It’s common for third-string players in the NBA to either become journeymen or be cut entirely with no team willing to take a chance on them. This unfortunate fate can even happen to top players eventually.

The likes of former NBA MVP candidate Isaiah Thomas can attest to this. The two-time All-Star has famously been out of the league, going through 5 teams after getting traded by the Boston Celtics. However, he has been making waves in the Pro-Am leagues and has recently gone viral after scoring 81 points in Jamal Crawford’s Crawsover Pro-Am League. He is now rumored to have been working out with the Los Angeles Lakers.

With IT’s potential NBA return on the horizon, we take a look at three players who were on the same boat recently, all of whom then proceeded to have successful returns to the Association. These players were deemed surplus to requirements by every team in the league at some point but then proceeded to impress once eventually given a roster spot.

With that, let’s get into the players who defied the odds and made great comebacks to the A.

NBA return triumphs:

Cameron Payne

Career NBA Statistics: 6.8 points, 2.0 rebounds, 2.8 assists

The Tank Master, The Tank Commander, Russell Westbrook’s Dance Partner. These were all unfortunate monikers given to a young Cameron Payne in his first NBA stint. Here, he averaged paltry statistics of 6 points, 1.8 rebounds, and 2.5 assists in his short tenures with the Oklahoma City Thunder, Chicago Bulls, Toronto Raptors, and the Cleveland Cavaliers (10-day).

As the nicknames suggest, he was viewed all around the league as a below-average roster-filler or bench player: his Tankmaster and Tank Commander nicknames came from his days as a member of the aggressively tanking Bulls, while he was merely the random bench player doing routine pre-game handshakes with Russell Westbrook while in OKC. After short stints with the Toronto Raptors and the Cleveland Cavaliers, he was swiftly out of the NBA. The former lottery pick’s stock has never been lower.

“We knew the second practice that he couldn’t play at [an NBA] level…” – a Bulls coach on Cameron Payne after the former got traded to Chicago from the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Payne eventually ended up playing two games for Chinese outfit Shanxi Loongs, wherein he averaged nearly 23 points on about 45% shooting and a below-average 28.6% from three. Nevertheless, his 23-6-8 stat line across the 2 games was enough to get him back to the NBA via the G-League’s Texas Longhorns. Payne’s game continued to rise, averaging 23 points, 5 rebounds, and 8 assists to go along with 2.3 steals in 3 games. This was good enough for the Orlando Bubble-bound Phoenix Suns to take chance on the journeyman, signing Payne on a two-season deal.

CP15 would repay the Suns’ faith by being an instrumental part of their memorable 8-0 bubble run, averaging nearly 11 points a game as a spark off the bench. Payne and the Suns’ form would carry over to next season, with the guard averaging 8, 2, and 4 in 18 minutes of play per game. He would further make noise in the Playoffs, increasing his output to 9, 3, and 3. The best game of Payne’s NBA career came in one of the best games of the 2021 postseason, Game 2 against the Los Angeles Clippers; Payne led all scorers with 29 markers (career-high) to go along with 9 assists while being tasked to deputize for the injured Chris Paul.

Although CP15 and the Suns fell short of winning it all, they proved their respective points this past season: for Cam Payne, this point was that he is good enough to be a big part of a contending team, and that he truly belongs in the NBA. He’s finally shaken his dancing and tanking reputation off.

J.R. Smith

Career NBA Stats: 12.4 points, 3.1 rebounds, 2.1 assists

Achievements: 

2x NBA Champion

1x Sixth Man of the Year

J.R.’s NBA exit and comeback is quite an unusual and interesting story.

In 2011, the fourth NBA lockout occurred.

Here, all NBA operations were stopped momentarily while the league and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) were negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA). This caused the season to be delayed and shortened to 66 games. More pertinently, it caused three Denver Nuggets players to play in the Chinese Basketball Association for the meantime. These players were Wilson Chandler, Kenyon Martin, and J.R. Smith. Technically, all three would be qualified to get an entry on this list, but J.R. has had the best comeback tenure among the three.

Before going off to China, Smith was a young, athletic guard averaging about 13 points,3 rebounds, and 2 assists on good shooting splits. Of course, as it almost always turns out, he turned into prime Michael Jordan while playing in China. With Chinese outfit Zhejiang Golden Bulls, Smith put up a whooping 34.4 points in 32 games on crazy shooting splits of 49.7% from the field and 46.2% from three.

Upon returning to the NBA, however, he was even more impressive than in his first stint. In the 2012-13 season, J.R. averaged a career-high 18.1 points per game for the New York Knicks. He was also awarded that season’s Sixth Man of the Year award.

The Henny God would continue to be a reliable scorer for both the Knicks and the Cleveland Cavaliers. He would win his first NBA Championship with the latter in their historic 2016 Finals 3-1 comeback against the Golden State Warriors as a starter. His second would come four years later with the Los Angeles Lakers, with J.R. taking a much lesser role.

A comeback story as interesting as the man himself. It is unfortunate that J.R. Swish would not be most remembered for his shooting, athleticism, and championship pedigree, but by his infamous 2018 NBA Finals blunder.

Carmelo Anthony

Career Statistics: 23.0 points, 6.3 rebounds, 2.8 assists

Achievements: 

10x All-Star

2x All-NBA Second Team

4x All-NBA Third Team

1x Scoring Champion

Yes, Melo isn’t an NBA champion like J.R. Smith (not yet, at least), nor has he reached the NBA Finals like Cam Payne. However, he will undoubtedly go down as a 1st-ballot Hall-of-Famer, one of the greatest scorers of his generation, and the the most feel-good comeback story on this list.

Carmelo Anthony’s scoring exploits for the Denver Nuggets and the New York Knicks are well-known and well-documented, so it would be useful to go straight to where it started to go wrong: his time with the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Melo, along with Russell Westbrook and Paul George, were considered a Big 3 in OKC, but it never really panned out in the regular season. Things got worse in the Playoffs, wherein the unimpressive trio got eliminated in 6 games by the Utah Jazz led by a rookie Donovan Mitchell. He was traded to the Atlanta Hawks later on, who promptly waived him. Melo’s value has gone down significantly at this point.

Without a team for about a month, Anthony was signed on the veteran’s minimum by the Houston Rockets. However, he was once again unable to jell with the team in his 10 games played for Houston. He was subsequently traded to the Chicago Bulls to alleviate the Rockets’ luxury tax, but he was waived once again.

This was arguably the worst period of Carmelo Anthony’s career; no NBA team wanted to take a chance on the former All-Star, and he was without a team for a year. Unlike Cam Payne and J.R. Smith, Melo did not sign with any other team overseas in this time period. Finally, a Portland Trail Blazers team struggling with scoring depth decided to bring the vet in via a one-year non-guaranteed deal. With Melo joined with two dynamic scorers in the form of Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum once again, the situation could have gone similarly to the OKC one.

However, Melo was able to jell beautifully with the Blazers, and would rekindle his NBA career. With a mix of catch-and-shoot plays and his favorite post fadeaways, Anthony was able to be an integral part of the Blazers. He helped them reach the 2020 playoffs with 21 markers in the play-in game against the Memphis Grizzlies, which is only one of his numerous great performances with Portland.

He continued to be an integral part of the Blazers’ offense off the bench next season, moving to 10th all-time in scoring in the process. Melo’s time in Portland was only for a brief two seasons, but what a memorable, feel-good comeback tale it turned out to be. He now has a chance to win his very first NBA championship after getting recruited by LeBron James to the Los Angeles Lakers. If all goes well, it will be a worthy fairytale ending for such a great career, one that looked to end in anticlimactic fashion just a couple of years ago.