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Under Armour?
- Thread in 'Other Brands' Thread starter Started by jorh xd,
- Start date
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- 10
Flotro looks to be UA's new bread and butter. So far so good. A solid 3rd Brand/option After Nike/JB & Adidas. more room for better perfermance products. Enjoy!
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https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/under-armour-uaa-q4-earnings-report-2024-b48ea80c
Under Armour to Slash Jobs, Warns of Revenue Drop
Under Armour is collapsing — and Kevin Plank has to take the blame
The Under Armour meltdown continues.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/18/business/under-armour-kevin-plank-shoes/index.html
Under Armour was a real threat to Nike. Now it’s fighting to stay relevant
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/oth...ees-as-part-of-restructuring-plan/ar-BB1mA8dK
Under Armour to lay off employees as part of restructuring plan
https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/under-armour-uaa-q4-earnings-report-2024-b48ea80c
Under Armour to Slash Jobs, Warns of Revenue Drop
Under Armour is collapsing — and Kevin Plank has to take the blame
The Under Armour meltdown continues.finance.yahoo.com
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/18/business/under-armour-kevin-plank-shoes/index.html
Under Armour was a real threat to Nike. Now it’s fighting to stay relevant
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/oth...ees-as-part-of-restructuring-plan/ar-BB1mA8dK
Under Armour to lay off employees as part of restructuring plan
whole industry hasnt been doing so hot tho and nike just went through huge lay offs as well to restructure the brand...
albeit nike is a beast and way bigger than UA is and have retros that can give them brand heat, but can't be acting like they're the only brand going through tough times at the moment
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The Balenciaga x Under Armour Collection Releases Spring 2025
Balenciaga has teamed up with Under Armour to produce a collection of apparel for Spring 2025. Find images and information here.
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Good for them. You never know what weird collab will help pull them out of the spiral
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This collab won’t help either brand.
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Unisex Curry 4 FloTro Basketball Shoes | Under Armour
Shop Under Armour for Unisex Curry 4 FloTro Basketball Shoes
www.underarmour.com
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Hadn’t had a curry since the og2s. Flotro any good?
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Balenciaga x Under Armour
Release Date: Spring 2025
Release Date: Spring 2025
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UA really think they are going to be able to pull some of the high fashion crowd though? Like the collab seemed odd but now after seeing some of the pieces and them being....lets just say...far away from the UA target market I can't imagine anyone who is actually buying this.
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They had to try a different play. This is what collabs do. Let's see how this plays out.
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First curry’s since Og 2s.
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Dude is a nice guy and he's had a moment or three in the NCAA, but just like Curry brand to sign him.
Declared for the 2023 draft then withdrew after it was clear he wasn't going to get taken.
In the draft this year but Sports Illustrated notes:
"Tominaga, who likely won't get drafted in the upcoming 2024 NBA Draft, has already committed to pursuing his Olympics dream instead of participating in the NBA Summer League as a possible free agent. He made his Olympics debut in 2020 as a member of Japan's national team."
UA stays taking Ls. I get the connection between him and Steph, and it's a really nice story. And I guess UA/Curry has nothing else going on anyway, but wow, this is just bad.
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Baltimore-based Under Armour bets on innovation to turn around sports apparel brand
Baltimore-based Under Armour doubles down on technical innovation to remind consumers of its roots, propel a turnaround and push itself ahead of competitors.
www.baltimoresun.com
Baltimore-based Under Armour bets on innovation to turn around sports apparel brand
Lorraine Mirabella
11–14 minutes
Loading your audio article
Fabric samples line the walls of the “materials library” in Baltimore-based Under Armour’s innovation labs in a corner of Building 37 on a corporate campus in Baltimore Peninsula. A trend board for spring 2026 stands nearby, meant to inspire with its display of athletic shoe uppers in the latest textiles.
The textiles team meets here with product designers to select fabrics for seasonal apparel pieces and hash out fabric ideas. Team members aim to find the best intersection of sportswear and innovation, in areas such as performance and durability, for the market.
