Sidy Cissoko Was Destined to Land With the Trail Blazers: 'It's a Small World'
The 6-foot-6 French wing had plenty of ties to the organization before landing in Portland on a two-way contract this week.
📍DENVER — In some ways, Sidy Cissoko was always destined to one day end up with the Trail Blazers.
Even after the Blazers passed on drafting him one pick before he went 44th overall to San Antonio in 2023, there were too many connections to ignore.
The player Portland took instead at No. 43 was Cissoko’s close friend and fellow Frenchman Rayan Rupert.
The player they took third overall that year, Scoot Henderson, was Cissoko’s teammate with G League Ignite.
Shortly before the 2023 draft, the Blazers hired Pooh Jeter, the longtime point guard who was one of the veteran mentors on that Ignite team, as an assistant coach.
One of the coaches Cissoko worked with during the predraft process, Gil Abraham, was hired by the Blazers later that summer as a player development coach.
And Blazers assistant GM Mike Schmitz, who’s as plugged-in on the international basketball scene as anyone, had long been a fan of Cissoko as a prospect, projecting him as a first-round talent in his previous job as an NBA draft analyst at ESPN.
“It's a small world,” Cissoko said Wednesday after meeting the Blazers in Denver for the first time since signing on a two-way contract earlier this week.
It’s been a whirlwind week for him since the weekend before the trade deadline.