COLORADO SPRINGS – Saturday’s Day II of the USA Basketball Men’s Junior National Team Minicamp is in the book after several nifty individual match-ups – and a spectacular sequence by one of best guards in the Class of 2020.
Six-foot-four Josh Christopher (Mayfair High in Lakewood, CA) provided the latter in an evening session scrimmage in the U.S. Olympic Training Center’s Sports Center 2 gymnasium.
Another like-sized and California-based guard, Jalen Green (Prolific Prep in Napa by way of Fresno), did his usual “dang, it’s like he’s bouncing on a trampoline!” takeoff for what, naturally, was going to be just the latest in the spectacular dunks he’s been cranking thru rims since he was in seventh grade.
“Not today” (Game of Thrones, anyone?), said Christopher by his response, though.
Christopher – one of the 80 or so players at the event who can come close to matching Green’s vertical pop – caught the ball with his right hand before Green could pound it through the iron with his right hand and actually controlled the ball when he came down.
He pushed the ball in transition and then found Greg Brown III (Vandergrift High in Austin, TX) with a lob pass that Brown snagged and slammed home with the same force that Green would at the other end minus the effort of Christopher.
Those in the gym who witnessed the sequence experienced a collective “did I just see what I think I saw?” moment.
Some thirty minutes after, Christopher (pictured) was reasonably low-key in talking about that five- or six-second stretch of play.
But, yeah, there was still a tad bit of adrenalin pumping.
“If it was anyone else, I would have probably screamed at him (the victim of the block),” Christopher said.
But he spared Green – who he has played with, and against, since midway through the second term of the Obama presidency – that insult.
“I couldn’t do it (to Green),” he said, “because he’s my boy.”
Later in the gym the individual match-up took place that likely most intrigued the multitude of scouts and personnel directors from NBA franchises on hand.
And it said a lot about this era of basketball that 7-foot senior Evan Mobley (Rancho Christian in Temecula in Southern California) and 6-11 junior Chet Holmgren (Minnehaha in Minneapolis) – the most “skilled” players at their sizes in their respective classes – spent as much time guarding one another at the 3-point line as they did in the low post.
In the morning session, I was in the Sports Center I gymnasium where the four teams mostly made up of players from the Classes of 2022 and ’23 were in action.
Two cool head-up confrontations in one of the final two scrimmages of the session pitted two of the best 2022 point-guards, Richard Isaacs, Jr. (from Las Vegas but attending Wasatch Academy in Utah) and Zion Cruz (Hudson Catholic in Jersey City), and 6-9 Jalen Duren (Roman Catholic in Philadelphia) from ’22 and a 2021 standout in 6-10 Nathan Bittle (Crater in the little Oregon town of Central Point).
Each had multiple strong moments but the Isaacs-Duren squad prevailed, as Duren’s strong defensive closeout may have bothered Bittle’s potential game-winning 3-point attempt from the right corner just enough to keep it off target.
Sunday’s final day of action gets underway at 9:30 a.m., with the second session scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m.
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