Looking to build on breakout season
In late July, JaVale McGee tweeted a video of himself working out in a Los Angeles gymnasium. The 56-second clip was standard McGee: alley-oops, dunks, post-up moves.
That is, except for the three made three-point shots peppered throughout the video. This is a player who is 1-for-9 from the beyond the arc in his nine-year NBA career. At 7foot, 270 pounds with a 7-6 wingspan and a 31½-inch vertical leap, McGee is an alley-oop maestro — not a long-range marksman.
But those who were surprised by McGee’s video probably haven’t watched him cap his postpractice shooting routine each day with a trip around the three-point arc. Now, after spurning other offers and re-signing with Golden State for a one-year, $2.1 million contract, McGee hopes to build off his breakout 2016-17 season. Even if that doesn’t involve many threepointers.
“I’m just going to keep running the floor, blocking shots, rebounding and catching spectacular alley-oops,” McGee said. “There are other things that I can do, but they probably won’t be used because we have four All-Stars, and the ‘5’ isn’t the scoring position on this team.”
When McGee joined the Warriors last September as a nonguaranteed training-camp invitee, his NBA career was on life support. A slow-healing leg injury had limited him to 62 games over his previous three seasons. Four years removed from signing a four-year, $44 million deal with the Nuggets, McGee was known more for his blooper reel than his skills.
It wasn’t long before McGee carved out minutes as a change-of-pace option off the bench at a position rounded out by the more ground-bound Zaza Pachulia and David West.
On a team stocked with elite shooters and passers, McGee’s knack for catching lobs added another dimension to the league’s most prolific offense. Opponents were so concerned about Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson that they often left McGee a direct route to the rim.
He took more than 300 shots for the first time since the 2012-13 season, and his 65.2 percent shooting from the field was a career high. Facing a depleted Portland frontcourt in the first round of the playoffs, McGee averaged 9.8 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.3 blocks in 12.3 minutes per game. Seven weeks later, after Golden State’s Game 5 win over Cleveland in the NBA Finals, a player who had long been anchored to the worst of labels was a champion.
McGee allowed himself 10 days before returning to the gym. Between meeting with prospective teams and hanging with his newborn daughter, the then-free agent posted a handful of videos of himself working out to Twitter and Instagram. Less than a week after he tweeted that clip of the three three-pointers, he hit three threes in two days at the Drew League in Los Angeles.
“I’ve been playing against JaVale since high school, and he was doing the same thing back then,” Warriors forward Jordan Bell said. “I think him putting it on Twitter was the only reason people are talking about it.”
Late in Golden State’s 139-115 win over Washington on April 2, McGee hoisted a three-point try from the corner. Wizards point guard Brandon Jennings, upset with what he viewed as an attempt to embarrass his team, shoved McGee on the shot and earned a flagrant-1 foul.
Jennings might not have realized that McGee prides himself on his ability to hit open threes. During his sophomore season at Nevada, he made 14 of his 42 attempts from deep. Today, two months after he announced his return to Golden State on Twitter, McGee is content simply to have a measure of stability.
For the first fall since 2014, he didn’t change teams in the offseason. Unlike previous franchises, which sometimes vilified McGee for his goofy persona, the Warriors see him as an ideal fit.
“We’re all really happy he’s back,” said assistant coach Jarron Collins, who works closely with McGee. “He’s always had a great attitude. And who knows? Maybe we can sneak a three in there every now and then.”