点击查看原文：How former Spur Cory Joseph has built a blue-collar NBA career

How former Spur Cory Joseph has built a blue-collar NBA career

Cory Joseph (10) of the Orlando Magic shoots during the second quarter against the Cleveland Cavaliers at Rocket Arena on March 16, 2025 in Cleveland, Ohio.

The Orlando Magic were in Denver on Feb. 6, the night of the NBA trade deadline.

The final bell on swap season had been rung hours earlier with the Magic opting to keep their roster intact. As relieved players arrived at the team bus to Ball Arena for the game, one in particular stood outside to greet the others.

“It’s good to see you,” a smiling Cory Joseph told each teammate who passed.

In doing so, Orlando’s most veteran player provided a much-needed moment of levity for a young team still learning to deal with the annual bout of wracked nerves that accompanies the trade deadline.

“He cares about people, he cares about the game,” Orlando coach Jamahl Mosely said of the 33-year-old backup point guard. “He understands that to be a great professional, you’ve got to pour into others. He exemplifies that more than a lot of people I’ve been around.”

It is a quality that has kept Joseph employed in the NBA for 14 seasons, and one he says he first learned as a wide-eyed 20-something in San Antonio.

“If I didn’t go to San Antonio the first four years of my career,” Joseph said, “I don’t know where I’d be.”

The Spurs selected Joseph out of Texas with the 29th pick in the 2011 draft, in the same first round that also brought them Kawhi Leonard.

In his four seasons with the Spurs, Joseph learned at the feet of Hall of Famers – the art of playing point guard from Tony Parker, professionalism from Tim Duncan, competitiveness from Manu Ginobili, new curse words from Gregg Popovich.

It turned out to be the perfect basketball grad school for a 20-year-old rookie who had played one nondescript college season.

“Everybody there having such a high IQ, playing that beautiful basketball the way that we did, I learned a lot,” said Joseph, who was back at the Frost Bank Center on Tuesday with the Magic. “Some of the things I’ve learned from those guys I try to give back now to these young pups now.”

Joseph was a part of the 2014 Spurs team that won a championship, and spent one more campaign with the club before commencing on the nomad’s life of an NBA journeyman.

Two seasons back in his hometown of Toronto. Two in Indiana. One and a half in Sacramento before being dealt to Detroit, where he spent 2 ½ seasons. One with Golden State and now one in Orlando.

Victor Wembanyama (1) and Chris Paul (3) of the San Antonio Spurs pressure Cory Joseph (10) of the Orlando Magic in the second half of a preseason game at Frost Bank Center on October 9, 2024 in San Antonio, Texas.

Joseph owns career averages of 6.3 points and 2.9 assists per game. He has never been a star and has rarely been a starter.

And yet for 14 seasons now and counting, Joseph has never lacked for an NBA job.

Those who know him know why.

“It says a lot about him and what he’s done and who he’s been throughout this league,” Mosely said. “He’s always in an upbeat mood, a positive mood, encouraging guys, trying to get guys to continue to work. You want those guys around.”

Spurs forward Harrison Barnes played with Joseph in Sacramento from 2019 to 2021. He admired the plucky point guard’s consistent preparedness for whatever task he was asked to do on a given night, often warding off nagging injuries to do so.

It is an attribute the Magic have come to appreciate of late. After spending most of the season buried on Orlando’s bench, Joseph has started nine consecutive games heading into Tuesday’s return to San Antonio due to an injury to Cole Anthony.

“People don’t stay in this league that long without providing value,” Barnes said. “There can only be one or two 20-point scorers on every team. There’s only going to be one or two All-Stars on every team. So that leaves a lot of opportunity for guys to bring value in other ways, and Cory has done that throughout his career.”

Not surprisingly, Joseph views his yeoman-like career in blue-collar terms.

“I think just being able to adapt, being realistic, not being consumed with what other people are getting or not getting,” Joseph said. “Kind of like being that construction worker that puts up the building but doesn’t get the credit. That guy gets to work for a long time, and the people who are in the company, they know the value he brings.”

That’s not to say all 14 seasons of Joseph’s career have been sizzle-free.

His garbage-time dunk over Oklahoma City’s Serge Ibaka near the end of the Spurs’ blowout loss in Game 4 of the 2014 Western Conference finals has been immortalized as an inspirational moment that fueled the team’s eventual title run.

Asked if his current Orlando teammates – some of whom were in grade school when he unleashed his record-scratch slam – remembered that particular highlight, Joseph laughed.

“A couple of them know, but not all of them,” Joseph said. “Not as much of them as should know about it.”

The Spurs had struggled for years against Ibaka’s defensive presence near the rim. In an instant of dunking defiance, the Spurs’ anonymous third-string point guard had cracked the code.

The Spurs went on to finish the series against the Thunder in six games, then annihilated Miami in the NBA Finals.

“It gave us some juice, at least I would like to think so,” Joseph said of his dunk. “I tried to be fearless, tried to just compete.”

Hard hat and lunch pail in hand, that is how Joseph has attempted to approach every day of a career that reached well past a decade, which is a big reason he has a career that has reached well past a decade.

And why the Magic have been glad to see him every day this season, too.

“I think you just have to do things to bring value to an organization,” Joseph said. “Even if it’s not stat stuffing or doing things that are popping eyes out, just not having an ego, being able to work really hard, being ready when your name is called but also giving back to the young guys. That’s really all it takes.”