Reece Gaines
American basketball player (born 1981)

Clifton Reece Gaines (born January 7, 1981) is an American former professional basketball player and former assistant coach at Austin Spurs.
High school and college career
Gaines, a 6-foot-6-inch (1.98 m), 205-pound (93 kg) shooting guard, played high school basketball at Madison West in his hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. He then played four years at the University of Louisville, earning AP All-America 3rd-team honors his senior season while leading the Cardinals to a 25–7 win–loss record. He is considered one of the best all-time shooting guards for the Louisville Cardinal basketball program. He ranks among the top-five Louisville leaders in made three-point field goals (225), free throws (456) and assists (475). Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat once called Reece Gaines "the best college basketball player he ever faced".
NBA career
Gaines was drafted by the Orlando Magic in the first round (15th overall) of the 2003 NBA draft and signed with the club on July 18, 2003. He spent one season on the bench in Orlando (1.8 points, 1.0 rebounds and 1.1 assists per game in 38 games) before being traded to the Houston Rockets (along with Tracy McGrady, Juwan Howard and Tyronn Lue) in exchange for Steve Francis, Cuttino Mobley and Kelvin Cato.
Gaines played ten games with the Rockets (2.6 points, 1.1 rebounds and 0.3 assists per game), spending the majority of his time on the injured list. He was traded again on February 24, 2005 (with two future second-round picks) to the Milwaukee Bucks for Mike James and Zendon Hamilton.
The public source identifies “Reece Gaines” as american basketball player (born 1981). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Reece, Gaines and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2273491. The first chronological checks are 1981, 2003 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Reece Gaines” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.