https://theathletic.com/787122/2019/01/31/anonymity-may-be-fine-for-purdue-fort-waynes-john-konchar-but-his-story-deserves-to-be-told/
Anonymity may be fine for Purdue-Fort Wayne’s John Konchar, but his story deserves to be told
By Dustin Dopirak Jan 31, 2019
FORT WAYNE, Ind. — To watch John Konchar play basketball is to repeatedly ask yourself if anyone — especially Konchar himself — appreciates the latest in a long lines of remarkable things you have witnessed.
The Purdue-Fort Wayne fifth-year senior doesn’t catch your eye immediately, because he’s so quiet and unassuming. It’s not that he doesn’t look like a basketball player — he’s 6-foot-5, 210 pounds and jacked — but he has the sort of boxy frame that makes it just as easy to imagine him toiling as the most powerful guy on a construction site and spending his weekends blasting home runs in softball tournaments.
But Konchar is far more fluid than he appears at first glance, and there is nothing on a basketball court that he doesn’t do well. His passes are like magic tricks. One of his go-to moves is to take the ball at the left wing, dribble to the top of the 3-point line and throw a pass over the shoulder to a shooter standing where he was without once looking backward to make sure that shooter is where he expects him to be. He can catch a pass at the top of the key and skip the ball over to a shooter in the far corner without ever taking his eye off the bucket, and he threads needles with cross-court passes from one corner of the half court to the others.
“His vision is just ridiculous,” Purdue-Fort Wayne senior guard Kason Harrell says. “There’s times that I’m open and I don’t think he sees me, and all the sudden I just see the ball coming my way. Sometimes there’s a split second of eye contact. Sometimes he just has eyes in the back of his head.”
And Konchar’s ability to play above the rim can be just as awe-inducing as his floor game. His dunks are some of the most highlight-reel worthy moments in the program’s history. That includes the vicious left-handed one he threw down on Indiana’s Juwan Morgan and Thomas Bryant when the Mastodons knocked off the then No. 3 Hoosiers November of 2016, the same month that IU team beat both Kansas and North Carolina.
Konchar also made the steal that ended that game. He’s not a lock-down defender, but he can defend any position on the floor, and his ability to anticipate makes him both a ball-hawk and an exceptional rebounder.
“He’s freakishly athletic,” coach Jon Coffman says. “The game is so slow to him.”
Konchar is a three-time first-team All-Summit League pick, and he’s a lock to make the team again this year. He’s Purdue-Fort Wayne’s all-time leading scorer and rebounder, and as an across-the-board stat-sheet stuffer, he is one of the more prolific college basketball players of the last 30 years. According to SportsReference.com, he is the only player since 1992-93 to amass at least 1,800 points (1,857), 1,000 rebounds (1,065), 400 assists (491) and 200 steals (246). His career offensive rating of 130.99 is the highest Sports Reference has on record going back to the 2009-10 season. As a senior, he’s averaging 19 points, 8.7 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game for the Mastodons, who are 14-10 and 6-3 in the Summit League after a blowout win against South Dakota Wednesday.
But just as was the case in high school, when he set the school scoring record at West Chicago High School but barely heard a whisper from college coaches, Konchar remains largely anonymous even by the standards of a mid-major star. He is overshadowed even within his own conference by South Dakota State’s Mike Daum, who is college basketball’s leading active career scorer and ranks in the top 20 in Division I in career points.
The lack of attention suits the stoic, dry-witted Konchar just fine. The spotlight annoys him, and he tries to avoid even the modest amount of press coverage he gets in the Fort Wayne market. When he broke the Purdue-Fort Wayne career scoring record set by Frank Gaines in 2013 with two free throws late in a loss to Omaha on Jan. 24, Knochar showed no reaction even as the crowd at the Gates Athletic Center erupted. Knowing he wouldn’t want a big deal made of the accomplishment, the only thing the athletic department did was post a graphic on the video board that included a picture of him wearing an expression that was as blank as the one he was displaying on the floor.
“I don’t react to those things,” Konchar says. “I’m here to play basketball. It’s a great honor and Frank Gaines is a great player, but I’m there to win a basketball game.”
