Charting the Rise of Trey Kell
After finishing the regular season with a league and personal best record of 37 wins and 16 losses, the Moncton Magic went on to capture the NBL Canada Finals without dropping a game – the first team to do so.
Playing no small part in their success both in the latter half of the season and in the playoffs was Trey Kell. The 6’4 guard was a late addition to the Magic’s roster, but has clearly been making up for the lost time, quickly going on to rank among the league’s leading offensive players.
In the first three games of the Finals he put up 26.0 points and 9.6 rebounds per contest, a big part of Moncton’s dominance in the series and made him the early favourite to scoop up the award for Finals MVP. What made his success in the NBL Canada significant is the fact that he came to the league without the expectation to perform at the levels he did.
As a teenager, Kell was included in ESPN’s top 100 high school players in 2013, when he led St. Augustine High School to state championship victory. He then went on to an understated but successful four-year career with the San Diego State Aztecs in the NCAA, where he earned two Mountain West conference honours and career averages of 10.4 points and 3.8 rebounds.
With his numbers impressive but not reaching superstar level, he turned few heads in the NBA. After going undrafted in 2018, he signed with Igokea in the Adriatic Basketball League. However, he left after three games played and eleven total points scored.
After leaving Igokea, he joined up with Moncton mid-way through the season - a signing that somewhat flew under the radar, but clearly the Magic saw something in him no other team did.
Kell made his NBL Canada and Moncton Magic debut on February 10th against the Saint John Riptide, and made an immediate impact with 17 points and 8 rebounds off the bench. He built on this in the following game, where he led the team with 24 points and 12 rebounds against the St. John’s Edge. This was to be the start of his dominant season for the Magic.
He made his first start after three games and went on to start in twenty more after that. Shortly after his debut he put up a career-best 40 points for Moncton against the Island Storm on February 24th an amazing performance which saw him named Player of the Week. Only on three occasions in the season did he not reach double digits.
His 20.8 per game average was the best of the entire Magic squad - more than Billy White, who has played 43 games this season, and Corey Allmond, who played 48. He also led the team in rebounds (7.7 per game) and assists (4.5 per game), and was among the top ten in both scoring and rebounds in all of the NBLC.
In short, Trey Kell was both a highly valuable asset of the Moncton Magic as well as one of the biggest highlight players of the 2018-19 NBL Canada season. He capped it off with the league title, Moncton defeating St. John's 4-0 in the finals, where his individual heroics earned him the Finals MVP honour. It could have been the start of a long and fruitful NBLC career but what he did in Canada saw his stock rise in the basketball world.
He moved on to the ASEAN league, where he played for Hong Kong Eastern, and was also reunited with Magic head coach Joe Salerno in the 2022 Asian Cup qualifiers, having become the naturalised member of the Syrian national team. In 2021 he joined Polish club Stal Ostrów Wielkopolski, his presence having a noticeable effect on the team. Having already lifted the Moncton Magic to the NBL Canada title, he is now on the brink of becoming Polish league champion and winning one of the biggest prizes in European basketball.
Picture: Jacinthe LeBlanc
Updates to original article made on April 25th 2021
