Mike James made it to the NBA, but can he stay here?

When the Suns inked Mike James to a contract on Monday, it represented a culmination for him. The 26-year-old guard, who last played for Panathinaikos, had finally made the NBA. That path was not easy. It involved almost every level of basketball outside of the league that you could think of.

Since graduating from Grant High School in Portland, Oregon in 2008, James played for the following teams, in order: Two years at Eastern Arizona Community College (Go Gila Monsters!); two years at the Division I level for Lamar; nine games for KK Zagreb in Croatia; a stint in Israel with Hapoel Kazrin; time in the Italian second division with Omegna; three games in something called the International Basketball League; eight more games in the lower tiers of Europe with Kolossos in Greece; two years in Spain with Baskonia; one Summer League stint in 2015 with Phoenix; and last year, a return to Greece with Panathinaikos.

James played in six countries in three years at one point, and his lone time in the U.S. was in a regional league in the Northwest United States that literally no longer exists and featured Dennis Rodman and Shawn Kemp at its peak. This is not what you’d call a linear path to the best basketball league in the world.

But James is here now. His performance in the 2015-16 Las Vegas Summer League (12.6 points, 4.3 rebounds, 3.9 assists per game over seven games) got him on Phoenix’s radar, and they decided to give the 6-foot guard a shot at his dream. This comes on the back of James’ stellar performance in Euroleague, where he averaged 13.1 points, 2.2 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game in helping lead Panathinaikos to a fourth-place finish in the regular season.

James developed into a very solid Euroleague guard on the combination of his outstanding work ethic and his NBA-level athleticism. The knock on him has always been that he’s too small at 6-foot, but that never stopped him in Euroleague, where he was able to use his quickness and vertical pop to get to the rim almost at will. Give James and inch of space, and he can fly.

With the ball in his hands, James was no match for many Euroleague defenders. He is a brilliant transition scorer, able to contort his body under and around bigger defenders on the break. In the halfcourt he’s mostly a straight-line driver, but he finishes at a high level through a combination of touch and body control at the rim. James shot 58.7 percent on 2-point shots this year, per Overbasket, and most of those attempts came at the rim.

James also does offer some value as a creator. He has decent court vision, although he can get tunnel vision when attacking the rim. He is best at distributing out of the pick-and-roll, where he reads the interior of the defense well, setting up lobs or passing back to the weak side when he sees the defense overcommit.

From this, you can see where the value for James kicks in, especially on a team like the Suns that actually runs a very similar offense to the types seen in Europe. He’ll be able to get to the rim in the NBA, and he offers enough as an initiator that the Suns likely plan to run bench units through him when Devin Booker sits. He basically did this in Euroleague, after all. When starting point guard Nick Calathes would take an early rest, James would come in and run the offense in the second quarter, with former Wizard Chris Singleton as his primary pick-and-roll partner and shooters surrounding them.

The maximal value of James in the NBA is a question mark, however. That’s a solid outline of an NBA role, but he has to prove that he can also play in a less ball-dominant role than he took in Athens. A big part of that calculus is spot-up shooting, which he’s been inconsistent at throughout his three Euroleague seasons. James shot 34 percent from the perimeter last season in Euroleague, but a lot of those attempts came off the dribble. He did shoot more spot-up attempts for Baskonia in 2015-16, but there are still some major red flags. His form on catch-and-shoot opportunities is somewhat inconsistent, and his release is consistently slow, which is going to be a problem against NBA closeouts.

James also isn’t the best decision-maker. As mentioned earlier, he often will get tunnel vision attacking off the dribble. Against long and nimble perimeter defenders that can close off his lanes to the rim, he lacks the top-level craft of an Isaiah Thomas or Chris Paul to compensate and can get sucked into midrange jumpers and step backs. He’s a good ball-handler, so turnovers aren’t going to be a problem, but bad shots will be.

There’s also the matter of defense, where James is at a disadvantage due to his size. Like Thomas, he will compete and can stay in front of guys. He’s a very good transition defender, making heady and opportunistic plays in the open court. But make him navigate screens from NBA bigs, and there are about to be problems. Playing him and Tyler Ulis together is going to be a disaster.

This Suns team isn’t in position to be competing at any level this year, though, and they were likely to be bad anyway on this end. They need the help in offensive initiation, and James at least tries on this end, which is more than can be said for some of their young guys. For this year, James being bad on this end isn’t an issue.

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James’s move to the NBA is a fantastic opportunity for him, and his story is one of the better ones you’ll see among NBA rookies this year. Like Malcolm Delaney of the Atlanta Hawks, he got completely overlooked coming out of college, and made the NBA by working his tail off and earning opportunity after opportunity in the European game. However, now comes the real test. James has to stay in the NBA, and he has some physical disadvantages that could prevent him from sticking. He’ll be a useful scorer at this level, but he needs to become a better off-ball player in order for this to work. The dream for James has been realized, but the hard work doesn’t stop.

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