Konchar has been misjudged and underestimated throughout his career, but it’s never bothered him. Nothing really does. He has always had a philosophy to avoid any kind of thinking that creates stress. He stays away from social media — except when posting photos on the offseason occasions he and one of his teammates declare it to be jean short Fridays — and unlike his father, Jim and his brother, Pete, who have White Sox tattoos, he doesn’t invest in any team other than the one he’s playing on, emotionally or otherwise.
“I just go out there and play basketball,” Konchar says. “That’s the only thing that’s on my mind. I don’t get bothered by added stress.”
All of the slights do, however, still stick with the family members and coaches who couldn’t find many believers when they tried to tell everyone how good he was in high school. Now that his college career is winding down and he’s starting to pop up on the radar of NBA scouts, they don’t want to see it happen again.
Konchar comes from a family of basketball players who were passionate about the game but limited in their physical gifts.
Jim played at St. Lawrence High School in Chicago. He never got a chance to play collegiately, but he also didn’t miss many opportunities to play in pick-up games and recreational leagues until he turned 55.
Pete and older sister Jen also played in high school, but both passed on the opportunity to be Division III athletes. One of the methods Jim used to teach his kids were instructional VHS tapes on ball-handling, passing and shooting by Hall of Famer “Pistol” Pete Maravich. They went through the drills while watching the tapes in the family basement.
That’s what got John Konchar hooked.
“That was when I was really young,” he says. “They just stuck in my brain for a while and they just helped me because Pete Maravich was an amazing basketball player, and all of the moves he was able to pull off were really intriguing. He did everything. His ball-handling, all of those drills were really good. Passing, I’m a big fan of passing. It was in my brain at an early age, and it grew on me, because I’d rather get an assist than score.”
Pete Konchar is seven years older than his brother, so he was in high school when John was just starting to play in elementary school. But even then he could tell that John had a feel for the game that was beyond his.
“I just remember when he was in first or second grade,” Pete says. “When he played in like a park district league or whatever it was, he would dribble up and down the court faster than the other kids could run.”
From a very young age, John could handle the ball with ease, pass at an exceptional level, move without the ball, finish at the rim and shoot from outside. By the third grade he was playing travel ball with the Illinois Basketball Academy and in national-level tournaments, and by ninth grade he had grown taller than 6-foot.
“He was always pretty advanced, pretty high basketball IQ,” says Dedrick Shannon, his coach at IBA. “I thought he was a game-changer. The way he could get open at an early age is pretty impressive. Most kids don’t understand backdoor cuts or how they can finish, not necessarily in traffic, but to be able to get to the open spot. The things you have to go in-depth with, I didn’t really have to go too in depth with him about it. I would do things like insert him into the high post when we were struggling against the zone, because he was such a great passer, and he always knew where the open spot was.”
One problem Konchar did encounter was that the game came too easily for him. He spent hours on his craft away from practice developing muscle memory and instinct, but at practices and in games, he never looked as if he was expending much energy. Coaches in the suburbs west of Chicago took his quiet demeanor as lack of interest and his graceful movement for laziness. It wasn’t until his junior year at West Chicago High School that he found a coach who realized that wasn’t the case. Konchar didn’t make the varsity as a freshman and he didn’t always start as a sophomore, but had Bill Recchia been in charge? Konchar would have been a four-year starter.
“When I came in, the early knock on John was they were like, ‘Well, he just doesn’t work hard,'” says Recchia, who was the school’s all-time leading scorer before Konchar arrived and took over as coach before his junior season. “I came in and I watched John play, and I’m like, ‘These people are nuts.’ The game just comes very easy to him. It may give the appearance that he’s not working hard, but his brain is going a mile a minute on that floor. He had vision I had never seen before or since in anyone who has stepped on a basketball court. He coasts. He glides. When a player like that glides, it doesn’t look like he’s busting his ass, and I guess to some people, they think a guy who’s working hard has to have his arms flailing about and be a little bit of a showboat. John’s none of that.”
Recchia also noticed Konchar was sometimes too deferential, especially to older players when he was a junior. As a senior, he made sure he and his teammates knew who was supposed to get the ball when a big shot had to be made.
