Fifteen years after entering the NBA as a first-round draft pick, and ten years after leaving it again, former Denver Nuggets forward Jordan Hamilton is still playing professional basketball. And he is still getting buckets.
Now 36 years old, the veteran wing has returned to Japan for a second stint and a fifth overall season, continuing a lengthy international career that has taken him through several countries and most of the continents since his last NBA appearance a decade ago.
Hamilton is currently playing for the Saitama Broncos in the second division of Japan’s B League, where he has so far averaged 16.2 points, 6.7 rebounds and 4.6 assists per game. Through his first 11 appearances, he has shot 43.0% from the field and 87.5% from the free-throw line, using the physical advantages he still enjoys over the domestic opposition even as he kicks 40’s door down. Hamilton remains a productive offensive player, contributing as both a scorer and a facilitator in his own ball-dominant way. And in between his time with the Nuggets and his stints in Japan, he played near-enough everywhere else.
All Around The World
Hamilton had previously played in Japan for each of the Shiga Lakestars, Kumamoto Volters, Kobe Storks and Aomori Wat’s (apostrophe theirs), a rare wing import in a league that usually looks to add American size. His best statistical season came in the 2020-21 season with Shiga, where he averaged 24.6 points, 9.5 rebounds and 6.7 assists per game, shooting 49.5% from the field.
Japan, though, has been only one part of an extensive overseas career. Hamilton has also played professionally in Italy, Israel, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Montenegro, Lebanon, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Russia, Turkey and Taiwan, finding regular employment in a variety of competitive leagues while mostly eschewing the more-common European route. He did dip his toe in, though; in 2018-19, Hamilton averaged 15.7 points and 7.2 rebounds in ten Italian league appearances for the team now known as Maxima Roma, while the following season saw him record averages of 14.3 points and 4.4 rebounds with Hapoel Tel Aviv in Israel.
All this has come subsequent to an NBA career spent mostly with the Nuggets, but which never quite hit the heights once foreseen for him. The story of Hamilton’s NBA career was much like the one of his post-NBA career – getting a lot of work, but never quite sticking anywhere,
Hamilton’s Nuggets Career
Although he was originally selected by the Dallas Mavericks with the 26th overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft, Hamilton’s professional career began in Denver. His rights were traded by the Mavericks to the Nuggets on draft night in a three-team deal with the Portland Trail Blazers (who sent Andre Miller to the Nuggets as well), with Denver giving up only Raymond Felton from their end. Hamilton’s time with the Nuggets, though, was spent largely on the fringes of the rotation.
Hamilton appeared in 26 games as a rookie, averaging 4.4 points in 9.9 minutes, before improving slightly to 5.2 points across 40 appearances in 2012-13. His most substantial opportunity with the Nuggets came in 2013-14, when he started 11 of his 39 appearances and averaged 6.8 points and 3.4 rebounds in 17.2 minutes per game. The Nuggets however traded Hamilton to the Houston Rockets at the 2014 trade deadline in exchange for Aaron Brooks (having declined his fourth-year team option before the season began), and he finished the season averaging 6.6 points across 21 games for his new team. Leaving as an unrestricted free agent, Hamilton subsequently joined the Toronto Raptors for training camp before being cut, was claimed off waivers by the Utah Jazz for only ten days, and would go to the G League for the majority of the season before being picked up for the final two months by the Los Angeles Clippers, for whom he played 14 games averaging 2.7 points.
In 2015-16, Hamilton’s final NBA opportunity would come with the New Orleans Pelicans. Signing for the season’s final month. Hamilton played 11 games, started four, and averaged a career-best 11.4 points, 5.6 rebounds and 2.3 assists in 27.6 minutes in entirely uncompetitive games. Despite that productive late-season spell, those would be the last NBA games of his career..
Across five NBA seasons, Hamilton appeared in 151 regular-season games, making 21 starts and averaging 5.9 points, 2.8 rebounds and 0.8 assists. He shot 40.8% from the field and 35.7% from three-point range. His NBA career was relatively brief, but his subsequent decade overseas has demonstrated that his scoring ability could translate into a longer professional career elsewhere. He just has to have a dominant share of the ball to do it.
Former Nugget Still a Bucket, Fifteen Years Later