Martinelli's two-way deal looks small right now, but his path could end up mirroring what Kobe Sanders just did with the Clippers.
The Los Angeles Clippers added a forward this week who spent four years turning himself into one of the best scorers in college basketball, and almost nobody outside Chicago seemed to notice.
Nick Martinelli signed a two-way contract with Los Angeles on Monday, another sign that this front office keeps finding value late in the draft, right where most teams stop paying attention.
He fell all the way to the 55th pick despite averaging over 20 points in each of his last two seasons at Northwestern and winning back-to-back Big Ten scoring titles, and his rights bounced through another team before he landed with the Clippers for cash.
Production like that rarely falls this far, and it says something about how little patience teams have for players who do not look the part.
Why Martinelli Got Overlooked
Scouts worried about his average speed and length, the traits that show up on a measuring tape rather than a stat sheet, and those concerns pushed him down draft boards all spring.
What gets lost is how much better Martinelli got every single year at Northwestern. His three-point shot climbed from under 34 percent as a sophomore and junior to 41.7 percent as a senior, and his free-throw percentage jumped from 72.8 to 80.9 over that same stretch.
He also rebounds well for his position, averaging more than six boards a night the last two seasons with over two of those coming on the offensive glass, a skill that tends to hold up at any level.
Those are not the numbers of a player who got lucky for one season.
His senior year averages put him alongside Zach Edey, Keegan Murray and Luka Garza as the only Big Ten players in three decades to score 22 points and grab 6 rebounds a game, and that company should count for something for a player who was a three-star recruit not so long ago.
The Kobe Sanders Blueprint
Los Angeles has done this before.
Kobe Sanders went 50th overall a year ago, also traded away on draft night before landing with the Clippers, also a four-year college grinder without the tools teams usually chase.
Sanders turned his two-way deal into a standard contract by February and then into a four-year, $11.2 million extension this month, becoming exactly the type of player this new-look roster wants to build around.
His rookie averages, 7.3 points a game on 40.8 percent shooting from three, give a real sense of what a smart bench role could look like for Martinelli in year one.
The Clippers finished last season 42-40 and lost the play-in to Golden State, and after trading Kawhi Leonard to Toronto this offseason, the front office is clearly betting on cheap, productive players over aging stars.
That is the same young core Keaton Wagler is stepping into, and Martinelli now has a real chance to show his college production can travel.
