Playoff spot at stake as Canton faces Fort Wayne in Wednesday D-League action

Alex Jensen wasn’t sure what he was getting into.

He’d played minor league ball before, jostling around the now-defunct Continental Basketball Association, before jetting off to finish his playing career in Europe. He’d also played for—then coached alongside—college coaching great Rick Majerus, too.

So when he took the head coaching job for the Canton Charge last summer—becoming the first coach in team history, after the team had relocated, re-branded and re-associated (as the single affiliate of the Cleveland Cavaliers) in the offseason—he knew he had to strike a balance between putting wins on the board and players in the NBA.

He just wasn’t sure exactly how, yet.

“In the D-League, unlike other leagues, there are some things you don’t have control over,” Jensen told NBADLeague.com before the season. “You come to practice and games every day, and the goal every game you’re in is that you’re playing to win, whether it’s the 10-minute scrimmage in practice, or a playoff game. ... (But) the development part of it and winning go hand-in-hand. If you’re not developing your players, you’re most likely not gonna win.”

Jensen already has sent two players to the NBA this year. And now, he has his team just two wins—or one win and a Texas Legends loss—away from clinching the team’s first-ever berth in the NBA D-League Playoffs. And on Wednesday night, when the Charge meet the Fort Wayne Mad Ants at 7 p.m. ET, you can watch it live on SportingNews.com.

In a league known for scoring, Jensen came in preaching stops.

“You can be the best shooter in the world, but if you can’t stop anybody, you won’t play—because at the pro level you can’t hide anybody like you could in college, or at least as easily as you could,” he said before the year.

Jensen had learned a defense-first (and second, and third) mentality from Majerus, who also taught Jensen “everything” else he knows about the game. But after Jensen opened the year, what he got from Canton was one of the most balanced teams in the league.

While the Charge (101.7 ppg allowed) haven’t kept up defensively with a team like, say, Tulsa (93.6 oppg), they’ve also faired a lot better than a team like Rio Grande Valley (108.8 oppg). Meanwhile, they’ve put up 102.5 points per game. Again, not among the league’s elite, but enough to put them in playoff position.

However, they’re now without their top two scorers, as Manny Harris and Alan Anderson both earned NBA call-ups and stuck in the NBA. Throw in Keith McLeod, the team’s fourth-leading scorer this year—who’s now running point for the Erie BayHawks—and the Charge have had a few holes to fill of late.

And in that time, they’ve played some of their best ball all year. Canton went 9-4 in the month of March, including a win streak of seven games. If you extend the run back to mid-February, they’re 12-5 in their last 17.

Much of the credit goes to Luke Harangody— on assignment from the Cavaliers—who’s looked like he did at Notre Dame in his 10 games since joining the Charge at the start of the month. After struggling to find a role in the NBA, he’s racked up 21.6 points and 13.4 points per game since coming down for his second assignment of the year.

Joining him in the front court are Dante Milligan, Frank Hassell and Tyrell Biggs, all of whom sit just a notch below the top tier of NBA D-League prospects, each of them good for about 10 points and eight rebounds a night.

Behind them stand Antoine Agudio—who, at 56 percent from 3-point range this year, reigns as the league’s top long-distance shooter—and TJ Campbell, an undersized (to the tune of 5-foot-9) point guard who has turned himself into one of the league’s best distributors.