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Roddy Gayle Jr. signs with Pistons, Nimari Burnett with Raptors
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- Roddy Gayle Jr. signs with Pistons, Nimari Burnett with Raptors
Three Michigan basketball national champions made history being selected in the lottery portion of the 2026 NBA Draft , but they aren't the former Wolverines on the 2025-26 team who will get their shot at making the NBA.
Senior wing Roddy Gayle Jr. has signed to play with the Detroit Pistons in the Summer League in Las Vegas while graduate wing Nimari Burnett signed an exhibit-10 contract with the Toronto Raptors − a one-year, non-guaranteed NBA minimum-salary agreement which is often used to invite players to training camp and secure their G-League rights.
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Gayle, who spent the final two seasons of his college career in Ann Arbor after beginning at Ohio State, played in 146 career games, with 72 starts, coming off the bench as a sixth-man the majority of the past two seasons for the Wolverines.
Michigan Wolverines guard Nimari Burnett (4), Michigan Wolverines forward Will Tschetter (42) and Michigan Wolverines guard Roddy Gayle Jr. (11) try to take the ball from Purdue Boilermakers forward Trey Kaufman-Renn (4) Friday, March 14, 2025, during the Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
He averaged 7.3 points, 3.3 rebounds, 1.3 assists in 21.1 minutes per game in his final season and scored in double figures 11 times. He became known as "March Roddy" inside the team after he struggled in January and February of his first campaign with U-M, then exploded in the NCAA Tournament, averaging 14.7 points per game which included scoring 26 points with four 3-pointers in a comeback victory over Texas A&M to advance to the Sweet 16.
The legend of March Roddy grew this past year. Having scored nine or more points in just two of his final 17 regular season games, he did so in three of U-M's six NCAA Tournament games and averaged nine per game through the postseason, highlighted by his 16 point outing against Alabama in the Sweet 16 as he was named to the NCAA All-Midwest Regional Team.
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Standing 6 feet 5 and 210 pounds, Gayle is known as a tenacious defender and a bit of a jack of all trades: someone who can rebound (he had seven or more rebounds three times last season), get to the free-throw line and make scrappy plays on both ends of the court.
Burnett had an even more circuitous route to the NBA. The former McDonald's All-American standout in high school played six years of college ball, beginning his career at Texas Tech before transferring to Alabama. He suffered injuries at both stops before he moved to Ann Arbor for the final three years of his career where he became a fixture in the rotation.
Michigan guard Nimari Burnett (4) cuts down net to celebrate 95-62 win over Tennessee at the NCAA Tournament Midwest Regional Final at United Center in Chicago on Sunday, March 29, 2026.
He started all 109 games without missing a single contest during his three-year run with Michigan, starting in 2023-24 when U-M went 8-24, the worst modern team in program history, and ending with its 37-3 campaign in 2025-26 when it won the national championship.
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A knock down 3-point shooter, Burnett shot 40% on 3s in 2024-25 and 37.5% this past season while averaging at least four attempts per game in both years. He made 50 or more 3s in every season, which included 60 or more in his final two.
While Burnett, 6 feet 5 and 195 pounds, never averaged double figures in his career, he was between 8.2 and 9.6 points a night all three years in Ann Arbor. His highlights included a buzzer-beater game-winning 3 against Rutgers in 2024-25, a career-high 31-point outing against Penn State this past season and three games in double figures in the NCAA Tournament in 2025-26, starting with 15 points in the opener against Howard.
It will be a long path for both, but Burnett and Gayle will each get their NBA shot.
Tony Garcia is the Michigan beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at apgarcia@freepress.com and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia .
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Two Michigan basketball national champions to get their NBA shot
