The Pacers’ summer league group took a step back on Sunday night with a 100-93 overtime loss to the Sixers, but one name kept popping: Rienk Mast.
Indiana had already snapped into the win column on Friday with a 99-93 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers, a welcome change after a 19-63 season just a year removed from a Finals berth. Summer league is only summer league, of course, but the Pacers have still found some useful pieces in the mix.
Third-year guard Jalen Slawson has stood out, and so has Japanese legend Yuki Kawamura. Even without a top-four pick in the uniform this summer, there’s still talent worth tracking.
The biggest surge against Philadelphia came from Mast, the Nebraska big man who led Indiana in both scoring and rebounds. He’s on an Exhibit-10 contract for now, but the next goal is obvious: a two-way deal, or at least a G-League spot.
Mast’s path to this point has been a long one. He joined the Dutch club Donar at 16 and helped them win a cup as a rookie. In his second season, he took another leap and collected Under-23 MVP and Most Improved Player honors at the same time.
Not long after that, he made noise on the international stage. The Netherlands went on to win the FIBA Second Division gold medal, a result that caught plenty of people off guard.
Mast was the captain of that team, and the run helped him land a scholarship at Bradley University in Illinois. He spent three years there before transferring to Nebraska, where he earned All-Big Ten honors both before and after coming back from a major knee injury.
What Mast brings is pretty clear. He’s a strong post presence who can score and pass out of the block, and he has a real feel for working around both rims. At 6'10, he’s not the biggest frontcourt player around, but his frame and broad shoulders help him play bigger than the measurement suggests, and he moves better than you’d expect.
He also isn’t walking into this moment as a newcomer to pressure. With nearly 10 years of professional experience behind him, Mast has already been through plenty of different basketball situations.
RotoWire.com compared him to Kelly Olynyk or Nikola Vucevic. That’s not the kind of rim-protecting profile the Pacers seem to prefer, but he could still fill a reserve-center role if injuries hit the depth chart again, as they did this past year.
If Indiana gets to that point, it likely means bigger issues are already in play. For now, though, Mast looks like one of the more interesting watches on the summer league roster and maybe its most valuable find.
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