Copyright Wayne Perras 2011

Little Bit a’ Backstory, Regarding:

The Local Legend of Jimmer Fredette

Now his name is on every national sportscaster’s lips; it used to be just Capital District TV guys like Roger Wyland and those of us fans in
Upstate NY who told the tales to each other of what we’d seen.

                        Jimmer-mania is ubiquitous: announcers on SportsCenter, CBS weekend College Hoop coverage, PTI chat between Michael Wilbon & Tony Kornheiser, and Bloggers from LA to Boston are on a first-namebasis these days. His unique moniker is no longer only a proper noun, as with most of us—it has now become a verb (That team got Jimmered), an adjective (as in “shooting from Jimmer distance”), and most humorously a command, displayed on posters in the stands:

                       FREDETTE ABOUT IT!

The staid Mormon campus of BYU has run amok with Jimmer fever, and it is great to see. But way beyond that specific point of up-close observation--now we have ESPN personalities singing his praises, singer Nelly and leading NBA scorer Kevin Durant tweeting about him with shocking adulation, Adam Durwitz comparing him to Deron Williams, one of the best and strongest pro guards, who also happens to play in Utah. Opposing college crowds on YouTube are recorded chanting his name. Joseph Smith should be awfully proud. The last Mormon hooper this good was Danny Ainge, who
showed up when Fredette played before an adoring hometown crowd in Glens Falls in December, scouting him for the Celtics. Ainge himself once scored 44 versus mighty UCLA back in the day, before becoming a steady pro on Boston’s championship teams himself. Jimmer topped that last year with 47 against Arizona, a precursor of what was to come in his senior season.

He is leading the country in NCAA scoring as I write this. He is considered one of the three top candidates for Player of the Year in College ball, along with Kemba Walker (UCONN) and Jared Sullinger ( Ohio State). But what seemed to really set the buzz on fire was when Fredette outdueled projected future NBA baller Kwasi Leonard of San Diego State, ranked #4 at the time, on national TV (CBS College Channel), hitting for 43 points.

And what people now KNOW, which is what we up here already KNEW, is that he’s just a whole lot of fun to watch. He exhibits consummate ball control, rarely gets riled, sets up defenders up with non-stop fakes, feints, cross-overs, dizzying yoyo-yanks, and stepbacks. He’ll juke his man and then shoot like an assassin, and he normally hits over 50% from anywhere. But he will never woof at opponents, though on occasion he will pound his chest and howl. Yet when you see him move through the warm-up lines, if you weren’t forewarned as to who he was, you would not pick him out as the most talented or athletic hoop player on the floor. Once the game starts, you begin to understand.

Let me say what I haven’t heard anyone else say quite yet: there hasn’t been an American-born Caucasian guard this good since the main man of my youth, Pete Maravich…and before that, Jerry West. Some will say Mark Price, but while he was pre-cise as a shooter, he did not have the fluid Handle & Flow
of Jimmer. He didn’t have the pull-up forty-foot temerity of Jimmer, the multiple-shimmy cross-overs, or the ability to get his shot off in ridiculous traffic, with BIGS just dying to swat him. Maravich had that stuff, but much as I loved him, he didn’t fight to WIN as much as Jimmer. Jimmer does not showboat; he wants to beat you. His BYU team is 21-2 at the moment, standing just outside the Top Ten teams in America.

We have seen Canadian-born Steve Nash dazzle theNBA for over a decade, and claim 2 MVP crowns; Dirk Nowitzkyis a 7-foot blonde dude from Germany who has been in the Top 10of NBA scoring for that same duration—but you might have to go back to Larry Bird to actually come up with an American-bred white guy to play with the same chutzpah, pizzazz, and scoring ability as Jimmer Fredette. The NBA game has been dominated for so
long by African-Americans, that the few white players to rise to the upper echelons--Manu Ginobili, Pau Gasol, Nash & Nowitzky—are considered rare exceptions to the rule that black ballplayers are simply and obviously the best. With all due respect, Kyle Korver, JJ Redick, and Gordon Hayward are not going to steal the spotlight from Kobe LeBron, D-Wade, or Derrick Rose. Fredette is the first Great White Hope (pardon the cliché) in a long time who could be an American-born lottery pick. How far he will go after that is the subject of much current debate—but do not doubt his WILL to succeed.

Without the speed or lanky length of some, or the gravity-
defying qualities of others; the question hangs in the air for longer than he does: How did he get this good?

SHOOTING 3’S IN THE DARK, POUNDING PARQUET IN THE BASEMENT

The answer is what Fredette has always been famous for,
up in Glens Falls--a town that was built around logging, pulp & paper
mills: HARD WORK. His legend was not based upon physical gene pool
advantages, or Robert Redford-like “Natural” talent, but upon relentless
and almost religious devotion to getting better at Hoop. He is a cerebral
player who was trained by older brothers since roughly age 5 to succeed
at a game that they loved and never quite conquered themselves. He became
their protégé, their insatiable student, their fanatic devotee to the myriad
pleasures of Hoop. Like Pistol Pete, whose old man, Coach Press Maravich pushed him relentlessly through year-round drills and basketball training, Fredette had nonstop nurturing toward his goal to excel--from his father, those two older brothers, and then an uncle named Lee Taft who created a domed work-out facility near his home that transformed a once-chunky youth into a buff-cut D-1 specimen.

