to meet Triano and see Simon Fraser University’s campus, eventually declining the offer to play college basketball in the U.S.
Triano couldn’t swing Steve Nash, but he had an opportunity to bring in another young talented Canadian guard during his six-year run at Simon Fraser University.
In a recruitment that gained significantly less publicity or buzz, Triano, who had strong ties to his home province of Ontario, identified a player at Toronto-based York Mills Collegiate Institute named Claude Nembhard.
It’s not clear who pulled the plug, but Nembhard chose to stay put in Toronto and play college hoops at York College while Triano was named the head coach of Canada’s senior men’s basketball team a handful of years later.
Relationships built on the recruiting trail often have a way of circling back, especially if you stay in the game long enough.
Skip forward to 2020. Nembhard’s oldest son, Andrew, was plotting his next move after transferring from Florida. Gonzaga quickly emerged as a potential destination, so Claude paid a phone call to Triano, whose son Dustin always gushed about the three years he spent at Gonzaga as a walk-on guard.
Skip forward again, this time to the second day of the 2025 NBA Draft. Triano, hired 12 days earlier to join Jason Kidd’s Dallas Mavericks coaching staff, was watching the second round unfold from the team’s war room. The Mavericks needed another ball-handler, but didn’t have a pick after taking Cooper Flagg with the No. 1 overall pick. They had someone in mind, but they’d be at the mercy of 29 other NBA franchises until the draft ended, sweating out each pick.
Ryan Nembhard wasn’t expected to go off the board on day one, but when the Gonzaga point guard began slipping on day two, Triano and other members of Dallas’ coaching staff quietly started to swell with excitement.
“I think it was interesting because we were watching the draft and didn’t have a pick and hope he just kept sliding,” Triano told The Spokesman-Review in July at NBA Summer League. “Not for the kid, because the kid wants to get drafted, but at the same point if you don’t get drafted and you get to choose where you want to go and have an impact, and we knew he could have an impact with us.”
The feeling was mutual within Nembhard’s camp. If Ryan was taken early in the second round, the family knew there’d be a relatively simple pathway to an NBA roster spot, not to mention a generous contract. Andrew was selected No. 31 overall in the 2022 Draft. At the time, he signed the most lucrative contract by a second-round selection in NBA history before working his way into the Indiana Pacers’ rotation as a rookie.
Ryan’s experience wouldn’t be quite as painless. After a handful of teams declined to use a second-round pick on Gonzaga’s point guard, the Nembhards pivoted toward finding the best situation possible, cautioning teams with mid to late second-round picks Ryan preferred to try his luck in free agency.
“I think his time went in the draft and I think he really wanted to go undrafted and come here,” Claude Nembhard said at halftime of Ryan’s Summer League debut against the Los Angeles Lakers at Thomas & Mack Center.
The Mavericks were a perfect match. Four months later, that much hasn’t changed.
“I think they showed the most love,” Ryan said. “I thought they really wanted me, they showed the most care for me and felt like I had a chance to come do something over here as well as just the personality they have. A lot of lob threats over here, a lot of veteran guys to learn from.
“I feel like there’s an opportunity for me to possibly get a contract in the future.”
The guard’s fit in Dallas became even more logical when you begin to connect the puzzle pieces. Claude Nembhard’s longstanding relationship with Triano is only one layer.
Prior to college stops at Creighton and Gonzaga, Ryan spent three years at Florida’s Montverde Academy under famed coach Kevin Boyle. Two of Boyle’s national title-winning teams at Montverde featured Nembhard’s new backcourt mate, D’Angelo Russell, and a third Mavericks guard, Kyrie Irving, played for the coach at St. Patrick High in New Jersey from 2008-10.
Russell and Irving presume to play mentorship roles for Nembhard this season and the two-way rookie could benefit from additional opportunities in the Mavericks thinned-out backcourt, which will operate without Irving much of the season as he veteran guard recovers from an ACL injury.
All things were considered as Nembhard filtered through the best possible landing spots.
“I think it’s an exciting opportunity with their point guard depth right now, he might have a real opportunity to impact winning,” said Andrew Nembhard, who sat courtside to watch his younger sibling at Summer League just weeks after losing in Game 7 of the NBA Finals to former Gonzaga teammate Chet Holmgren and the Oklahoma City Thunder. “I think that’s where he’s best, if he can impact (winning) in whatever way.”
Flagg, the Duke phenom who was instantly slotted to go to Dallas after the franchise won the draft lottery, also fits into the Mavericks/Montverde Venn diagram. The No. 1 draft pick joined the prep school two years after Nembhard graduated, giving the rookies built-in chemistry even before they arrived in Vegas to play leading roles for the Summer League Mavericks.
“Familiar faces are always good,” Nembhard said. “Having a little bit of a relationship there is good and I think we can build our relationship and get to know each other more.”
General manager Nico Harrison was all in on the Nembhard plan, too. Formerly Nike’s vice president of North American basketball operations, Harrison, a Seattle native who spent time living in Spokane as a child, got to know Claude Nembhard while Andrew was competing for UPlay Canada, an AAU team that competed on the Nike EYBL circuit.
“One of the things about Ryan is we thought he was one of the best passers in the draft,” Harrison told the S-R at Summer League. “People knock him for his size, but he’s so scrappy and his high assist-to-turnover ratio, that’s what you want in a point guard.”
The Nembhard acquisition received a unanimous approval rate across the organization.