“Our textiles have to perform,” said Kyle Blakely, Under Armour’s senior vice president of innovation, development and testing. “We have an expectation from the consumer that we’re a performance brand. … That’s what makes our brand so different. … When you buy our fabrics, you don’t have to sacrifice performance or sacrifice comfort. You get both.”
In textiles, product design, testing and manufacturing, Under Armour is doubling down on technical innovation. Officials believe it will remind consumers of the sportswear maker’s roots, propel a turnaround for the faltering brand and push it ahead of a growing pack of competitors.
The reemphasis on innovation comes at a critical time for a company that invented a sweat-wicking T-shirt nearly three decades ago and rapidly grew into a multibillion-dollar sports apparel and footwear maker. But in recent years, sales, profits and the company’s stock price have slumped.
Founder Kevin Plank, who came up with the idea for the shirt that launched Under Armour, returned April 1 as president and CEO after more than four years. During a May earnings call, Plank told analysts that in an industry roiled by the coronavirus pandemic, intense competition and shifts in consumer shopping behavior, Under Armour is doing too much.
“There are too many products, too many initiatives, too much of too much,” Plank said. “We must be highly focused and prioritize what needs to get done.”
Almost immediately, amid slipping quarterly sales and with additional declines expected in the U.S., Plank began the company’s second restructuring since 2017. He outlined plans to reduce product assortments, speed up product development and improve in-store descriptions of what merchandise does and how it improves athletic performance.
At the same time, Under Armour plans to move its corporate headquarters in South Baltimore from Locust Point to anchor the Baltimore Peninsula waterfront community. On 50 company-owned acres south of Interstate 95, Under Armour has long run operations such as the innovation labs out of Building 37, a former Sam’s Club store named for Plank’s University of Maryland football jersey number, and where the new headquarters is under construction. Corporate workers will begin moving in November.
Standing near one of the company's knitting machines, Kyle Blakely, senior vice president and head of innovations, holds spools of Neolast, a new fabric developed in the innovation lab at Under Armour's Port Covington Global Headquarters.
Standing near one of Under Armour’s knitting machines, Senior Vice President Innovation, Development and Testing Kyle Blakely holds spools of Neolast, a new fabric developed in the innovation lab at Under Armour’s Port Covington global headquarters. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Staff)
In an interview, Blakely described the evolution of his 190-person innovation department. Its engineers used to work separately, almost in secret, from other departments — even those designing and testing products.
“That might be OK for building fighter jets, [but] for building shoes and shirts, it was challenging, especially if you want to innovate quickly,” he said. Now, “the innovation team is working hand-in-hand with the product teams and the design teams on a daily basis. It fosters this culture here that … innovation is influencing everything we’re doing.”
Blakely, who started as an entry-level materials developer 15 years ago, has overseen innovation since 2022. Just weeks ago, he took on oversight of materials, product development and testing, a shuffling meant to foster better collaboration on product development from start to finish and get innovative designs to market faster — something Plank flagged as a turnaround goal.
Innovation team employees are split between Building 37, with a focus on apparel, Portland, Oregon, with a focus on footwear, and a textile and manufacturing facility at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Employees might work on projects that will hit the market within months or not for years.
“Kevin’s vision is that we’re doing commercial innovations,” Blakely said. “Yes, we need to inspire and, yes, we will build crazy concepts that are amazing. But we need to build things that are going to elevate the brand and are going to make money.”
One of the newest and biggest ideas is Neolast, a replacement for spandex that Under Armour co-invented with Texas-based chemical maker Celanese Corp. Under Armour believes the new fiber will not only perform better and be more sustainable, but will transform the sports apparel industry. The apparel maker began creating Neolast yarn seven years ago in Baltimore, working with Celanese and building a custom-made knitting machine for the Under Armour facility in North Carolina.
The fabric eventually will replace spandex in all Under Armour garments and is being sold industrywide by a third-party distributor. On May 7, Under Armour unveiled the Vanish Pro T-shirt, the first product made with Neolast, and plans to scale up manufacturing of additional products.