Legend had it that his father Al (a voluble guy who will volunteer all this information himself, in first-hand version) created a 9’ by 9’ parquet floor in his basement, with a wide mirror attached to a concrete wall—so Jimmer could practice his handle and crossover moves for countless hours when not on the court, in poor weather, evenings and late into the night. Even then he would visualizing this future that he is now trying to make true, driven by his tacit dream—to make the NBA as a white 6’2” guard not named Steve Nash.

Now lots of white kids have decent handle but not many of those can shoot like Fredette: 25, 30, 35 foot bombs, dropped softly through the net, nothing but bottom. He has been doing this since before he was ten (again, Legend sez), and has put up prolific numbers of them in almost every game since. In high school he was notorious for firing up 3 threes in the first three possessions, before the confused defenders knew how far out to go chase him. He often had 9 points before the first timeout, and seemed to start almost every game hot. Once they warily went out on him, he could drive all day, and hit from closer in.

Where did get that kind of confidence, you ask? How about the fact that he practiced shooting thousands of threes in the dark, at the Glens Falls High School gym, after everyone else had left. You shoot for the sound of the SWISH, and if you can make ‘em in the dark, think how easy it should be when you can see… This is the kind of thing the Legend must have whispered to Fredette, during those sessions.

He was fortunate, like Maravich, to have a Coach like Tony Hammel at Glens Falls High give him free rein, from Day One, on the number and types of shots he could take. And now after 3 ½ years at BYU, Dave Rose has taken the same approach—there seems to be no constraints: if Jimmer thinks he can hit a shot, he can take it, because he has proven he can.

ONE MORE ANECDOTE: JIMMER’S FIRST VARSITY HOOP

Talk about foreshadowing greatness: my son and I saw Jimmer’s first shot attempt as a freshman at Glens Falls High, and it was as amazing as what he’s doing now, as a senior in college. It was at Saratoga High’s gym, the first game of the season, a post-Thanksgiving Tournament, 2003. We’d heard about this kid who had led a local AAU team to Nationals as a 13-U player, and before that had led a three-on-three contingent as a 12 year old to a 2nd place finish in a nation-wide competition. But he starts the game on the bench, five seniors playing ahead of him. He looks like a puppy on a tether, jiggling his knees impatiently waiting to get his run. His team flounders a bit against the Home squad, but then the Coach waves him to the scorer’s table, with something like five seconds left in the 1st quarter.

A Saratoga kid misses a foul shot, the ball squirts around a bit and a pass comes out to Fredette in front of the opposing bench, his hands up, wanting the ball. He glances at the clock, the defenders are jogging back, he takes one bounce and with steely focus lets loose a one-hander from about 65 feet away—drills a line drive right through the net. A clean SWISH as the buzzer sounds, and a surprised WHOA! from the Saratoga crowd. Three points for Glens Falls, and the first of 2400+ points in Jimmer’s schoolboy career. He saunters off casually with a wide, almost sheepish grin while his teammates clap him on the back. He does not pump his fists nor dance his way off the floor. He seems to have expected it to go in—like it was no big deal. There would be plenty more.

Flash forward to January 12th, 2011, the morning after Jimmer goes off for 47 more points, tying his career high, against University of Utah, at Provo, on their home floor. He already has 20+ near the end of the first half, and in surreal fashion, the away crowd is chanting his name. He gets the ball out-of-bounds under his own hoop, a defender hounding him all the way. He calmly jukes the poor guy right and then left and comes back to his right, defender kind of stumbling, and Jimmer lifts another one-hander from just behind half-court. Ball Don’t Lie—as one Blogger says—goes in clean as a whistle, no rim. 3 more. Walks off nonchalantly, opposing crowd going ape—game all but over at the half. The cameras flash, he ducks into the tunnel, no need for further acclaim. The crowd will long remember his name: it’s JIMMER.

EPILOGUE, Before the NCAA Tourney…

Think about how many towns in America have spawned would-be Hoop Superstars— black, white, Latino, mixed-blood, whatever race you like—full of youthful confidence and swagger, playground legends and local heroes-- who eventually hit the wall and exhausted their potential? There is no guarantee that the best 8th grader will become the best senior, the best freshman on varsity will ever play in college, or that the best high school hooper your school ever produced will ever get on the floor for a good D-1 college, much less lead his team in scoring, much less lead the NATION in scoring. Nor is there any guarantee that Fredette himself will stick in the NBA, much less become a star performer on that stage. For every Eric Devendorf scrambling to play in Europe after writing a column for SLAM! Magazine and then prematurely shucking his college career, there are 200 great shooters who are stuck in D-2 ball, playing in front of 200 less-than-rabid fans, and no one knows their names.

Others we’ve seen dominate the scene on the local TV screen have not managed to keep straight, sober, or academically involved enough to get through their college hoop career successfully—a chronic problem from decades past to just yesterday.

With Jimmer his devotion to task seems supreme—he was born not just to play ball but to average 28 a game, no matter where. For Kevin Durant to testify to his talent, when he is dropping 30 a night in the pros himself, speaks volumes as to how others can now see his prowess.

I’d like to go on record saying I believe he will make the pros and vindicate himself as much more than the JJ Redick-type role player that some people have predicted. Will he reach Jerry West status? Pete Maravich glory? Will he replace Larry Bird as the greatest white hope in hoop’s last 30 years??? Stay tuned to find out, but keep in mind, we saw him here first.

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