NBA veteran Andre Roberson headlines CU Buffs alumni team at The Basketball Tournament

BOULDER — Andre Roberson had made it.

By the end of his fourth season in the NBA, the former Colorado star continued to bring the elite defense he displayed for three years in Boulder and established himself as one of the league’s top perimeter defenders.

Roberson was a key piece to what the Oklahoma City Thunder were building. He earned himself a three-year, $30 million contract after being named to the NBA’s all-defensive second team.

It was all taken away in an instant on a January night in Detroit.

In the first season of that new contract, Roberson suffered a ruptured patellar tendon in his left knee while trying to elevate for a lob pass on the baseline during a blowout win for the Thunder over the Pistons.

Roberson wouldn’t play in an NBA game for over two years, making his long-awaited return to the court during the league’s Disney World bubble in July 2020 — receiving a standing ovation from the few dozen people allowed in the arena.

Nearly four years since that moment, Roberson has played in just a handful of NBA games and none since 2021. But the 32-year-old who was once the Pac-12 defensive player of the year for the Buffs isn’t ready to call it quits just yet.

Roberson is the headliner of the latest iteration of Team Colorado, comprised mostly of CU alumni, heading to The Basketball Tournament — an annual summer tournament with a winner-take-all prize of $1 million.

“Dealing with my injury, I guess my path is a little different,” Roberson said this week. “I sat out, what, three years? I still got a little something to prove. I’m just going out there, ultimately, to fulfill myself and what I want to give back to the game of basketball and redefine myself outside of the OKC thing.”

The increasingly-popular, 64-team tournament with plenty of former NBA players on various rosters begins this weekend at four different regional sites. No. 5 seeded Team Colorado faces No. 4 seed Purple Reign, the K-State alumni team, in the Wichita Regional on Saturday at 1 p.m. with coverage on FS2.

Team Colorado got together in Boulder this week for a brief training camp as the group of 11 players quickly tried to acclimate themselves to many guys they’ve never shared the court with before.

“That’s the challenge right there, basically trying to get everybody on the same page, get some chemistry, what works with who and try to play with everybody’s strengths,” Roberson said. “We know what kind of task we’ve got at hand. We gotta go out there and execute as much as we can. It might turn into a pickup game, who knows.”

Familiar faces from recent CU teams like Evan Battey, D’Shawn Schwartz, Shane Gatling and George King will play big roles for the group led by Buffs assistant coach Zach Ruebesam, but everyone is looking to Roberson, who brings an element that was lacking last year when Team Colorado went out in the first round of TBT.

“He’s the best defender in the TBT right now,” said Ruebesam, who was a student manager when Roberson played at CU. “I mean, he played in the NBA for eight years. He was chasing Steph Curry around screens for a reason. For us, Team Colorado, it’s night and day because we have that dude, kinda like Coach Boyle always talks about defense and rebounding, that’s who Andre is.

"The way he talks, the intensity he plays with, he’s out here guarding our point guard 45 feet from the basket. Just him setting the tone for this group is going to be huge. We didn’t have a pure defensive stopper last year.”

While not doing work for Boyle’s program, Ruebesam spends months planning for an event that could last just a few days, maybe less.

“The fact of the matter is, our TBT Team Colorado organization is a ‘mom & pop’ shop,” Ruebesam said. “We don’t have the staff that some of these other TBT organizations have.”

Ruebesam would prefer to have a roster that solely relies on former Buffs, but that isn’t as easy with many former players like McKinley Wright IV and Tyler Bey making good money overseas to the point where it doesn’t make sense for them financially to play for Team Colorado.

That’s why this year, Ruebesam has added some firepower to the backcourt with the likes of former Wyoming standout Josh Adams and Aurora native Jaizec Lottie, who played his college ball at Arkansas-Little Rock and Flagler College.

But there’s no bigger get than Roberson, who is hoping to use this opportunity to show that he’s still got something left in the tank and continue his professional career, potentially overseas.

“It’s always good to be back in good old Boulder County,” Roberson said. “Zach called me a couple years ago, I told him I’d give him one year and I guess this is the year. I'm going to go out there and make the most of it and make Colorado proud.

“We all know what we’re here for, we’re pros. We’re gonna go out there, play hard and try to win it all. We have a great group of guys, we all listen and we’re all in it together.

Team Colorado TBT Roster

Evan Battey (2017-22)

D’Shawn Schwartz (2017-21)

Daylen Kountz (2018-20)

Shane Gatling (2018-20)

George King (2013-18)

Andre Roberson (2010-13)

Shannin Sharpe (2010-12)

Joshua Adams (Wyoming)

Andre Spight (Arizona State/Northern Colorado)

Ibrahim Sylla (Northern Colorado/NC A&T)

Jaizec Lottie (UA-Little Rock/Flagler College)