Two locals step up for Danish team tied for first

Our series on Hampton Roads pro basketball players excelling overseas continues with natives of Hampton and Virginia Beach sparking a team in Denmark.

Josh Fortune, a Kecoughtan High graduate, leads the Randers Cimbria team with 19.5 points per game. At last check, Cimbria — based in Randers, Denmark’s sixth-largest city — was 14-3 and sharing first place with the Bakken Bears in the top Danish league.

Fortune, a 6-foot-5, 200-pounder, is playing 31.8 minutes per game and is shooting 49.8% from the field, including 40.7% from 3-point range and 82.4% at the free-throw line. He also is averaging 7.7 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 1.8 steals per contest.

One of his top teammates is Brandon Norfleet, a Landstown High graduate. Norfleet leads Randers with 7.5 assists per game and also is averaging 17.8 points, 5.3 rebounds, 1.7 steals and a team-high 32.6 minutes.

Fortune, 28, played two NCAA years apiece for Providence and Colorado from 2012-17. Statistically, his best season was in 201516, his first with the Buffaloes, when he averaged 10.3 points and 4.0 rebounds on a 22-12 team. Since then, Fortune has competed for teams in Hungary, Germany, Ukraine and Greece as well as Denmark. He’s in his second tour with Randers, having averaged 16.2 points per game in 2019-20 and 13.8 last season.

Norfleet, 29, showed competing in Division I is not a necessity to be a successful pro. After his 2012 Landstown graduation, he played four years of Division II ball in the Keystone State — one for Cheyney and three for Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He averaged 14.7 points and 5.5 rebounds in those four years. In 2016, when he was the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Player of the Year for IUP, the coaches named him an All-American.

Norfleet competed in Italy in 2016-17 for the Andrea Costa Imola team, but starting in 201819, he has been in Denmark’s league. He spent four years with the Svendborg Rabbits, averaging no fewer than 13.1 ppg, but now is savoring his best pro season statistically in most categories with Randers.

Mahomes memories: Longtime major leaguer Pat Mahomes, the father of Kansas City’s NFL MVP quarterback, pitched for the Norfolk Tides in 1999.

Coming back from a stint in Japan, Mahomes signed with the New York Mets, then the Tides’ parent club. With Norfolk, he was 4-1 with a 3.49 ERA in six starts.

That helped him earn a promotion to the Mets, and he helped New York reach the National League Championship Series by going 8-0 in 39 relief appearances that season. (His son, Patrick

II, the future quarterback icon, would turn 4 on Sept. 17.)