Greg Hansen: NBA Finals full of hard-working, smart role players like ex-Wildcat Solomon Hill

Miami starter Duncan Robinson began his college career at Division III Williams College before transferring to Michigan. He was not an All-Big Ten player. He was not drafted.

The Heat’s go-go scorer, Jimmy Butler, who was homeless in part of his teenage years, began his college career at Tyler Junior College in Texas before transferring to Marquette and playing three more college seasons.

Miami’s starting power forward, Jae Crowder, began at South Georgia Technical College before transferring to Howard JC and ultimately to Marquette.

Andre Iguodala, a former Arizona Wildcat, is playing in his sixth consecutive NBA Finals.

Mark J. Terrill / The Associated Press

Similarly, the Lakers, who have always been viewed as more Hollywood than working-class, aren’t all about LeBron James.

Among their eight-man rotation, shooting guard Alex Caruso went undrafted after a modest career at Texas Tech. Three-point shooter extraordinaire Danny Green played high school football for two years — he was a top quarterback prospect — before signing to play basketball at North Carolina. Green didn’t start his first two seasons at UNC and wasn’t drafted until deep into the second round, No. 46 overall.

And even the Lakers’ lone Pac-12 player, forward Kyle Kuzma, struggled in college. Kuzma didn’t start his freshman season at Utah, 2015, averaging just eight points per game.

Earlier this week, it was disclosed that the NBA’s final stage of pre-draft evaluations won’t include Oregon State forward Tres Tinkle. That’s a shame because I thought Tinkle was the epitome of a college basketball success story in his years at Gill Coliseum. He reminded me a lot of the college version of Solomon Hill, in that he was not overly athletic, not a physical demon nor given the attention of, say, Oregon’s it’s-all-about me point guard Payton Pritchard, or the Arizona one-and-done crew of Nico Mannion, Josh Green and Zeke Nnaji.