The 2024 NBA draft wasn’t successful for Texas men’s basketball.
The program ended the ceremony with no drafted players, but for these two graduates, professional basketball dreams are not over.
Though they would have preferred to leave the draft with full-season contracts, former Texas guard Max Abmas and former Texas center Dylan Disu have joined summer league rosters.
The NBA Summer League is an off-season competition in which all 30 teams come together to try out different rosters in place of regular season lineups in a typical tournament style. Abmas will be joining the Utah Jazz, while Disu will be a part of the Toronto Raptors.
The two will play with league rookies, sophomores and G League affiliates, the minor league organization of the NBA.
Disu and Abmas were two key figures for Texas in the 2023-24 season.
Abmas transferred from Oral Roberts to play his last year of eligibility in Austin and ended the season becoming the eighth-leading scorer in NCAA history with 3,132 points and as No. 3 on the NCAA Division I men’s all-time career three-point field goals with 512. In his one season at Texas, he started all 34 games and led the team in scoring, assists and minutes.
“I’m super grateful for the opportunity to compete at Texas,” Abmas said after the Tennessee March Madness defeat. “I never, in high school, would’ve guessed that I would be at Texas in college. Super grateful for (Rodney Terry) and the whole coaching staff for believing in me.”
Disu also didn’t start his collegiate career at Texas but left a mark as a Longhorn. He could have declared for the draft last year, but after a successful March Madness run in 2023 and a knee injury, the center decided to stay another year in Austin.
“It means the world to all of us,” Disu said about playing in the NCAA tournament. “I’m so happy I was able to come to this tournament one more time with my teammates for this University.”
However, his fifth season didn’t begin as planned. Disu missed the first nine games of the year due to a left foot surgery. Nonetheless, he came back to have 20 starts in 25 games played and wrapped up the season ranking second in scoring with 15.5 points per game, only behind Abmas’ 16.8.
The two announced their free agent contracts with the NBA within hours of each other on social media.
The 2024 NBA Summer League will run from July 12-22.