During a recent tour of the bustling innovation labs, Blakely showed off massive knitting machines used to make Neolast fabric, basketball uppers and other fabrics. In a section of the innovation labs called the Lighthouse, a small-scale manufacturing facility that first opened in 2016 at City Garage in Port Covington and is now in Building 37, pattern makers and sewing machine operators work just steps from design and product teams.
Besides creating prototypes, “if an athlete needs something, we can make it immediately,” Blakely said. “We’ve had multiple instances where we made Steph Curry something within 24 hours to support him if he needs it, or many, many other athletes.”
Blakely picked up a sample of the basketball superstar’s latest signature shoe, the Curry11, made with “Flow” traction technology. A Nike shoe sat nearby, a rare appearance at Under Armour but needed for demonstration. When the rival shoes were placed side by side on a slanted board replicating a court surface, the Curry 11 stuck while the Nike fell off.
Candace Davidow, manager of the materials testing lab, places a jacket on the lab's "sweating torso," a machine that mimics and tests sweating patterns, at Under Armour's Port Covington Global Headquarters. On left is a wind machine, so the company can test wind and atmospheric patterns and their effects on garments and fabrics under development.
Candace Davidow, a materials lab engineer and manager for apparel at Under Armour, places a jacket on the lab’s “sweating torso,” a machine that mimics and tests sweating patterns. At left is a wind machine, so the company can test wind and atmospheric patterns and their effects on garments and fabrics under development. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Staff)
Nearby, in a development department dedicated to team uniforms and apparel for retail, employees take fabrics and create ideas for garments and how they should fit. A workspace where different departments sit across an aisle from each other helps people across specialties take ownership throughout the creative process, Blakely said.
Products in development go through rigorous, scientifically backed testing at an in-house textile materials lab, dubbed the Proving Grounds. It includes a climate chamber in which instruments simulate how bodies sweat and otherwise react in hot and cold weather.
“We do tons of different testing,” said Candace Davidow, a materials lab engineer and manager for apparel. “We do everything from durability testing, which is pilling, snagging, abrasions, to thermal testing. … We have stretch testing. We have wash testing. We do a lot of laundry.”
Other equipment tests for moisture management. Employees check drying time, drying rate, wicking speed and wicking distance, said Davidow, a nine-year employee.
In a new initiative, the company is coming up with fabric that reduces shedding, an attempt to limit environmentally harmful synthetic microfibers that pollute water after being pumped from washing machines. Besides testing for shedding from future retail products, the company developed its own fiber-shed test method and kit, used in its labs, and since December sold commercially to mills and apparel makers seeking sustainable options. Under Armour plans to launch its first piece of clothing made from shed-reduction material this fall.
Besides testing in the lab, Under Armour tests products in the field. It runs about 500 “wear tests” a year on new and modified products with some 10,000 athletes and other consumers, checking for fit, comfort, durability and performance. Neolast fabric, for instance, was tested many times on many athletes.
“We need to put it on bodies to get true, real-world perspectives from athletes,” said Meagan Marando, director of product testing and insights for the past five years. “I hear constructive criticism, but it could also be, ‘I love this piece of it.'”
The lab may show one result, but “can the athlete feel that benefit? Are they feeling cooler? Are they feeling drier? Do they feel it can help them improve what they’re doing?” Marando said.
Her team often observes high school and college athletes trying out products, including the Maryland Terps, Towson University and Loyola University Maryland. The brand also keeps a database of 100,000 self-selected testers involved in various sports and workouts. Feedback has led to alterations of seams, pockets or waistbands, and changes in design, fit or material.
In her role as senior lead materials developer, Haley Bennett and her team work closely with lab and field testing departments to solve problems flagged by athletes or other consumers. When creating or improving materials, developers work with mills around the world, often starting with athletes to understand their pain points and relying on textile science to engineer solutions.
“I feel like I’m an investigator, when it comes to trying to figure out what’s the problem and what’s the best way to solve it,” Bennett said. “We try to tackle it as a team. Not one person has the best solution.”
