Dear Brooklyn Nets, Please Give GQ Jacky a Roster Spot

Welcome to the team, GQ Jacky! We’ll get you sorted with a badge and a computer later, but for now just go ahead and settle in. There’s a free, albeit limited, selection of snacks in the kitchen.

To back up: Cui Yongxi, who also goes by Jacky Cui, is a young forward currently fighting to make the Brooklyn Nets. He is 21 years old, stands six-foot-five, and at least according to his Wikipedia, is the son of one of the most prolific street basketball players in Southern China. That’s not exactly why I’ve gathered you all here today, though. We’re here because, as Cui’s teammate Jalen Wilson eloquently put it on Monday during the Nets’ postgame locker room scrum: Jacky got the fit on.

After their preseason game against the Wizards, Cui strutted his stuff in the locker room wearing a streamlined black suit. This led Wilson to dub him “GQ Jacky”, and led us to joyfully adopt him as one of our own.

It’s important for people in Cui’s position—trying to do everything in their power to avoid getting cut during training camp—to stand out, whether that’s diving for loose balls, providing a positive spirit in the locker room, or in Cui’s case, dressing for success. In our world, that’s more important than the 13 minutes of preseason ball he’s played this fall.

In those 13 minutes (spread across two games) Cui has made two of his seven shots and corralled three rebounds. He logged five points in Brooklyn’s 131-92 win over Washington on Monday, which was the Nets’ third-to-last preseason tuneup before the regular season gets going. So, while Cui is not exactly stuffing the stat sheet, or getting enough playing time to properly assess whether he’ll be a viable NBA player, that’s fine! And for two reasons: Cui is on a two-way contract, which guarantees that if he doesn’t break camp with the team, he’ll have a spot on their G League roster.