From Josh Allen to Chris Paul: Ish Wainrights winding journey to the NBA

June 24, 2024

PHOENIX — Ish Wainright’s life was about to change. He and his then-girlfriend were expecting their first child and he had to find a way to support his family. The problem? He was 21 and still had another two years of college. It was 2016 before college athletes could make money off their name, image and likeness. Wainright was a role player for Baylor’s basketball team, and his NBA draft stock was nonexistent.

Wainright could have gone to the G League and made a salary that would top out at around $40,000. He could have headed overseas, too, though that would have separated him from Isabella, who was born that June.

Enter Matt Rhule, by way of Wainright’s Twitter DMs. The new Baylor football coach offered Wainright the chance to play tight end once his basketball eligibility expired the following year.

“I got a lot of respect for you for what you’ve done for Baylor so far,” Rhule’s message read. “I don’t want to mess up anything, just come try it.”

Staying in college longer might’ve seemed counterintuitive — but Wainright learned NFL practice squad players make good money, too, around $207,000. Rhule had immediate playing time to offer. Wainright decided to take him up on the offer.

He spent a year learning and playing the position, amassing four catches for 34 yards and scoring two touchdowns. That led to a short stint as an undrafted free agent with the Buffalo Bills before Wainright found his way back to the hardwood and a spot in the rotation for the Phoenix Suns.

I just want to thank the @buffalobills for the opportunity. I can't wait to get to work !

#BillsMafia

— Ish Strongman Wainright 😁 (@Wainright24) April 30, 2018

In an era of specialization, Wainright has now successfully switched sports twice. The journey has taken him across the Atlantic and back, all in hopes of supporting his young family. He’s gone from playing alongside Bills quarterback Josh Allen to future Hall of Famer Chris Paul, two of the best passers in their respective sports. His return to basketball coincided with the game changing to the point that it fit his skill set better.

“I don’t know that you can find another guy (with his career arc),” said Jerome Tang, the Kansas State coach who was an assistant when Wainright played at Baylor. “It just shows that there are many ways to get there, but the common denominator is perseverance and hard work.”

Despite helping the Bears to a pair of Sweet 16s and the program’s first No. 1 ranking, Wainright lacked a true position. He didn’t have any flashy stats. At 6 foot 5 and 250 pounds at the time, he had a power forward’s frame at shooting guard size. He was a glue guy.

“When he finished playing, (the game) wasn’t as positionless as it is now,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said. “Nobody looked at him as being able to play one through five in the NBA.”

What Wainright did have was charisma and the desire to do whatever it took to win. He commanded the locker room despite not being a star player.

“This guy was the mayor at Baylor,” Rhule said.

Shortly after taking over as the football coach at Baylor in 2017, Rhule found himself at a basketball game watching Wainright. He saw the hulking frame and thought if things broke his way, Wainwright could be a tight end in the NFL.

“It takes a lot for somebody to reach the heights where they’re the face of the basketball program and then (say), ‘Hey I’m going to start over at the same school with a brand new sport,’” Rhule said.

His new plan was in service of making money, but a paycheck wasn’t imminent. While Isabella was a newborn, he took a creative route to support his family. Wainright sold his entire sneaker collection. He said he cried every time he sold a pair of shoes.

Wainright’s adjustment to football was less emotionally taxing. While basketball players naturally profile as tight ends more than at any other positions, it’s a difficult job to learn. Depending on the scheme, a tight end can function as an additional offensive lineman or a receiver. When Wainright joined the program in the spring of 2017, co-offensive coordinator Glenn Thomas sat him down and quizzed him on the position, while reminding him how different football practice was going to look compared to basketball. Instead of being in an air-conditioned gym, they’d be in the heat for three hours. Instead of a handful of instances where Wainright took hard contact, it would be routine at his new position.

At the start of Wainright’s football career, Rhule and the coaching staff had a message for him: If an opportunity to play professional basketball came up, by no means should he feel guilty leaving the team, whether it be in the preseason or midseason.

“Who am I to stand in the way?” Rhule said.

Added Thomas: “We thought he was the one sacrificing for us.”

Wainright’s size, catch radius and athleticism made him an attractive tight end. The coaching staff developed a set of plays to maximize his potential. After gradually acclimating him to the sport during the first two games of the season, Rhule planned to increase Wainright’s snap count and role in the offense in the third week of the season against Duke. In the week of practices leading up to that game, Wainright remembers Rhule demanding that quarterback Charlie Brewer throw him the ball.

“Everything: slants, fades, everything you can think of,” Wainright said.

But just days before the game, Wainright woke up and couldn’t get out of bed. He had mono. He missed multiple games and lost weight, derailing his season. He played in just three games, catching those two touchdowns, one a fade against Kansas on his first career catch and another on a jump ball at Iowa State. Both showcased his athleticism and catch radius.

Ish. Wainright. #SicKU pic.twitter.com/2VS0moANRz

— Baylor Football (@BUFootball) November 4, 2017

“He lost the weight, but more important he lost the experience and the time practicing,” Rhule said. “He showed a lot of versatility as the year went on. I always felt like one more year playing or a couple more weeks playing and he would have had more opportunities.”

Wainright went undrafted the next spring, but he still had a few NFL teams after him. After a tryout with the Chiefs, his hometown team, he accepted a rookie camp invite from the Bills and found himself lining up with Allen, the team’s new quarterback.

As Wainright ran routes for Allen, he wondered if the NFL was really for him. On the first play of minicamp, while playing without pads, Wainright was supposed to cut off the defensive end on a route, but instead found himself being dragged by a lineman in the other direction. Upon his return to the huddle, Wainright said he looked at Allen and said, “I don’t know if this is for me.”

