We all have seen the Jaden Ivey who ought to sign an endorsement deal for landing gear rather than sneakers, the guy who plays so far above the floor he’ll need an air traffic controller to call his NBA games instead of a play-by-play announcer. Trevion Williams has seen that more than the rest of us, because he practiced with him daily for two full seasons at Purdue.
Williams, though, has seen what drives Ivey to soar, the qualities that elevate him beyond mere elevation.
“That’s a guy that just wants to win, more than anything,” Williams told The Sporting News. “Jaden’s a very emotional guy — you can’t hold that against him, because it’s only because he wants to win so badly. When we do lose games, I’ve been in those situations at Purdue where Jaden breaks down, he’s in the locker room going crazy, but it’s only because he wants to win so much. You’re going to have teammates like that, that just take things differently.
“Guys get frustrated. He’s allowed to get frustrated. He wants to win. When you have guys on your team that want to win that bad, it just makes you work that much harder.”
We have heard for months that the debate regarding the first few picks in the NBA Draft involves the three bigs who earned All-America honors as freshmen: Auburn’s Jabari Smith, Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren and Duke’s Paolo Banchero. Each of them has great potential for success. There are myriad reasons why each of them should become a first-rate NBA player.
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Only occasionally is the possibility of Ivey breaking into their company discussed. More often, of late, the possibility of him falling outside the top four has been raised, including mock drafts by Sports Illustrated, Fox Sports and, yikes, by The Athletic’s Zach Harper, who predicts Ivey could fall all the way to No. 9.
They all may be right. They probably are. The teams in the first three slots will pick the three young big guys, and the folks doing the mock drafts will have correctly predicted this. There’s something everyone involved in these categories ought to consider, though:
The Jaden Ivey model is damn close to perfect.
By that we mean that just about every accomplished prospect who fit the Ivey athletic profile has become a significant NBA player. And we can say this with great comfort because there have been so few.
Seen what Ja Morant has been up to with the Grizzlies? Derrick Rose was the league’s MVP in 2011. Russell Westbrook has been All-NBA nine times. John Wall made five NBA All-Star teams.
This club is more exclusive than Augusta National. Ivey will be a member the moment he shakes Adam Silver’s hand on NBA Draft night, although that occasion may arrive a half-hour later than it should.
“He’s that type of player,” an Eastern Conference personnel executive told TSN at the NBA Draft Combine in May. “Elite athleticism, great speed, great quickness, dynamic, able to defend, has great size for the position — I think he’s a really good player.
“A lot of folks are always enamored with size, so you look at the 6-10, 6-11 guys. But pound-for-pound, he’s just as good as any guy in this draft. I think he’s great.”
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After more than six decades under the rule of imperial big men, from George Mikan to Shaquille O’Neal, the NBA has been overtaken by a small-ball coup. And the little guys are showing no signs of surrendering their power. The reigning champion Warriors didn’t have a player taller than 6-8 among their seven top scorers in the NBA Finals. Their opponents, the Celtics, didn’t have anyone taller than 6-9.
The 2021 Finals included Bucks 7-footer Brook Lopez and Suns 7-footer Deandre Ayton as pivotal players, but neither of those teams even reached the conference finals this year. One never could say size doesn’t matter in the league, but its influence obviously is shrinking.
The Warriors have led us to believe the ability to convert 3-point attempts has become the most important ingredient in the pursuit of NBA championships, but the first ingredient to a made three is a quality opportunity. The gift for shredding defenses that made Allen Iverson a Hall of Famer, Westbrook a superstar and Morant the talk of the league just three years into his career can be found in Ivey, as well.
“What makes Jaden Ivey special is that he’s obviously super fast in transition, and he’s a paint-touch guy, but coming back as a sophomore has made him understand how to play the game,” a Division I head coach whose team faced Purdue told TSN. “What I was impressed with was his knowledge of the game, how he picked and chose his moments.
“The things that he does will translate in the NBA because there’s 3-second defense, so the lanes are not as clogged. He’s got a tremendous first step.”
In averaging 17.3 points and 3.1 assists in his sophomore season for the Sweet 16-bound Boilermakers, earning consensus second-team All-America honors, Ivey routinely dominated with his extraordinary dynamism: his quickness, his ability to accelerate and change direction, his propensity to fly to heights opponents could not reach.
After playing primarily off the ball as a freshman, Ivey took near complete command of the Purdue offense and demonstrated a flair for playmaking that led to Purdue’s offense being ranked No. 2 in efficiency by KenPom.com. It was No. 26 the year before.
Ivey had to learn to govern his acceleration. He can generate such speed going to the hoop that he often arrived at the goal moving too rapidly to comfortably convert, as when he shot just 3-of-10 from the field in a Martin Luther King Day game at Illinois. The Boilers won that game in double overtime, however, in part because Ivey attacked the Illini defense so ferociously he earned 15 free throws and converted all but two.
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Ivey shoots what amounts to a set shot when lining up from deep, which robs him of the extension that might be available because of his leaping ability but does serve to stabilize his release. He still is growing as a shooter, from 25.8 percent on 25 makes as a freshman to 35.8 percent on 64 makes last season. He faded badly in that department, though, hitting only 16-of-59 from mid-February to the end of the season.
“He’s got to be consistent outside. He’s got to be what I consider to be kind of an option quarterback,” the college coach said. “An option quarterback situation, you know he can run the ball, he can pitch it at any time, but every now and then he’s got to drop back and throw a pass. I think he’s got to be a respectable shooter behind the 3-point line in order for his game to take off.”
In his second season as a collegian at Murray State, Morant registered near-identical 3-point numbers to Ivey’s: 36.3 percent on 57 makes. Westbrook shot 33.8 percent in his sophomore year. Rose’s only season ended with him at 33.7 percent. If you want to go back and loop Dwyane Wade into this conversation, he hit 33.3 percent in his sophomore season. Wall was the least of them in this department, hitting 32.5 percent in his one year at Kentucky.
So the few members of this exclusive club all needed a little time on the practice range. The son of a coach — Niele Ivey of the Notre Dame women’s team — and one of the most improved players in Division I basketball in 2021-22, Ivey would seem to be inclined to put in the necessary work to ascend.
“That’s an energy guy. That’s a guy you want on your team,” Williams told TSN. “That’s a guy that does not get tired. Jaden could play 50 minutes if you wanted.”
Every NBA Draft pick carries some degree of risk, even if that is contained to whether the player’s body will prove durable enough for 80-plus games a year. With Ivey, though, it is possible the greatest danger will be passing on a player who’ll supersede the bigger names and bigger bodies chosen ahead of him.
