Years of working on his jump shot with his father built Jabari Smith Jr. into the player he is today. JeremyWoo details the philosophy that's shaped an SEC star with a big-time future:
The philosophy was simple enough. There would be no value placed on national rankings, much less how many points Smith Jr. scored on a given day. Defense was paramount. And no matter how tall he grew, he would prepare to play all over the floor. “It was so technical and on point,” Smith Jr. says. “Everything had to be compact and done the right way, with a sense of urgency. That’s just kind of how he raised me, just listening to it and learning.
As Smith Jr. grew, his father ensured he would be coached hard, then did his best to stay out of it. Entering Jabari’s freshman year, Jon-Michael Nickerson—a former college coach at IUPUI and Memphis who also played minor league baseball—took over at Sandy Creek High School. There, Smith evolved from a skinny role player into a dominant force, organically taking on responsibility and never requiring special treatment. They were state runners-up his senior year.
“I try to keep Jabari in a mind frame of, if you try to win every game, you're gonna get the attention. Because that's what winners get.” An Atlanta-area product, Kessler spent most of his freshman year at North Carolina riding the bench on a team with too many centers and is now a candidate for postseason accolades. He’d been a five-star recruit and one of the top transfers available, in demand to the point that Duke and Gonzaga wanted him, despite already having centers in the fold. Smith was familiar with Kessler from high school and got involved.“I knew he was real,” Smith says.
Then there’s K.D. Johnson, a six-foot, 200-pound fireball who defected from SEC rival Georgia. Johnson has become a cult-like campus figure for his scowls, howls and things like leaping headfirst into the school band after wayward basketballs. “What people don’t realize,” Smith adds, “he’s always encouraging. He’s not gonna get mad at nobody for looking him off or nothing like that. He just looks that way.
“As coaches we like to think we’re great, we know a bunch, and we’ll run this set or this action,” says Auburn assistant Ira Bowman. “But at the end of the day, you throw him the ball.”
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