“He’s one of the most unselfish players I’ve ever coached,” Recchia says. “When John was a junior, there were some seniors that thought they were the guys that should be taking the shot. When John was a senior, one of the first meetings I had with everybody was, ‘This is the guy that wears the cape. Make no doubts about it, the ball is going to be in his hands come crunch time.’ They all knew.”
So as a senior in 2013-14, Konchar posted the best individual season in the history of the program. He averaged 28.9 points, 14.1 rebounds, 4.1 assists, 3.2 steals and 2.5 blocks per game, breaking Recchia’s career scoring record along the way. The Illinois Basketball Coaches Association named him second-team all-state, and he led West Chicago to 17 wins, its most victories in a decade.
But after all that, he received a single scholarship offer.
“I still scratch my head about it,” Recchia says. “I contacted every school in the state of Illinois, from every single mid-major to every major school. Every school passed on him. I still to this day can’t get an answer why.”
The schools from Illinois that declined to recruit Konchar didn’t mention what their issues were, but the programs from out of state that came to see him did.
There were concerns about the level of competition. West Chicago and inner-city Chicago are not nearly the same in terms of talent level. Recchia argues that West Chicago is much better than it gets credit for, but future NBA draft picks Jahil Okafor, Cliff Alexander and Jalen Brunson were all playing in the city that year. Konchar did reasonably well against them in summer travel tournaments, but he didn’t have to play against them when he was putting up his 29 points per game.
The bigger issue, however, involved weight. At 6-foot-4 and 165 pounds, Konchar didn’t possess a lot of muscle, and even the mid-major schools weren’t comfortable putting him in games.
It wasn’t that Konchar didn’t enjoy working out. He just struggled to put on weight because of a digestive issue that he saw several doctors for without getting a diagnosis. “I grew out of it,” he says of the ailment. “I had two or three tests done. They put a thing down my throat and took pictures of my stomach and they didn’t find anything.”
The schools that had shown some interest didn’t bother waiting around for the test results. Coaches from Rider and Northeastern attended games but never offered a scholarship. By March of Konchar’s senior year, the only schools that had shown interest were a Division III school in Iowa and a Division II school in Ohio.
“I thought I was going to end up D-III,” Konchar says. “Just stay close to home.”
Konchar’s break came, however, when a Notre Dame assistant coach came to see him.
Rod Balanis had heard from Recchia and was interested enough to watch a few of Konchar’s game. In one, Konchar set the school scoring record with 49 points and grabbed 27 rebounds.
Balanis loved Konchar’s skill set, but the Fighting Irish were in the midst of a 15-17 season that would snap a four-year streak of NCAA Tournament appearances, and they were putting together a strong recruiting class that included point guard Matt Farrell and forward Bonzie Colson. Instead of running Konchar’s name up the ladder to Mike Brey, Bironas called Coffman, a close friend who he knew through the Colgate coaching tree where both had been assistants. Coffman had just been named the coach at what was then IPFW, and he had a few scholarships to fill.
“Rod tells me, ‘This is the type of guy we’ve taken in the past, but we’ve had a down year, we probably need to take a higher-level of transfer, something with a little more juice. But this is the guy, man. I think he’s really good,'” Coffman recalls. “I take his word for it. We bring him down for a visit and find out on the visit that he’s struggling to put on weight with some eating stuff. I’m nervous. I don’t know how good he’ll be if he stays at 165 and 6-4, but again, he’s just super, super skilled. We’ve had teams that can really shoot it, and I love guys that can pass the ball.”
So Coffman took a chance and offered Konchar a scholarship. Without any other D-I opportunities, the choice was an easy one for Konchar. Two years later, he was one of the best players in the Summit League.
Even Purdue-Fort Wayne strength and conditioning coach Kevin Rudolphi was skeptical when Konchar walked through his door the first time.
“I remember when he came on his visit, I was like, ‘Man, this kid is skinn-neee,” Rudolphi says. “He was like a beanpole. Thin. A rail. And you never know. He looked like he had a good frame. You think you’ve got something to work with, put some muscle on, but if you would have told me on his visit or like that redshirt year that his senior year he’s going to be 205, 210, lean, bodying people, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
The transformation happened fast. The stomach issue abated — still with no explanation — and Konchar was soon in the weight room seven days a week. The Mastodons didn’t need Konchar to play his first year, so he took a redshirt, which allowed him to spend the year lifting without having to stay in game shape and going through the calorie burns that games produce. Within a year, he was up to 195 and without losing explosiveness in his vertical or any of his coordination.
