Trevelin Queen signs with Philadelphia 76ers
Stephen Wagner
LAS CRUCES – Former New Mexico State Aggie men's basketball star Trevelin Queen has signed with the Philadelphia 76ers, according to several media outlets.
ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski was the first to report Queen inked a NBA contract after Yahoo Sports' Chris Haynes reported this morning that the Houston Rockets had declined to extend Queen a qualifying offer, making Queen an unrestricted free agent. Haynes reported Queen's deal is a two-year, $3.3 million contract.
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The 2022 NBA G League MVP spent the 2021-22 season on a two-way contract with the Rockets but spent most of the season with the team's G League affiliate, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers. He averaged 25.3 points, 6.7 rebounds, 5.2 assists and 3.2 steals during the regular season. He was named the G League Finals MVP for helping the Vipers to their second G League championship since 2019. Queen scored 44 and 24 points in the two Finals games.
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Queen will be one of the smaller cap hits on a 76ers team which recently saw NBA star James Harden choose to decline a $47.4 million option in favor of a more "financially flexible" contract to bolster the 76ers roster, according to The Athletic's Shams Charania. Philadelphia also signed veterans P.J. Tucker and Danuel House Thursday afternoon.
Queen signed with the 76ers less than an hour after the NBA free agency period officially began.
Born in Glen Burnie, Maryland, Queen starred in all sports growing up. But the 5-foot-9 high school freshman would soon grow to 6-foot-6 and decided to take basketball seriously. However, he went largely unrecruited out of high school. He started his post-high school career playing for Marin College, where he and his teammates bounced around from house to house — sometimes sleeping in a car.
Queen would continue to bounce around the country — including at New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell — in pursuit of a Division I opportunity and finally found it at New Mexico State. In his senior, COVID-shortened season, Queen averaged 13.2 points and 5.2 rebounds per game and caught the eye of NBA scouts for his "three and D" play, though he went undrafted in 2020.