Kefah Abbas, a designer, tailor and pattern maker, sews a pair of pants in the innovation lab at Under Armour's Port Covington Global Headquarters. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Staff)
Kefah Abbas, a designer, tailor and pattern maker, sews a pair of pants in the innovation lab at Under Armour’s Port Covington global headquarters. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Staff)
Analysts have applauded both Under Armour’s turnaround plans and Plank’s return. But several warned change takes time.
Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, said in a recent report that a string of weak financial numbers reflects problems with strategy and vision. He noted sales in the U.S., Under Armour’s most important region, slumped by more than 10% in the most recent quarter.
“In our view, there is not nearly enough product innovation, especially in important categories like sneakers, which has put Under Armour on the back foot as newer players like On and Hoka are churning out products that inspire and interest consumers,” Saunders said. “On apparel, ranges continue to be confusing as Under Armour jumps between trying to provide technical solutions and trying to appeal to those wanting fashion fixes.”
Plank’s return, while not an automatic fix, signals that management “intends to get to grips” with problems, Saunders said.
As executive chairman overseeing two consecutive CEOs since 2020, Plank told analysts he was able to step back, reflect and lead from a new perspective.
Ultimately, he said he took back over as top executive after he saw shortfalls in the goal of becoming the top athletic brand of choice, blaming struggles on a lack of continuity in execution and competition based mostly on price, “versus our core competency, which is performance and technical innovation.”
It also helped him to realize, he said, that “what I do love doing is selling shirts and shoes — selling the best shirts and shoes.”
Lorraine Mirabella
11–14 minutes
Loading your audio article
Fabric samples line the walls of the “materials library” in Baltimore-based Under Armour’s innovation labs in a corner of Building 37 on a corporate campus in Baltimore Peninsula. A trend board for spring 2026 stands nearby, meant to inspire with its display of athletic shoe uppers in the latest textiles.
The textiles team meets here with product designers to select fabrics for seasonal apparel pieces and hash out fabric ideas. Team members aim to find the best intersection of sportswear and innovation, in areas such as performance and durability, for the market.
“Our textiles have to perform,” said Kyle Blakely, Under Armour’s senior vice president of innovation, development and testing. “We have an expectation from the consumer that we’re a performance brand. … That’s what makes our brand so different. … When you buy our fabrics, you don’t have to sacrifice performance or sacrifice comfort. You get both.”
In textiles, product design, testing and manufacturing, Under Armour is doubling down on technical innovation. Officials believe it will remind consumers of the sportswear maker’s roots, propel a turnaround for the faltering brand and push it ahead of a growing pack of competitors.
The reemphasis on innovation comes at a critical time for a company that invented a sweat-wicking T-shirt nearly three decades ago and rapidly grew into a multibillion-dollar sports apparel and footwear maker. But in recent years, sales, profits and the company’s stock price have slumped.
Founder Kevin Plank, who came up with the idea for the shirt that launched Under Armour, returned April 1 as president and CEO after more than four years. During a May earnings call, Plank told analysts that in an industry roiled by the coronavirus pandemic, intense competition and shifts in consumer shopping behavior, Under Armour is doing too much.
“There are too many products, too many initiatives, too much of too much,” Plank said. “We must be highly focused and prioritize what needs to get done.”
Almost immediately, amid slipping quarterly sales and with additional declines expected in the U.S., Plank began the company’s second restructuring since 2017. He outlined plans to reduce product assortments, speed up product development and improve in-store descriptions of what merchandise does and how it improves athletic performance.
At the same time, Under Armour plans to move its corporate headquarters in South Baltimore from Locust Point to anchor the Baltimore Peninsula waterfront community. On 50 company-owned acres south of Interstate 95, Under Armour has long run operations such as the innovation labs out of Building 37, a former Sam’s Club store named for Plank’s University of Maryland football jersey number, and where the new headquarters is under construction. Corporate workers will begin moving in November.
Standing near one of the company's knitting machines, Kyle Blakely, senior vice president and head of innovations, holds spools of Neolast, a new fabric developed in the innovation lab at Under Armour's Port Covington Global Headquarters.