“Every month I kind of noticed the growth,” Konchar says. “And I really liked it. I think I was able to bench press 185 pounds one time when I got here, and now I can do 18 or 19. On the court, I was able to drive and bully someone. I was never able to do that before. And I was thankful that my shot never got lost. Gaining all that, you think you’d have to adjust, but I never had to.”
Weightlifting became almost as much of a passion for Konchar as basketball, and he came to pride himself on being stronger than whomever was guarding him.
“We came back from a game at Austin Peay his freshman year at like 4:30 in the morning,” Coffman says. “I go out to do a class check at 8:30, and I see John in the gym just pumping out pull-ups. He’s a machine. When we go on the road, the first thing he does is find a weight room. He’ll lift the day before a game. He’s religious with his body and it shows.”
It showed during that redshirt freshman season of 2015-16. Even after sitting out a year of competitive basketball, he found his footing quickly and felt stronger than ever. His first two points as a collegian came on a dunk against Valparaiso.
“The only time I’ve ever really been nervous for basketball was the first minute of the Valpo game,” Konchar says. “I’ve never felt it again.”
He led the Summit League in rebounding that season with 9.2 per game while finishing in the top 15 in scoring (13.0 points) and assists (2.7). His scoring figures have increased since then, on the strength of his 56 percent shooting from the field (plus 42 percent from 3). And he has continued to average at least eight rebounds, 3.8 assists and a steal a game each season. He played both forward positions early in his career but now plays point guard, which has reduced his rebounding stats but set him up to set a career high in assists.
“He just does everything so well,” Coffman says. “And he really makes us good.”
The challenge Coffman now faces is getting Konchar to alter his game enough for the NBA to notice.
Konchar (center) has consistently risen to the level of his competition, including during games against Indiana. (Brian Spurlock/USA Today)
Konchar is already set up for life after basketball. He finished his bachelor’s degree in information technology with a GPA around 3.5 and is working on a master’s in organizational leadership. He would like to be involved in cybersecurity, but anything in the info tech field would suit him fine. He has designs on pro basketball but seems to view that as more of a hope than a necessity and seems OK with the idea of going overseas.
Coffman, though, believes his star belongs in the NBA. He probably won’t be taken in the two-round, 60-pick draft, but a camp invite and a two-way contract don’t appear to be out of the question.
“There are so many things he can do,” Coffman says. “I don’t think there’s a team he doesn’t fit.”
Konchar hasn’t tested the NBA waters, but Coffman says he was in touch with 17 franchises last year trying to get an idea of what they wanted to see from Konchar.
Coffman beefed up the nonconference portion of the schedule mostly for Konchar’s benefit, even though he had a combined 10 newcomers between transfers and freshmen. Konchar shined with 25 points, eight rebounds and six assists against UCLA; 13 points, nine rebounds and four assists against Ohio State; and 11 points, seven rebounds and eight assists against Dayton.
“He’s had some of his best games against those guys,” Coffman says. “He rises to the level.”
Konchar also has been trying to take over games and hunt his own shot, things he is capable of but not wired to do.
“The hardest thing over his career was getting him to get that scorer’s mentality about him,” Coffman says. “He makes the right play all the time. But sometimes it’s, ‘You’re a 60 percent shooter. Go get it.’ As soon as he saw help, he was kicking in the post, so he wouldn’t get to the free throw line. Now it’s like, ‘Let’s turn the corner, split the gap, try and score and maybe get to the line.'”
Konchar has reluctantly taken heed, and he’s averaging a career-high 18.9 points per game and is on pace to set career highs in field goals and free throw attempts.
“I’ve been trying to get in the paint and just try to finish more this season,” Konchar says. “They’re professionals, they know their job and obviously I’ll take any advice that will help me get to the next level. I don’t think about it in games. I just try to do whatever it takes to win the game rather than think about getting to the NBA.”
So he’ll just keep making amazing plays and let the scouts decide whether they appreciate it or not.
9/23/2020 9:40 PM
