Backed with his dream of becoming the first homegrown Filipino to play in the NBA, Sotto went to the United States to further develop his game and realize his dream.

After almost two years of extensive training with The Skills Factory in Atlanta, Sotto suited up for G League’s Ignite—team featuring elite high school prospects such as Jalen Green, Isaiah Todd, Jonathan Kuminga among others.

However, the 7-foot-3 Filipino center was caught in between suiting up for the NBA G League or Gilas Pilipinas for the final window of the FIBA Asia Cup Qualifiers with him ended up flying to the Philippines to play for the national team and things seemingly did not end well.

Following the postponement of the FIBA qualifiers with hopes of donning the national team jersey, Sotto went back to the US, however, never got to rejoin Team Ignite.

A mutual decision was reached between the camp and the 18-year old that the latter will no longer play for Ignite dealing a big blow to his NBA dreams.

Archer, who once tried to recruit Sotto to play in Europe, felt sad about how the young basketball star’s career fell into pieces in a short span of time.

“It’s really painful to see somebody who had so much upside that maybe made just a couple of career decisions that didn’t go well,” he said.

Despite a turn of events for Sotto in his career in the US, Archer believed that Europe is still an option in realizing his NBA dreams.

However, the 34-year old FIBA Agent said that the European scouts will not be as intrigued as they were before when Sotto first caught their attention considering what happened in the States.

“Before, Europe was really excited about the potential, that they’re going to wager on him as a future potential, some superstar that can be drafted in the NBA from Europe.”

“Now I think that they’ve seen him in the States and what happened, now they know what kind of player he is. And now they’re going to say we can offer you this, and maybe different clubs are going to be interested, but not the same ones,” he added.

But Archer is firm that Sotto going to Europe is the perfect road considering that most international players coming from the country are big men.

“Kai’s strengths are his IQ and skills and European games are well suited for that. And it would be a good time spent to develop and showcase his skills in that kind of system,” he said.

With the Filipino big man out of his tracks, for now, the Minnesota native agent hoped that he would be back on his feet once again.