“Get the team to rally together and try to win the game”

Gonzaga’s Andrew Nembhard has a plan for the NBA

BY HENRY ABBOTT

In March, Gonzaga’s Andrew Nembhard was named the most outstanding player in the West Coast Conference championship tournament. ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES

When Andrew Nembhard was three years old, hooping in the driveway in Ontario, he would pretend to be Allen Iverson. His brother, Ryan, preferred Nuggets-era Carmelo Anthony. “Always, always,” Andrew says, his plan was to play in the NBA. 

“I was delusional at that point,” he laughs, sitting almost literally in the lobby of the NBA. He’s smearing butter on a bagel from the same Chicago hotel counter where Pacers coach Rick Carlisle is, as Nembhard speaks, purchasing a salad, a water, and a Mountain Dew. There are agents and players and front-office people and league personnel at almost every table. “That delusion,” he says, “got me to this point.”

Some rookies have to adjust to living away from home for the first time. Nembhard moved away from his parents in Vaughan, Ontario, to chase his NBA delusion five whole years ago.…