Cross-Country Workout Swing: Part Two, Abunassar Impact Basketball
by: Jonathan Givony - President
May 20, 2008
After a day and a half in Bradenton, we flew cross-country to Las Vegas to take in two full days of workouts and extensive 3 on 3 games featuring no less than 28 players preparing for the NBA Draft. Some of the prospects here included Joe Alexander, Marreese Speights, J.J. Hickson, Richard Hendrix, Malik Hairston, Giorgi Shermadini, James Mays, Marcus Dove, Alonzo Gee, Quan Prowell, Rudy Mbemba, Deron Washington, Aleks Maric, Mickell Gladness, Bruce Price, Longar Longar and Mykal Riley. Also present and working out were current NBA players Aaron Gray, Cedric Simmons and Patrick O’Bryant.
The first day was mostly about shooting drills and physical training (weight lifting and such)—with the players quickly zipping on and off the court and the trainers very efficiently ensuring that they get up as many shots up as humanly possible. The second day was slightly more interesting for us—two full hours of three on three half-court games being played on both end of the court.
The afternoon concluded with a phenomenally entertaining make-shift dunk contest between Joe Alexander and Deron Washington Since there were a lot of players on hand to evaluate, we’ll get right to it, but unfortunately won’t able to write about everyone.
Player Evaluations
Joe Alexander
Alexander came into his morning workout with a great reputation, as everyone we spoke with that had been working with him over the past week could not stop raving about how well he had been responding to them thus far. “A fierce worker,” Joe Abunassar told us. “He’s an animal in the weight room,” strength trainer Tony Falce told us. “He’s worked non-stop for every minute since the second he got here.” One after one, each of the trainers filtered over to our direction to share a story about their favorite pupil. And indeed, physically he’s extremely impressive, quick off his feet, agile, with a great frame, and big hands. “He has great strength, balance, and power” Abunassar told us. Alexander looks like he’s in incredible shape, having finished off the grueling shooting session much stronger than he started, and looking like he could easily have gone for another hour.
Any question about just how freakishly athletic he is vertically were answered as we watched him perform a series of highlight reel caliber dunks as the day of workouts came to a close—360s, off the backboard, windmills, the Vince Carter “honey-dip“/elbow inside the rim, between the legs, taking off from a step inside the free throw line, he visibly wowed each and every one of the players on the sidelines with his antics. Just for good measure, he finished off by jogging lightly towards the basket, jumping off two feet and viciously head-butting the rim, as you can see in the photo.
Ironically, Alexander started off his first workout quite unimpressively actually, looking very streaky from outside. As he went on, though, he found his rhythm, looking excellent from mid-range and showing off terrific form on what appears to be his go-to move—a one-dribble crossover pull-up jumper from about 18 feet. He gets terrific separation off the ground to create space from his imaginary defender, which, coupled with his extremely high release point, will make this shot very hard to stop in one on one isolation situations. He attacked every drill with the same balls to the wall aggressiveness you would expect from the reputation he’s earned here and in college as a phenomenal worker, and this, combined with his terrific athleticism and seemingly very high character should make him somewhat of a hit on the NBA private workout trail. We walked out of his first day workout being much higher on him than we were before we came in. “He shoots the ball very well, is quick and explosive off the dribble,” his trainer Joe Abunassar said. “He’s dangerous both inside and out.”
That impression did not lessen from what we saw during the competitive three on three games in the second day. His combination of quickness, explosiveness and intensity made him extremely difficult to contain, even if his rawness in the half-court was definitely evident, and the level of competition left something to be desired. Alexander still has considerable work to do on his ball-handling skills, shooting range, footwork, balance and overall technique if he’s to reach his extremely high ceiling as a player. The ball seems to slow him down and he looks a bit out of control with his dribble by the time he reaches the rim on his slashing moves. His mid-range pull-up jumper is not the most refined you’ll find, as he’s somewhat off-balance as he elevates—but he’s so athletic that he is able to recalibrate himself in the air as he reaches the apex of his jump. There are also concerns from what we could see here about his lateral movement on the perimeter defensively as he makes the transition to playing the small forward position fill time.