Standing near one of Under Armour’s knitting machines, Senior Vice President Innovation, Development and Testing Kyle Blakely holds spools of Neolast, a new fabric developed in the innovation lab at Under Armour’s Port Covington global headquarters. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Staff)
In an interview, Blakely described the evolution of his 190-person innovation department. Its engineers used to work separately, almost in secret, from other departments — even those designing and testing products.
“That might be OK for building fighter jets, [but] for building shoes and shirts, it was challenging, especially if you want to innovate quickly,” he said. Now, “the innovation team is working hand-in-hand with the product teams and the design teams on a daily basis. It fosters this culture here that … innovation is influencing everything we’re doing.”
Blakely, who started as an entry-level materials developer 15 years ago, has overseen innovation since 2022. Just weeks ago, he took on oversight of materials, product development and testing, a shuffling meant to foster better collaboration on product development from start to finish and get innovative designs to market faster — something Plank flagged as a turnaround goal.
Innovation team employees are split between Building 37, with a focus on apparel, Portland, Oregon, with a focus on footwear, and a textile and manufacturing facility at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Employees might work on projects that will hit the market within months or not for years.
“Kevin’s vision is that we’re doing commercial innovations,” Blakely said. “Yes, we need to inspire and, yes, we will build crazy concepts that are amazing. But we need to build things that are going to elevate the brand and are going to make money.”
One of the newest and biggest ideas is Neolast, a replacement for spandex that Under Armour co-invented with Texas-based chemical maker Celanese Corp. Under Armour believes the new fiber will not only perform better and be more sustainable, but will transform the sports apparel industry. The apparel maker began creating Neolast yarn seven years ago in Baltimore, working with Celanese and building a custom-made knitting machine for the Under Armour facility in North Carolina.
The fabric eventually will replace spandex in all Under Armour garments and is being sold industrywide by a third-party distributor. On May 7, Under Armour unveiled the Vanish Pro T-shirt, the first product made with Neolast, and plans to scale up manufacturing of additional products.
During a recent tour of the bustling innovation labs, Blakely showed off massive knitting machines used to make Neolast fabric, basketball uppers and other fabrics. In a section of the innovation labs called the Lighthouse, a small-scale manufacturing facility that first opened in 2016 at City Garage in Port Covington and is now in Building 37, pattern makers and sewing machine operators work just steps from design and product teams.
Besides creating prototypes, “if an athlete needs something, we can make it immediately,” Blakely said. “We’ve had multiple instances where we made Steph Curry something within 24 hours to support him if he needs it, or many, many other athletes.”
Blakely picked up a sample of the basketball superstar’s latest signature shoe, the Curry11, made with “Flow” traction technology. A Nike shoe sat nearby, a rare appearance at Under Armour but needed for demonstration. When the rival shoes were placed side by side on a slanted board replicating a court surface, the Curry 11 stuck while the Nike fell off.
Candace Davidow, manager of the materials testing lab, places a jacket on the lab's "sweating torso," a machine that mimics and tests sweating patterns, at Under Armour's Port Covington Global Headquarters. On left is a wind machine, so the company can test wind and atmospheric patterns and their effects on garments and fabrics under development.
Candace Davidow, a materials lab engineer and manager for apparel at Under Armour, places a jacket on the lab’s “sweating torso,” a machine that mimics and tests sweating patterns. At left is a wind machine, so the company can test wind and atmospheric patterns and their effects on garments and fabrics under development. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Staff)
Nearby, in a development department dedicated to team uniforms and apparel for retail, employees take fabrics and create ideas for garments and how they should fit. A workspace where different departments sit across an aisle from each other helps people across specialties take ownership throughout the creative process, Blakely said.
Products in development go through rigorous, scientifically backed testing at an in-house textile materials lab, dubbed the Proving Grounds. It includes a climate chamber in which instruments simulate how bodies sweat and otherwise react in hot and cold weather.
