Partizan found its eighth addition for next season in Ethan Thompson. The former Indiana Pacers guard signed a two-year deal, and there will be at least one familiar face waiting for him in the locker room. He already played alongside Carlik Jones with the Windy City Bulls, back when both were still trying to establish themselves somewhere between the G League and the NBA.
Jones has since become one of the most influential guards in Europe. Thompson is still looking for his own path. Before scoring his first NBA point, Thompson played 194 games in the G League. For years, he was close enough to practice with NBA teams, go through training camps and sign contracts that offered very little security, but never quite got the call that would keep him there. When he finally made his Indiana debut last December, he was 26. Those are prime years for a professional basketball player, but for an NBA rookie, it is a pretty late start.
Europe now gives him something very different. For the first time, he is leaving the American club system, entering the EuroLeague and joining an environment where the weight of the jersey and the results can dictate an entire season, and where success is ultimately measured in trophies.
Carlik Jones Already Knows This Version of Thompson
At least he will not have to start from zero with everyone around him. Jones and Thompson shared the Windy City backcourt in 2022/23. Carlik was the centerpiece of that team and finished the season as G League MVP, while Thompson had a quieter but meaningful role. Jones scored 27 against Motor City, Thompson had 22. Later against Fort Wayne, Thompson scored 23 and Jones 22. Down the stretch of the regular season, as Carlik was already playing the kind of basketball that would open the next door in his career, Thompson reached 20 points in four of five games.
The useful part of that history goes beyond the box scores, because they did not need the same areas of the floor or the same responsibilities. Jones handled the ball and carried most of the creative load, and Thompson had to figure out how to stay involved next to a more dominant guard without disrupting him. The hierarchy is different now and so is the level of competition, but those months in Chicago at least give them some common ground to work from.
Basketball Was the Family Business
Jones has since built himself into one of Partizan’s key players in Europe, and Thompson took the longer route to reach the same locker room…
Basketball is close to a family profession in the Thompson household. His father, Stephen Thompson, played at Syracuse, had a brief NBA stint, later played professionally overseas and eventually became a coach. His older brother, Stephen Junior, also played, which produced an unusual scene at Oregon State: Stephen wore No. 1, Ethan wore No. 5, and their father sat on the bench as an assistant coach.
Important thing was that basketball did not excuse anything else at home. Their mother, Amy, worked as a school vice principal, so before practice or going outside there were questions about homework and grades. Their father handled the other side. He took the boys to the gym, worked with them on shooting and ballhandling, and Ethan later recalled workouts on the beach, running through sand and doing pushups. Basketball was part of everyday life, but nobody in the family seemed to believe talent would take care of everything else.
He Chose Oregon State to Play for His Father
Thompson was not some lightly regarded prospect who suddenly appeared once he reached college, either. As a senior at Bishop Montgomery, he averaged 22.8 points, 7.7 rebounds and 5.4 assists, won a state championship and was named California’s top high school player. On the way to the title, Bishop Montgomery beat Chino Hills, one of the most closely followed high school teams in the country at the time, led by LaMelo and LiAngelo Ball. Thompson was hardly the main attraction in that media circus, but a few months later he went to college as one of the more highly regarded guards in his class.
His college choice says something about the environment he came from. Syracuse was his father’s alma mater and a program Ethan had wanted to play for since he was a kid. He had an offer, ESPN ranked him among the top 100 players in his class, and Oregon State was far from his only option. When his mother asked whether he was sure, his answer was straightforward:
“I really want to play for my dad”.
He stayed four years and ended up being part of one of the best seasons in Oregon State’s recent history. The Beavers entered the 2021 NCAA Tournament as a No. 12 seed, without much expectation of playing deep into March, and reached the Elite Eight for the first time in nearly four decades. Thompson was a senior by then, one of the players trusted with the ball when games tightened. He scored 26 against Oklahoma State and followed it with 22 against Loyola Chicago. A team few people had included among the serious contenders came within one win of the Final Four.
194 G League Games Before the NBA Call
A few months later, his name was not called in the NBA Draft. That began the less glamorous stretch of his career, and probably the more revealing one for anyone trying to understand the player Partizan is getting. Thompson did not disappear after the first setback, he stayed on the edge of the NBA long enough to learn how uncomfortable that space can be… Windy City, Mexico City, Osceola, Sioux Falls, Summer League, training camps, short-term deals and another fresh start became his professional routine.
In Mexico City, he made the All-G League Third Team. Before Indiana called, he was averaging almost 27 points per game for Sioux Falls. Year after year, he looked like somebody who had outgrown the developmental level, but that did not automatically turn into a stable NBA job. Plenty of players fade out of the larger basketball picture around that point. Thompson stayed in it long enough to finally get his opportunity.
The Pacers gave it to him in late November 2025. He debuted the next day and finished the season with 32 appearances, including 13 starts. Seven points, 2.2 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game do not need to be dressed up as anything more than they were. The important part was that he received real NBA minutes and had to show he could survive physically and tactically at that level. His best game came against Chicago, the organization where his professional career had started in the G League: 24 points, five 3-pointers and eight makes on 15 shots.
Puerto Rico Gives Him Some FIBA Experience
There is another part of his background that matters before the move to the EuroLeague. Partizan will be his first European club, but basketball outside the NBA structure is not new to him. Thompson has represented Puerto Rico since the junior level, played at the 2022 AmeriCup and was part of the national team at the World Cup a year later alongside his older brother Stephen. In the current qualifiers for the 2027 World Cup, he has averaged 15.5 points, four assists and 2.5 steals through two games. None of that means the EuroLeague adjustment will be easy, but Belgrade will not be the first place where he deals with the shorter 3-point line, FIBA rules, different spacing and a game that asks something different of guards than the NBA development system does.
Partizan Needs More Than the “Former NBA Player” Label
Partizan is not signing him because it can put “former NBA player” next to his name. What matters more is what Thompson showed during the years he spent trying to become one. He has good size and strength for a guard, can absorb contact, handle portions of the offense and play out of pick-and-roll, but he does not need to control the ball on every possession. That matters in a backcourt that already has Carlik Jones, Luca Vildoza, Alessandro Pajola and Kyle Allman.
His shooting will matter, too. The 32.8 percent he shot from 3 in the NBA is enough reason not to sell him in advance as a high-level shooter. His offense, though, is not built only around standing behind the arc. Thompson can attack a closeout, finish through contact and take over some creation when the primary ballhandler has nowhere useful to go.
His Job Is to Take Weight Off Carlik Jones
That should give Joan Peñarroya some freedom with his guard combinations. Thompson does not need the same kind of possessions as Jones, and Partizan would get more out of him if he can take some of the workload away from its lead guard rather than compete with him for control. Jones should not have to carry every possession for Partizan, and Thompson’s job will be to help make sure he does not.
In Belgrade, Thompson will no longer be playing for the next 10-day contract while waiting for an NBA team to call. For the first time in his professional career, he can look at a longer stretch of time in one place. Partizan, of course, will not give him the luxury of a long adjustment. The expectation is that he becomes part of a serious EuroLeague rotation right away.
After spending so much of his career trying to find somewhere he could stay, his first European deal gives him something he has rarely had, a role to earn with the same team over an entire season. And one of the players beside him will be somebody who remembers what the earlier version of that journey looked like.
