‘Trust the Work’: Former Gator Zyon Pullin Fights for Roster Spot After Summer League Surge
Former Gators guard Zyon Pullin never liked being the center of attention. After dropping 30 points for College Park High School, a reporter pulled him for a postgame interview, where he muttered three to four words in response to a question about his performance before turning the attention to his teammate, Diego Parades.
“He just didn’t care for the spotlight,” former College Park basketball coach Craig Battle said. “But he’s going to give me 100%. He’s going to play hard [and smart] when he gets out on the court.”
Pullin’s focus centered around positioning himself to reach the next level. Now a member of the Minnesota Timberwolves organization on a two-way contract, he made himself impossible to ignore at the 2026 NBA Summer League in Las Vegas.
During the Timberwolves’ Summer League opener against the New Orleans Pelicans, Pullin led the team with 24 points, 12 assists and eight defensive rebounds to secure the 105-92 win. He started all five games and led the Timberwolves in minutes (30), points (21) and assists (7.8) while recording back-to-back 24-point performances and two double-doubles to earn All-Summer League Second Team recognition.
“I tried to really go into this summer league knowing that I did put the work in,” Pullin said. “I can live with the results at the end of the day. That’s the biggest mindset that I’ve had going into this. It’s just trusting the work.”
It’s the kind of performance that would put most players in the spotlight they’ve always wanted, but not Pullin. When food fights broke out in the quad at College Park, he didn’t partake in the chaos. Instead, he spent his lunch period in a history teacher’s classroom with Parades.
“[Zyon] always wanted to be lowkey [and] stay out of trouble,” Parades said. “He balled out, and then he disappeared.”
Pullin flew under the radar during college recruitment but found a spot at UC Riverside, where he spent four seasons (2019-23) with his scoring average increasing from 4.1 points off the bench as a freshman to 18.3 as a senior. He also developed a knack for setting teammates up for buckets, ranking second in all-time assists at UC Riverside (394), and eclipsed 1,000 career points to finish with 1,369.
He transferred to Florida in 2023 off a First Team All-Big West season, unsure of what role he would carve out in Todd Golden’s system.
“He was like, ‘It’s going all right,” Parades said. “‘Coach [Golden] has me coming off the bench like I’m barely playing in these scrimmages.’”
Pullin quickly proved himself to the coaching staff, though, putting up 15 points, five rebounds and four assists off the bench in his debut against Florida State on Nov. 17, 2023. His first start came three games into the season against Baylor on Nov. 24, 2023, recording 17 points and five assists.
Pullin became a permanent starter nine games into the season after helping secure a double-overtime win against Michigan on Dec. 19, 2023. He led the Gators with 22 points and five assists, sinking a three-point shot with 8.3 seconds left in overtime to force double overtime.
“Zyon had the approach of a professional ever since he got here,” Florida basketball assistant coach Taurean Green said. “He’s a great teammate [and] he works hard every day. He’s put in the time, he’s put in the work, he’s stayed disciplined, and now he’s in a good place.”
His 3.77 assist-to-turnover ratio set a Florida program record behind his team-high 162 assists and marked the best number posted by an SEC player in the 2000s. He led the team in minutes (33.5) and ranked second in points per game (15.5), along with 3.9 rebounds per game and 30 total steals.
His stats proved his skills transferred from a mid-major conference into the SEC, and he received validation, earning Coaches First-team All-SEC recognition.
“The fan poll got him [at] second team, but he was like, ‘The coaches are the ones watching me every day, and they voted me as the first team,’” former College Park teammate Michael Curtin said. “So I think the confidence [from] that was the biggest thing.”
At the professional level, Pullin continued making his presence felt on the court in each jersey he wore, averaging 25.4 points and 34.9 minutes per game last season for the Iowa Wolves and helping them clinch a playoff berth for the first time since becoming a team in 2017. That performance helped earn him a two-way contract with the Timberwolves on March 2, and set up the breakout he rode into Summer League.
Pullin’s former College Park teammates made a tradition of watching him play in Las Vegas, and this year, noticed something different.
“Seeing him take in Isaiah Evans, the rookie, and Rocco [Zikarsky], his G-League teammate last year in Iowa, is super cool to see just because he was the mature one on that squad, kind of the vet in a way,” Curtin said. “That was cool just to hear him talk a lot and really be a leader. We always looked up to him as a leader, and he would talk when he needed to, but like this one was constant.”
Now Pullin is fighting for one of two open spots left on the Timberwolves roster. The team sits less than $4 million below the second tax apron and needs to fill a power forward gap created after trading away forwards Julius Randle and Naz Reid for guards LaMelo Ball and Josh Green on July 10.
Pullin can’t control whether the Timberwolves offer him a standard deal, but his approach isn’t changing either way.
“I try to never get too high, never get too low,” Pullin said. “I try to keep that same mindset everywhere I go. [I] trust the work. I think that’s something I can always fall back on, and at the end of the day, I know that if I do those things, I’m giving myself the best shot to be an NBA player.”
Category: Former Gators, Gator Sports, Gators Men's Golf, NBA
