Bouknight likely to leave for NBA
James Bouknight and Andre Drummond couldn’t be more different types of players.
Bouknight is a smooth, 6-foot-5 guard who glides across the floor, can shoot it pretty well, hits his free throws (usually) and boasts tremendous hops.
Drummond is a 6-11, 280pound specimen who dominates the backboards, swats away shots and can’t hit free throws. (OK, he does boast pretty impressive hops, too).
The two do share one thing in common: Both players’ UConn careers will end with first-round, NCAA tournament ousters. They won’t leave behind great UConn legacies.
After two years at UConn, Bouknight will almost certainly enter his name in the 2021 NBA Draft in the coming days.
But he’s not ready, you say? He needs another year. He was too fragile this season. He didn’t play well down the stretch, didn’t lead UConn to NCAA tourney glory.
Well, neither did Drummond. In 2011-12, Drummond’s only season at UConn, he averaged a mere 10 points per game. He had a few moments, but never really dominated, never gave any evidence that he’d be an NBA star.
Worse, he only averaged 7.6 rebounds per game. Ironically, he averaged the same number as a rookie with Detroit in 2012-13. After that, he’s emerged as perhaps the NBA’s dominant rebounder of his era, leading the league four times (including 16 per game in 2017-18). He’s hauling in 13.5 per game this season for Cleveland.
Bouknight’s sophomore year was much better than Drummond’s on a statistical basis. He averaged 20.7 points per game in Big East play, which would have led the league if he had played more than just nine league games. As it was, he averaged 18.7 per game, shot 45-percent from the floor and grabbed 5.7 boards per contest overall.
He struggled down the stretch, shooting just 14-for 41 (34 percent) and averaging 13 points over this last three games. He shot 1-for-13 from 3.
And so, the chorus grows that Bouknight isn’t ready for the NBA, that he should stay another season in college. Unlikely.
“In this league, it’s all about betting on the come,” one NBA scout said. “I don’t think they get too worked up about the latest games. They evaluate talent and don’t go up and down every game
based on stats.”
In other words, the NBA drafts players on talent and potential. Bouknight still boasts plenty of both. He has been seen as a potential lottery pick, and it’s not likely his subpar performance in the Huskies’ final few games will affect his positioning too much.
“I would think,” the scout added, “somebody will take him by the midfirst round.”
And if that’s the case, he’s got to go. Any firstround pick is guaranteed money, and obviously the higher the better. If you’re projected to go late-first round, that could give a player second thought. The possibility of slipping to the second round isn’t good.
“You could end up on a G-League bus,” the scout noted.
Granted, anyone who saw Drummond as a freshman knew he was a lottery pick, despite his pedestrian production. The NBA is much different from college. More wide-open. Not as many zone defenses or even intense defensive play, at times. A great athlete can thrive outside of the more constricted confines of the college game.
Bouknight is a great athlete. His game could easily translate better in the NBA. Yes, the players are bigger and stronger, but they won’t be keying their entire defensive schemes on him. More open floor, more room to operate. That’s where Bouknight could shine.
Will he be a star off the bat? Probably not. A team could take him, get him to get stronger, thicken up a bit, and turn him into a productive player by his second or third year. A superstar? Maybe not. Maybe a 12-15 ppg scorer, a la former Husky Jeremy Lamb, who didn’t start putting up those numbers until his sixth NBA season.
Funny thing is, unlike Lamb (or even Drummond), Bouknight seems to enjoy being in college, enjoys being a Husky. He also recognizes the legacy players like Ray Allen, Rip Hamilton, Kemba Walker and Shabazz Napier left behind and wants to leave a similar one.
He’s a good kid, too. His introduction to UConn Nation wasn’t a good one — a September, 2019 on-campus arrest after a series of terrible decisions. But he has matured since then, according to Jacques Rivera, who coached Bouknight for two seasons at The MacDuffie School and now coaches at Woodstock Academy.
“I think he’s going through his natural progression,” Rivera said. “I mean, what 18-year-old kid steps on a campus and is mature? Tell me that kid, and I’ll tell you a lie. I think he was never immature. I think because he’s not a kid that was groomed from a young age, at the age of 8 how to behave, because at 9-years old you’re an NBA player now. He was being a normal kid at 18.”
Rivera said he still speaks with Bouknight frequently and did so in the days after the player’s arrest 18 months ago.
“I think the first thing he realized is he had to take accountability for his actions. That’s one thing we tried to instill in all of our guys. He understood that. I think depending on the lens you’re looking at it through, you’re saying, ‘That was a scared child making those decision.’ The decision-making was clouded, because he was a scared kid.”
Bouknight will likely impress NBA teams during the interview process.
“They put a lot on these interviews,” the scout said. “He doesn’t seem to be a bad kid. I don’t think they’d hold too much against him.”
There is almost certainly a part of Bouknight that wants to come back. But common sense — and, most likely, the advice he receives from family and friends — will lead him to choose otherwise.
And anyway, as Dan Hurley has stated many times, Bouknight has left a different kind of legacy at UConn.
“James Bouknight has done so much for UConn basketball,” the Huskies’ coach said recently. “His decision to come here has changed the landscape ... James doesn’t have to explain his performance to anybody, what he’s done for UConn basketball and where this thing was at a couple years ago.”
RIM RATTLINGS
Expect a slow trickle of announcements over the coming days/weeks on what UConn players may return for next season. It’s not out of the realm that a senior or two could return under the NCAA’s COVIDinfluenced guidelines that give them one extra year of eligibility.