“We do tons of different testing,” said Candace Davidow, a materials lab engineer and manager for apparel. “We do everything from durability testing, which is pilling, snagging, abrasions, to thermal testing. … We have stretch testing. We have wash testing. We do a lot of laundry.”
Other equipment tests for moisture management. Employees check drying time, drying rate, wicking speed and wicking distance, said Davidow, a nine-year employee.
In a new initiative, the company is coming up with fabric that reduces shedding, an attempt to limit environmentally harmful synthetic microfibers that pollute water after being pumped from washing machines. Besides testing for shedding from future retail products, the company developed its own fiber-shed test method and kit, used in its labs, and since December sold commercially to mills and apparel makers seeking sustainable options. Under Armour plans to launch its first piece of clothing made from shed-reduction material this fall.
Besides testing in the lab, Under Armour tests products in the field. It runs about 500 “wear tests” a year on new and modified products with some 10,000 athletes and other consumers, checking for fit, comfort, durability and performance. Neolast fabric, for instance, was tested many times on many athletes.
“We need to put it on bodies to get true, real-world perspectives from athletes,” said Meagan Marando, director of product testing and insights for the past five years. “I hear constructive criticism, but it could also be, ‘I love this piece of it.'”
The lab may show one result, but “can the athlete feel that benefit? Are they feeling cooler? Are they feeling drier? Do they feel it can help them improve what they’re doing?” Marando said.
Her team often observes high school and college athletes trying out products, including the Maryland Terps, Towson University and Loyola University Maryland. The brand also keeps a database of 100,000 self-selected testers involved in various sports and workouts. Feedback has led to alterations of seams, pockets or waistbands, and changes in design, fit or material.
In her role as senior lead materials developer, Haley Bennett and her team work closely with lab and field testing departments to solve problems flagged by athletes or other consumers. When creating or improving materials, developers work with mills around the world, often starting with athletes to understand their pain points and relying on textile science to engineer solutions.
“I feel like I’m an investigator, when it comes to trying to figure out what’s the problem and what’s the best way to solve it,” Bennett said. “We try to tackle it as a team. Not one person has the best solution.”
Kefah Abbas, a designer, tailor and pattern maker, sews a pair of pants in the innovation lab at Under Armour's Port Covington Global Headquarters. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Staff)
Kefah Abbas, a designer, tailor and pattern maker, sews a pair of pants in the innovation lab at Under Armour’s Port Covington global headquarters. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Staff)
Analysts have applauded both Under Armour’s turnaround plans and Plank’s return. But several warned change takes time.
Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, said in a recent report that a string of weak financial numbers reflects problems with strategy and vision. He noted sales in the U.S., Under Armour’s most important region, slumped by more than 10% in the most recent quarter.
“In our view, there is not nearly enough product innovation, especially in important categories like sneakers, which has put Under Armour on the back foot as newer players like On and Hoka are churning out products that inspire and interest consumers,” Saunders said. “On apparel, ranges continue to be confusing as Under Armour jumps between trying to provide technical solutions and trying to appeal to those wanting fashion fixes.”
Plank’s return, while not an automatic fix, signals that management “intends to get to grips” with problems, Saunders said.
As executive chairman overseeing two consecutive CEOs since 2020, Plank told analysts he was able to step back, reflect and lead from a new perspective.
Ultimately, he said he took back over as top executive after he saw shortfalls in the goal of becoming the top athletic brand of choice, blaming struggles on a lack of continuity in execution and competition based mostly on price, “versus our core competency, which is performance and technical innovation.”
It also helped him to realize, he said, that “what I do love doing is selling shirts and shoes — selling the best shirts and shoes.”
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Went undrafted as expected. Other undrafted guys but fan favs like DJ Burns have signed on to play in s ummer league with teams or signed 2-ways. Tominaga is still waiting to get an opportunity as far as I've seen. Hopefully he can get on somebody's squad before having to go overseas immediately after leaving college. Here's to hoping.
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His 3pt contest performance was legendary
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Looks like it was the 12s in the box.
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From reddit:
