American-Ugandan professional basketball player, Ishmail Wainright has again signed with NBA’s Phoenix Suns.
He signed a two-way contract alongside guard Duane Washington Jr.
Two-way contracts allow NBA teams to carry two extra players in addition to the 15 on their regular season roster. These players generally bounce back and forth between the NBA and minor league, but remain under team control and can’t be poached by rival franchises.
The Phoenix Suns are an American professional basketball team based in Phoenix, Arizona. They are among the 30 teams that compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA), the premier men’s professional basketball league in the world.
Wainright, 27, played in 45 regular season games for the Suns last season, averaging 2.4 points and 1.2 rebounds in 8.0 minutes per game.
He scored all of his career-high 20 points in the fourth quarter on April 6 at the LA Clippers, joining Cam Johnson and Jamal Crawford as the only Suns players in the last 25 years to score 20-plus points in a period while coming off the bench.
Wainright (6-5, 235 pounds) also appeared in seven games during the postseason.
The athlete who was born in Missouri, U.S. represents Uganda internationally. He scored 36 points and collected 13 rebounds in his national team debut in a win over Cape Verde in November 2020
In July last year, Wainright represented Uganda at the FIBA Basketball World Cup African Qualifiers in Kigali (Rwanda) where he put up an impressive performance.
During the Kigali tourney, he averaged team highs of 19.5 points, 8.0 rebounds and 4.0 assists.
He was among the outstanding Silverbacks (Uganda’s national basketball team) in many games, among them Cameroon, Cape Verde and Nigeria.
He was passer, defender, rebounder, and screen-setter, for the national team. In Kigali, every country was allowed to have one naturalized player on their roster. For Uganda, it was Wainright.
Wainright is the first Ugandan national team player to sign for a NBA team.
Profile
Wainright is the grandson of former NBA player, Maurice King, who played for Boston Celtics in the 1959-1960 season.
After playing four seasons of basketball for the Baylor Bears (the team Baylor University basketball team), Winright joined the Buffalo Bills of the NFL (professional American football league) as an undrafted free agent, but he did not make the final roster.
He then returned to basketball and signed with Nürnberg Falcons BC (German-based basketball club) in September 2018.
In July of 2019, he signed with Sports Club Rasta Vechta, another German-based basketball club.
In June 2020, he signed with IG Strasbourg, a French professional basketball club.
On August 7, 2021, Wainright signed a two-year non-guaranteed deal with Canada’s Toronto Raptors but was waived by the Raptors in October of the same year.
Five days later, he signed a two-way contract with the Phoenix Suns. Wainright made his NBA debut on November 19, 2021 recording his first official points, rebounds, and assist two days later in a blowout win over the Denver Nuggets.
On April 10, the Suns converted his deal into a standard contract.
Wainwright joined the Phoenix Suns’ 2022 NBA Summer League roster.
