Know Your Team: Juan Pattillo
Windsor Express
6'6
Forward
From Dallas, Texas
In his third season in NBL Canada, Juan Pattillo will be bringing his strength, consistency and experience back to his original Canadian team.
After two years with the Southern Idaho Eagles, he joined the Oklahoma Sooners, playing alongside future NBA star Blake Griffin and for whom he was named to the Big-12 All-Newcomer Team. His final year in the NCAA was spent with the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers, where he averaged 13.6 points and 9.1 total rebounds per game.
Pattillo began his playing career for the Bakersfield Jam in the NBA D-League. He averaged 14.4 points and 7.2 rebounds per game in the 2011 season, numbers which saw him named to the D-League Select team at the 2012 NBA Summer League.
In 2012 he made the move to the Korean Basketball League, where he played for both Anyang and Busan. He went on to play in Turkey for Balikesir, for the Tsukuba Robots in Japan and then on to Finland for Salon Vilpas, where he started in every game of the 2014-15 Korisliiga season and finished with a career-best average of 20 points per game.
Pattillo then became the starting power forward for the Windsor Express in 2016, where he averaged 18.1 points and 10.6 rebounds a game, helping Windsor reach the Central Division finals.
The following season he returned to Finland to play for Korihait, appearing in 26 games before coming back to Canada. He played the remainder of the 2017-18 season with the Moncton Magic, finishing with 15.7 points and 7.3 rebounds per game and scoring over 50% from the field.
The 2018 off-season proved to be a busy one for Pattillo: the Sudbury Five traded their first overall draft pick to Moncton for him, after which he was traded again in a transaction that would see him return to the Windsor Express in return for Grandy Glaze. Both are big indicators of the value NBL Canada teams have on him, especially Windsor, who will be hoping for a repeat of his first appearance for the Express.
Picture: Kevin Jarrold