It sounds absurd now, but here was Zach LaVine three months ago, sitting in a small room inside the UCLA athletics office building.
"Actually, most people don't know about my athleticism," he said then. "A lot of people I've played with see me as a scorer and a shooter. I'm still fast and everything like that, but then, when they see me dunk, it's like 'Oh, damn.' "
Nothing at Pauley Pavilion is currently more fun to watch than the 6-foot-5, 180-pound freshman. The stats are there: the 14.2 points off the bench, second on the team; the 60.5 percent shooting from the field, seventh in the Pac-12 and second among guards.
But far more thrilling is the sight of him flying down the lane, a whirl of limbs colliding with a rattling rim.
Nine games into the Bruins' season, the tally is this: 15 dunks, just three shy of junior Norman Powell for the team lead. LaVine, though, is catching up. A dozen of his slams have come in the past six games; over that same stretch, Powell has flushed in 10.
Some of LaVine's top highlights have come in the spotlight. In a nationally televised game against Missouri last Saturday, he bounced off the floor just inside the free-throw line, finishing with a one-handed windmill that left more than one mouth open on the sideline.
The numbers back up a teammate's prediction. Before the season, sophomore point guard Kyle Anderson gave Powell a slight in-game edge . but crowned LaVine easily when it came to freestyling: "I wouldn't put anybody in the conference up with him."
His showmanship found roots early. When he was around three or four years old, LaVine watched the movie "Space Jam" and fell in love with Michael Jordan. Not long afterward, he started holding his own private dunk contests, helped by a lowered rim.
"He loves to dunk," says his father Paul, a former Portland Breakers linebacker who played briefly for the Seattle Seahawks during the 1987 players' strike. "His whole life, all he ever wanted to do was dunk. I told him, 'Zach, it's just two points.' "
Of all the Bruins this season, LaVine is perhaps the one that most embodies the team's new style of play. Dropped out of The Associated Press poll after the 80-71 loss to Mizzou, UCLA (8-1) is hardly without flaws: the frontcourt is shallow, its rebounding is suspect, and its man-to-man defense is passable at best. What the squad can do is push the pace.
The shift has backed up the promises made in April, shortly after Steve Alford was first hired as coach.
Through six seasons at New Mexico, Alford's teams had ranked no higher than 122nd in the country in adjusted tempo, and as low as 221st. Nevertheless, both he and athletic director Dan Guerrero had insisted that his arrival meant a refreshing era of up-tempo UCLA basketball, divorced from Ben Howland's half-court sets and frequent timeouts.
Shortly after USC coach Andy Enfield called the Bruins "slow" during a Trojans practice, Alford defended himself by referring to points per game: only one of his squads averaged fewer than 70.0, and never fell out of the Mountain West's top three.
In Westwood, Alford has applied his schemes well to his personnel, so much so that UCLA ranks 30th in tempo according to kenpom.com. With Anderson given full ballhandling duties, players like Powell and LaVine have been free to play loose. Every few games, someone connects on an alley-oop.
Scouts have noticed too. Under-recruited out of the Friends of Hoops AAU team in Seattle, LaVine's stock has risen so quickly that, as of Tuesday evening, ESPN.com's Top 100 board for 2014 does not yet include his headshot. This, despite the fact that the site lists him at No. 12. The report cites scouts who call him "Russell Westbrook with a jump shot."
Besides his dunks, LaVine's other major contribution has been his shot. His 50 percent shooting from downtown ranks fourth in the Pac-12, with most of those heaves coming from well beyond the arc. Neither distance nor defenses have seemed to thwart him. Often, what looks like a poorly chosen shot with a pressing opponent swishes cleanly through the net.
Whether or not he will leave for the pros after just one season still isn't clear, though he and his family insist they're not thinking ahead yet.
"His focus is about the here and now and what's in front of him," said LaVine's godfather, Marvin Carter. "Those things kind of go in and out of his head. He's aware of things, but he doesn't live for those type of things."
Especially when he sees a free lane.
"I just try to attack the rim as hard as I can," LaVine said. "Try to get the crowd pumped up a little bit."
No comments:
Post a Comment