Former Mavericks principal owner and current minority owner Mark Cuban tossed his endorsement into the ring during a social media exchange on draft night and elaborated when asked about Nembhard during an unplanned media scrum at Summer League.
“He’s part like his brother, part like T.J. McConnell. Who was the guy we drafted from (the University of) Miami?” Cuban said, referring to former first-round pick Shane Larkin. “Part like that too where he can get wherever he wants, he’s a pest and he can score. He’s a willing scorer, but he’s also a willing passer. You can tell he’s got his spots on the court he knows to get to.
“You didn’t see a lot from the 3-point line (in Nembhard’s Summer League debut), but I think Ryan’s going to be really, really good. And particularly with Kyrie out, between him, Brandon Williams and Cooper, it’s going to be really interesting to see how they mesh.”
Nembhard totaled 243 assists in his first year at Gonzaga and blazed past his own school record as a senior, setting school and conference marks with 344 assists last season – needing 10 fewer games to reach the milestone. Only 22 players in NCAA Division I history have recorded more than 300 assists in a season and just four have registered more than Nembhard did during his dazzling 2024-25 campaign.
The point guard’s win-loss record at Creighton and Gonzaga, 96-38 over four seasons, was another sparkling resume line.
But, even with that information readily available, NBA front offices who tend to lean younger and bigger while evaluating point guards didn’t view Nembhard as a top draft prospect.
“I think he also understands that for guys his size to make it in the NBA, you’ve got to have something special,” Triano said. “We’ve already talked to him about that. You’ve got to be a dog defensively, you’ve got to make it really hard for people so they don’t pick on you, they don’t try to expose you for what you are.
“So you’ve got a few things going against you right now. Number one, your size and number two, you didn’t get drafted. You wear those both like a badge, that’s who you need to be.”
Even with Flagg on the floor, Nembhard was arguably Dallas’ most effective player during a brief three-game stint at Summer League. In game one, with Dallas’ No. 1 pick struggling to find his offensive rhythm, Nembhard willingly took over as Dallas’ primary scorer, operating efficiently in the mid-range and simultaneously putting pressure on the rim en route to 21 points (8 of 14 shooting) and the game-winning basket in an 87-85 win.
“Ryan’s a great player. Incredible passer, can really score it as well,” Flagg said. “I don’t know if people realize that, so I’m excited to get on the court with him.”
Andrew Nembhard came into the NBA as a serviceable defender but has transformed into one of the league’s most reliable stoppers, a reputation the former GU point guard reaffirmed during the Finals. Even at his size, Ryan believes he can emulate smaller players like McConnell and the New Orleans Pelicans’ Jose Alvarado – known for their ability to defend 94 feet and get under the opponents’ skin.
“I don’t know Andrew, but I can tell you one thing, they’re both tough,” said Mavericks assistant Josh Broghamer, who coached the team at Summer League. “So you watch the Finals and you see Andrew guarding Shai (Gilgeous-Alexander) and putting his chest on him and fighting through screens.
“I would say that runs in the family really well, so he’s a very tough kid. Like you said, he might not be as big but I’ll go ahead and say he’s tougher than him right now at least from what I’ve seen so he’s been great to have around.”
Ryan’s runway to meaningful minutes in Dallas may not be as clear as Andrew’s, but mental toughness, basketball IQ and defensive hustle can all go a long way and the rookie guard should get ample opportunities to showcase his game splitting time between the Mavericks and G-League Texas Legends.
“I think those are the things he’s going to have to do to get playing time, but he’s a scrap,” Harrison said. “He’s been like that, his brother’s like that, his dad was like that so I think it’s just part of who they are.”
The question prompts a wry grin from Triano.
Twenty-five years removed from his recruiting pitch to Claude, could he have imagined a scenario where he’d be coaching the youngest member of the Nembhard bloodline?
“No, no. You can never predict something like that, but it’s been fun watching,” Triano said. “I know obviously Claude was a basketball player and they’re a basketball family, so the kids had a chance. They both did really, really well and it’s been fun watching. Basketball in Canada’s been really good and they’re part of that whole program.”
Nembhard’s collected plenty of skeptics as he enters the next phase of his career, but it wasn’t hard to locate supporters of the nation’s leading passer wandering the halls of NBA Summer League.
“I loved playing with him for two years, I was sad when he left,” said former Creighton teammate and three-time Big East Defensive Player of the Year Ryan Kalkbrenner, who’s now with the Charlotte Hornets. “I’m just happy he’s finding success and now making it here, he’s just one step closer to his dream. … He’s awesome, man. I hope our paths cross again someday in the NBA.”
Nembhard could secure a spot in Dallas’ rotation earlier than most anticipated. The rookie point guard averaged just more than 5 points in the team’s first four preseason games, but recorded 20 assists and only two turnovers, dishing out 12 assists in a single game against the Utah Jazz.
“Ryan could easily be in that rotation,” Kidd said after the fourth preseason game against the Lakers. “He’s made a case for that and he’s on a two-way.”
It’s possible Nembhard is playing meaningful minutes by Oct. 29, one of the rookie’s first opportunities to prove himself against a point guard of prototypical NBA size.
Dallas’ opponent that night? The Indiana Pacers and 6-foot-4 Andrew Nembhard.
“I’ve been kind of dealing with it my whole life. At the end of the day, I am who I am,” Ryan said. “It is what it is. I’m not going to grow that much more, I’m probably done in that sense. I feel like at a certain point the height won’t be talked about anymore. We all know we’ve just got to roll the ball out and play hoops at the end of the day.”