Travis Diener

Travis Lyle Diener is a former professional basketball player from the United States of America and plays as a point guard. Diener had a different high school experience as he underwent home schooling after the 8th grade. There were speculations that this was mainly done to increase his chances in high school When Diener returned to high school, he had to join as a freshman (after a year of home schooling). Normally, he would have had to join as a sophomore but his age advantage allowed him to get an advantage over his teammates and opponents.

In high school, he was a part of the baseball team as well, winning USA Today Player of the Year as a pitcher and a shortstop in 2000.

Diener went to the Marquette University where he helped the Golden Eagles reach the Final Four of the NCAA tournament in the 2003 edition. Along with Dwayne Wade and Steve Novak, Diener was one of the three players who would go on to play in the NBA.

The Orlando Magic picked Diener at 38th overall in the second round of the 2005 NBA Draft. With Steve Francis and Jameer Nelson, Diener became the third point guard to join the roster and that made this pick a highly debatable one for the Magic.

In his rookie season with the Magic, he played 23 games and had just 3.8 points per game in his first year at the big league. Things didn’t look any brighter in his second year with the Orlando team as he had the same average although he did appear in 5 more games than his first year. At the end of the second year, he became a free-agent.

In June, 2007, the Indiana Pacers decided to bring Diener on board and signed him up on a 3-year deal. In his first year with the Pacers, there was a drastic improvement in the number of games that he played. He played 66 games while starting 21 of them scoring at 6.9 points per game with 3.8 assists per game. The numbers dropped in his second year as he played 55 games but didn’t start any.

His scoring dropped to 3.7 per game while assists dropped to 2.2 per game.

Diener has grown in a family where basketball has been more than a way of life. Almost all his brothers, sisters and cousins have played basketball at some point of their school and college life while all uncles or aunts have been involved in coaching at various levels.