Pat Connaughton’s NBA story has always read a little sideways, the kind of career arc that makes you double-check the order of events. A second-round NBA pick who became a decade-long rotation piece and an NBA champion, yes… but also a legitimate pro baseball arm who once belonged to the Baltimore Orioles’ system.
Now, after the Charlotte Hornets waived him last week, Connaughton is sitting at the crossroads that has hovered around him since Notre Dame: does the next chapter end quietly, or does he try to do something that almost nobody in modern American sports even attempts anymore?
Charlotte officially announced Connaughton’s release on February 4, a roster-clearing move in a deadline crunch rather than a ceremonial goodbye. Since then, he has been listed as a free agent, with reporting framing him as unlikely to draw immediate interest once the waiver process runs its course. That’s the part that feels like the end; an 11-year veteran suddenly outside the league, not because he forgot how to be a pro, but because the league is ruthless about roster spots and timelines.
But Connaughton is one of the rare athletes for whom “What’s next?” isn’t automatically a front-office internship, a podcast, or a farewell tour. It might be a bullpen.
Back in 2014, the Orioles selected him in the fourth round of the MLB Draft, betting on a 6-foot-5 right-hander with a fastball that evaluators believed could climb into the upper-90s. The Orioles even allowed him to return to Notre Dame for his senior basketball season; an unusual level of flexibility that hinted at how seriously they took the baseball side. In his brief pro sample that summer at short-season Single-A Aberdeen, Connaughton posted a 2.45 ERA over 14 2/3 innings, with MASN noting his fastball topped out at 96 mph. This wasn’t a novelty cameo. It was an actual professional start, enough to make the “two-sport” label feel less like marketing and more like a legitimate fork in the road.
Then basketball hit the accelerator. Connaughton’s athleticism translated, his NBA pathway opened, and the baseball dream got boxed up… not abandoned, just stored. After he helped Milwaukee win the 2021 championship, he continued to speak publicly about the idea that baseball was still in the back of his mind, including in appearances tied to Dan Patrick’s show ecosystem that are still circulating among fans who track the baseball thread. It was never presented as a guaranteed plan, more like a stubborn ambition he refused to declare dead.
That distinction matters now, because the obstacle isn’t imagination. It’s time.
Connaughton is 33. Pitchers can survive into their late 30s, even their 40s, but that usually comes after years of pro innings, not after an 11-year detour through NBA travel, NBA wear-and-tear, and NBA timelines. Even if his arm is healthy, he’d be asking professional baseball to take him seriously after more than a decade away from game reps. That’s a tall order in a sport where command and feel are earned in thousands of throws under pressure, and where prospects half his age are fighting for the same roster oxygen.
And yet, this is exactly what would make it compelling if he tried.
The most honest way to frame the possibility is not “Connaughton is about to become an MLB player.” It’s “Connaughton is one of the very few athletes alive who can make that sentence non-ridiculous.” We have documented evidence he already lived in a major-league organization’s pipeline, threw mid-90s, and performed in the minors. He also has the kind of financial independence that could allow him to chase a long-shot without needing it to pay off immediately; his post-playing life includes significant business interests, including work tied to real-estate development through Three Leaf Partners, which the company has publicly discussed in terms of large-scale projects and investments.
That financial security cuts both ways. It makes the dream more feasible, and the motivation more mysterious. What drives a champion, after a full NBA career, to go sweat through minor-league backfields again? Pride. Curiosity. A lifelong “what if.” Or simply the rare athlete’s itch to test the limits of his own story.
If Connaughton never throws another competitive pitch, his career is already a success: 11 NBA seasons, championship credentials, and a reputation as a pro’s pro. But if he decides that the ending needs one more scene, one last spring training invite, one attempt to climb an affiliate ladder again, then it won’t be a joke. It will be one of the strangest, boldest postscript chapters an American athlete has tried to write in years.
And that alone might be reason enough for him to pick up a ball again.