With that said, we need to keep in mind that he’s only been playing organized basketball for about five years now, which means that his learning curve is still pretty steep as far as NBA talent-evaluators are concerned. That is certainly a good thing when you begin to project where he’ll be a few years down the road, especially when you take his work ethic into consideration. Before we started our workout swing, we reeled off a couple of names of the players we’ll be seeing on our various stops to an NBA Director of Scouting. “Right now he’s probably somewhere in the early 20’s on most teams boards, but he’s going to be one of the fastest risers in this draft,“ the executive predicted. We like to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism as we make the rounds around the country, keeping in mind the very loose and informal nature of the workouts we’ll be watching. But Alexander is definitely someone who left a very strong impression on us. Keep an eye out for a transcript of the interview we conducted with him over the next day or two.
Marreese Speights
More than any other player, Marreese Speights’ write-up needs to be separated into two sections: the drills, and the competitive three on three setting.
We walked away from the first day shaking our head at what we witnessed—a 6-10, 20-year old power forward who is about as skilled a big man facing the basket as you will find in this draft. “He’s really more skilled than anyone knows,“ Joe Abunassar told us. The first thing you notice is how fundamentally sound Speights’ shooting mechanics are. He’s got a natural, flawless stroke, showing small-forward like elevation creating separation from his defender, a high release point, excellent body control on his fade-aways, great technique squaring his shoulders and his hips simultaneously in perfect unison—and not surprisingly, getting unbelievable results in the process. He operates strictly on the balls of his feet as he catches and fires away, draining shot after shot from 16-18 feet with machine-like efficiency, and then proceeding to step-away and knock down college and even NBA 3-pointers with impressive accuracy as well.
In the post, he has a beautiful hook-shot and an even prettier turn-around jumper, to go along with great hands, length and size for his position and excellent agility finishing around the hoop. On top of that, there was nothing resembling any of the problems Speights had with his conditioning back at Florida, as he’s looking to be in phenomenal shape and had no problem at all finishing up his workout in very strong fashion. “He has really has worked on his body and conditioning,” Abunassar told us. Needless to say, we came away almost floored at what we saw—telling basically anyone that would listen that we’re talking about a starting NBA power forward any day of the week.
Alas, workouts can be somewhat of fool’s gold at times—something we need to constantly remind ourselves as we continue to make the rounds. What we saw during the second day probably brought us back to the proper proportions, for his sake, and ours as well. Speights seemed to fall in love with his jump-shot way too much for our personal liking, spending virtually the entire two hours behind the 3-point line and rarely if ever going inside to make his presence felt.
We need to keep in mind that this was a very informal setting where the players were more interested for the most part in having fun than winning at all costs, but it was still hard not to be bothered at times by his shot-selection and extremely poor defensive (and overall) intensity. When he did decide to focus and take things seriously, again we saw the flashes of talent that made many people think he’s a lottery pick in the making, putting the ball on the deck and finishing a play with a running one-handed floater, taking an offensive rebound, dribbling backwards and draining an incredibly difficult contested 19-foot turnaround jumper while being fouled, or spotting up effortlessly and knocking down an NBA 3-pointer. He has more potential as a two-dribble slasher taking his man off the bounce from the high post than we were able to see at Florida, something that could serve to be a great weapon for him in the pros considering the superior spacing he’ll enjoy in the NBA.
All in all, we still feel pretty strongly about the fact that if Speights is somehow able to harness all the talent he shows and put it all together over the next few years, he will be looked back at as a player that clearly should have been drafted in the lottery. With that said, we can see why he isn’t there right now considering what we saw and know from the rumblings about his overall approach to the game, as opposed to his talent. What we want to know is: how bad could his work ethic be if he went from barely being considered a top-50 high school recruit to one of the most skilled big men in the draft and a potential lottery pick in the span of just two years? Like so many players in this whacky draft, though, he’s incredibly young, incredibly talented, and still has a great deal of time to pan out in a huge way and reward the team that decides to “take a chance on him.” That just goes to show you how difficult a job NBA teams have…especially in this case.
5/21/2008 3:49 PM