Allen looked at him and didn’t disagree. “I thought you were going out for the pass,” he replied.

— Video courtesy of Buffalo Bills

“I’m looking at minicamp and these dudes are playing full-speed with only helmets,” Wainright said. “No pads. So I’m sitting there like, ‘I don’t want this. If they cut me, they cut me. If they don’t, they don’t.’”

The Bills waived Wainright at the end of camp. Unsure of what to do next, he told his mother, Mary Mills, he was going to give NFL teams two weeks to reach out before making a return to basketball. His phone never rang.

Wainright goes back and forth when asked to play the what-if game. If he had another year of eligibility to play a second season of football, the additional reps might have been enough to get him on an NFL roster. Rhule left Baylor in 2020 to coach the Carolina Panthers and said seeing Wainright crack a roster wasn’t a big leap for his brain to make.

But Wainright said his time in minicamp showed his lack of interest in the sport, compared to basketball. Had the Bills or another team waived him after a season or two, he might not have continued playing. And had he not had his daughter to worry about, he said he probably would have never turned to football in the first place.

“What I think football did, playing in the cold, going through what he went through, it really ignited a greater passion for what he really loved,” Tang said. “It made him make a greater commitment to change his body so he could be a professional player.”

Perhaps Wainright’s greatest legacy with football is what it did for Baylor basketball. When Wainright signed with the Bills, he became Drew’s third former player to sign a professional contract on the gridiron. The coach then got an odd request during fall practice: An NFL scout asked to watch.

“From now on, I’m coming here,” the scout told Drew. “Because it seems like every year, couple of years, you have a player.”

Shortly after leaving football, Wainright answered a call from his cousin, Eric Stamps, who was coaching in China with a group of players looking for more exposure overseas. His team was playing against the Nürnberg Falcons, and the Falcons asked if Stamps knew anyone willing to play for a meager paycheck in exchange for getting their feet wet in the pros. Stamps thought of Wainright.

At the time, the Falcons were considered one of the worst teams in Germany’s second-tier Pro A division and were at risk of being relegated. Their offer was one year for roughly 8,000 Euros. In September 2018, Wainright took it.

“Plan A didn’t work out,” Wainright said. “Plan B didn’t work out. So I was like how about I re-do Plan A? Which basically was my Plan C to go overseas.”

The transition to Europe was jarring. At Baylor, Wainright had traveled on charter planes and luxury buses. The Falcons traveled in minivans without air conditioning. A one-way trip to a game could take nine hours. Sometimes Wainright had to take his shirt off because he was so sweaty.

While playing football at Baylor, Wainright had continued to practice with the basketball team, which helped him keep off a certain degree of rust. And he maintained his athleticism partially thanks to the weight training football requires, which strengthened his legs. He came to Germany built like a football player, which led to early foul trouble. But his feel for the game was still there. As the season went on, he reshaped his body.

“I wasn’t a football player turned basketball player,” Wainright said. “I was a basketball player that decided to play football.”

In his first season in Germany, Wainright averaged 12.1 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game and led the Falcons to the Pro A finals, where they lost by one point on a buzzer-beater. His rookie year in Europe got him a call-up with Rasta Vechta, a top-division team in Germany, where he played the following season before going to France to play for SIG Strasbourg.

That’s where Wainright’s career took another turn.

While he was dabbling in football, the NBA was changing. Gone were the days of having to play a specific position with certain measurables; the sport had become positionless. Suddenly, Wainright became an intriguing option. NBA teams started to take notice of his play overseas, and the Raptors reached out while he was with Strasbourg. The team didn’t want to let him out of his deal but eventually relented, paving the way for Wainright to sign a contract with Toronto. He was waived at the end of training camp and landed in Phoenix on a two-way deal in 2021.

Wainright played sparingly with the Suns but earned a reputation as a cultural fit who left it all out there when he did play. At the end of last season, Wainright’s contract was converted to a standard NBA deal. This season, he’s back on a two-way deal with the Suns and has seen an uptick in his playing time as he continues to make his way into the rotation.

“He reminds me of most of the guys who spent a lot of time in college,” Suns coach Monty Williams said. “They’re used to the grind, they’re used to tough film sessions and being coached. But then you add the football element. I’m sure there’s a different approach to it all. The football guys that I know, I’ve lived in the neighborhood of a few of them, you see them leave in the morning around 6 and they come home around 7. That’s a different day compared to most NBA guys. I’m sure that’s helped him understand how long days, tough film sessions, how they work.

“But he does have a different mentality. I think there’s an appreciation for what he gets to do just because of his journey to this point. He’s pretty much the same guy every day. He comes into the gym and screams before he steps on the floor. I think it’s just his way of saying I’m thankful to be here.”

Wainright has started to rebuild his sneaker collection, though it wasn’t what it used to be. At its peak, he had a walk-in closet full of rare Jordans.

“It doesn’t even come close,” Mills said. “It doesn’t compare to what he had back in college. But it’s more expensive. One pair now may cost $1,800 compared to $200 back then.”

Wainright’s days of traveling in vans without air conditioning appear to be over while the charter plans are here to stay. He also has the financial stability he was searching for to support his family. More than anything, he’s come to appreciate the road he took to the NBA.

“This is the book I can’t wait to write, a movie I can’t wait to shoot,” he said.

(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Photo: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k2pncmxhZnxzfJFsZmlqX2V%2BcLXSoWSwmZmjv6qzx61knJmimrKzec2bmGamlqF8