Curious If Any Former NDSU Players Have Made It To The NBA?

At 6'11, this tall giant from Devils Lake, North Dakota, just recently made his professional debut - Grant Nelson

If you do a little research, you will be blown away by what it takes to play out your dreams on a basketball court, in the National Basketball Association. Let's start out with where Grant Nelson is from, a town of about 7,180 people, Devils Lake, North Dakota. Here is an obvious comment: this guy, from the start, was destined to do great things on the court, and after just two games into the pros, he has done that. Have you ever been to a high school sporting event in Bismarck or Mandan and could just tell someone was going to be a pro one day?

Grant becomes the first former North Dakota State Bison player to join an active NBA roster

After high school, Grant played for NDSU from 2020 to 2023, so for a while, he was doing what he loves to do, playing in the 2025 NBA Summer League. Remember how I said earlier how he was just destined to be something special, well it was all in the cards even back when he was named North Dakota Mr. Basketball back in high school.

The odds are so tough to overcome when your goal is to make it to the NBA

Let me lay some stats out for you:) According to ncaa.org "Approximately 530,000 student-athletes compete at NCAA schools, and just a select few within each sport move on to compete at the professional or Olympic level. Here is one more brutal statistic "Men's basketball: 1.2% of college players play professionally, 0.03% of high school players do" wolfpups.org reported.

Well Grant Nelson just set a franchise record

Check out what he did just a couple of days ago. According si.com "The Brooklyn Nets may have found something unique with Nelson. He became the only player in team history to record 10 or more points, five or more assists and five or more blocks in total through his first two NBA games"

I don't know about you, but I think I have a new team to root for!