Where do the Bandits go in winter? Seven of them are at NBA G League camps

If your kid asked at the Langley Events Centre last summer where the players go when the season ends, here is the answer for seven of them: to a tryout for an NBA farm team. The Bandits announced on October 27 that seven players who have worn the jersey, five of them from this past summer, were named to NBA G League training camp rosters. The G League season opens Friday, November 6, and teams had to hand in their opening-night rosters by November 5, so by the time you read this some of them have made the cut and some are looking for the next thing. Five things to know.

1. Summer here, winter there

The Bandits play in the Canadian Elite Basketball League, which runs from May to August: in 2026 that meant an eight-day training camp, a 24-game regular season from May 9 to August 3, and playoffs that finished in mid-August. The NBA G League runs through the winter. The two seasons barely overlap, so a player can spend the summer at the LEC and the winter in Portland or Salt Lake City without choosing between them. That is the whole idea of the CEBL’s calendar, and it is why the league’s boilerplate can say nearly 40 players have signed NBA contracts after a CEBL season.

2. What the G League actually is

It is the NBA’s official minor league: 31 teams, 30 of them tied one-to-one to an NBA club, the way a farm team in baseball or the American Hockey League works for hockey. The Rip City Remix belong to the Portland Trail Blazers, the Salt Lake City Stars to the Utah Jazz, and so on. The NBA uses it to develop players, coaches and referees, and the traffic goes both ways: the league says 51 per cent of players on NBA opening-night rosters in 2025-26 had G League experience.

3. Who went where

• James Karnik, the Surrey-raised forward, is with the Portland affiliate, Rip City Remix. He has played 36 regular-season games for the Bandits over four seasons since 2022, and this is his first G League camp invitation.
• Jaelen House is with Utah’s Salt Lake City Stars. He played only 10 games for the Bandits in 2026 but one of them was the night he scored 42 against Winnipeg on June 18, a single-game team record. He has been a G League All-Star before.
• Jarkel Joiner led the Bandits in scoring in 2026 at 17.8 points a game over 21 games, then got an NBA preseason look with the Charlotte Hornets, playing in four exhibition games. He is now with Charlotte’s affiliate, the Greensboro Swarm, who are the defending G League champions.
• Kyle Mangas, a Bandit in 2025, is also with Greensboro.
• John Knight III, 18 games for the Bandits this summer, is back with the Houston Rockets’ affiliate, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, where he has played since 2023.
• D’Andre Davis, who appeared in three games for the Bandits in 2026, is trying out with the Boston Celtics’ affiliate, the Maine Celtics.
• Giorgi Bezhanishvili, from the 2023 Bandits, is with the Atlanta Hawks’ affiliate, the College Park Skyhawks. He signed what is called an Exhibit 10 contract with the Hawks in mid-October: a one-year NBA deal that can pay a bonus if the player spends time with the G League affiliate, which is a common way an NBA team parks a player it wants to keep an eye on.

Last year it was four: Tyrese Samuel, Mangas, Bezhanishvili and MJ Walker. Seven is a step up, and a sign the Bandits’ roster is being watched.

4. The contract words you will hear

A two-way contract is the G League’s golden ticket. An NBA team can carry up to three players on two-way deals; they spend most of the season with the affiliate but can be active for up to 50 NBA games, and they are paid one salary for both, set at half the NBA minimum for a rookie (about US$636,000 in 2025-26). Only players with three or fewer years of NBA service can sign one. An Exhibit 10 is the smaller step before that. A call-up is what everyone is playing for.

5. Why it matters for the fans in Langley

Because it is the pitch, in both directions. For players, a good summer at the LEC can turn into an NBA preseason game by October, as Joiner’s did. For fans, it means the person taking the ball out under the basket on a Saturday in June may be on an NBA floor by the following fall, and the CEBL’s own numbers say about 70 per cent of the players in the league are Canadian, so a lot of those stories start close to home. Tyrese Samuel, named the CEBL’s Canadian Player of the Year for the second year running in August, was on last fall’s list, at the Phoenix Suns’ affiliate.

The Bandits’ 2027 season tickets are already on sale through the team’s ticket page. Our Vancouver Bandits page has the basics on the team, the Langley Events Centre page has parking and directions, and if the kids want to shoot around in the meantime, the Trinity Western Spartans play university basketball in the same building all winter.