Casey Mitchell Heads Overseas

You may have seen a post earlier on this site urging you to watch Casey Mitchell and the Sioux Falls Skyforce take on the Springfield Armor. At almost the same time, news came out that Mitchell had bought out his contract in order to play overseas. He was the Skyforce’s leading scorer at 19.6 points per game.

Skyforce team president Mike Heineman made the announcement via Twitter around 5 p.m. ET.

Casey Mitchell will not be in uniform tonight. He has bought out of his contract and is heading overseas..hate to see him go #scoringmachine

I had the opportunity to speak with Mitchell on Tuesday evening, and he told me that he was considering going to play overseas. He said if he did, his agent had already wrapped him up spots on the Lakers and Knicks Summer League rosters and that he would be able to come back to the U.S. at that point. That tells me that he was far enough along in contract talks in whichever team overseas it was to know that he could get a release in late-June when the Summer Leagues begin.

Before that he told me that playing in the D-League was “different from college and high school. It’s more business like. I’ve learned a lot from the older guys. It’s a different set of rules. You’ve just got to adjust to it.”

He talked about going overseas to make more money for the time being until he gets his shot on an NBA roster. The NBA will start handing out 10-day contracts to players starting this month, but Mitchell didn’t want to wait and see if he would get a call-up.

I asked him about his time at WVU. We know he had his ups and downs with Bob Huggins, so I asked him what was the biggest thing he learned from Huggins, on or off the court.

“Coach [Huggins] taught me to be more mature about things,” Mitchell said. “Being more of a man. To be successful you can’t be a boy.”

It appears that Mitchell took the advice of his former coach and the advice of his teammates and made a business decision that will help him in the short run and will hopefully lead to greater things in his future.

UPDATE: Mitchell now plays for Union Olimpija in Slovenia.