Louisville Kentucky — It took Derby City Distillers Team Market Owner, Akoy Agau a month to make his first big signing in his front office tenure as the expansion team opened training camp this week by inviting 28 players to Louisville.

Yet it was a particular name on the long roster list that jumped off the page: former NBA G League guard, Rodney Pryor.

After splitting time in college between Robert Morris and Georgetown, the athletic 6-foot-5 guard had stints around the G League with the Salt Lake City Stars, Raptors 905, Capital City Go-Go, and the Stockton Kings, where he played during the ‘22 season. Even after coming out of the Big East, Pryor had to navigate turning professional while trying to combat COVID-19 back in 2020.

“Basketball is all I know…I’m a professional basketball player,” Pryor said at the time.

Fast forward two years later, Pryor is still not ready to give up on his career and even penned an e-book about his road to the NBA G League. If anything, TBL is the perfect proving ground to receive a second look at potentially playing internationally. While there’s no doubt the Distillers are planning to make a splash in the debut season in the league, players like Pryor bring a certain cache with them coming from the G League. It goes beyond one development league getting the rub from another. It’s about guys turning some heads to take their talents beyond the G League.

Penning an e-book (and launching a sports brand with Identity Made) bout reaching and excelling in professional basketball with an emphasis on the “politics” of the business and developing character, may have to receive an updated revision detailing Pryor’s experience with the TBL.

That chapter starts this season with the Derby City Distillers.

Likewise, former NBA guard Tim Quarterman (pictured above) is adding his name to a TBL roster for the ‘23 season. Head coach and managing partner, Steve Tucker, announced Quarterman as the newest addition to the defending champion, Shreveport Mavericks. Known for being a coach who takes to Twitter to send messages to his players to emphasize a point, Coach Tucker certainly sent a big message to Shreveport and other teams around the league by inking Quarterman.

“Tim is a proven winner and a champion…he wanted to play back in Louisiana,” Tucker posted.

The LSU product returns to his basketball home in Louisiana, with the Savannah, Georgia native seeing his share off court dilemmas distract from his NBA experience over the last couple of years. From playing with the Portland Trail Blazers out of Summer League, tours of duty in the NBA G League, and playing abroad from Israel to New Zealand, Coach Tucker and the Mavs could be just want is needed for TQ to correct-course.

This isn’t only a league for young guys to make their name, or for current pros to use as a spring-board for bigger and better things, but now TBL is “a different league” for former NBA and NBA G League players to be openly embraced.

Wendell Maxey is the author of Around The Basketball League and has written about professional basketball and sports for 19 years. He’s been featured on NBA.com, ESPN.com, USA Today, FOX Sports, and SLAM Magazine among other publications and media outlets. You can connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn or read through his archive on Linktree.