Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of stories breaking down the film of some of the top freshmen recruits for 2022-23.
Previously: Nick Smith Jr., Arkansas
Sometimes you walk in a gym and just know you’re witnessing something different. In 2014, I’d gone to visit Michigan to write a story on Caris LeVert, and while I was there, I caught a Michigan practice. Off on a side basket was a tall, skinny guy draining 3s. I had no idea who the shooter was and quickly pulled up a Michigan roster to see. This was, I was convinced, one of the purest shots I’d ever seen.
The shooter was Duncan Robinson, sitting out that season after transferring from Division III Williams College. He was still an unknown to most of the basketball world. Robinson, who went undrafted four years later, has ranked in the top seven in 3s made in each of the last seasons in the NBA. He is now viewed as one of the best shooters in the world.
Last fall, I got that feeling again when I went to watch Sunrise Christian Academy practice for a few days. This time I knew about the shooter — Gradey Dick — but it was my first time watching him play. Dick shot the ball so effortlessly. Perfect form. Elbow in. No wasted motion. Always balanced. Perfect flick at the top. All it took was one day for me to be convinced he’s an elite shooter.
So it’s no surprise when Kansas coach Bill Self is asked about his 6-foot-8 freshman wing, the hyperbole flies right away.
“He’s got a chance to be one of our best shooters ever,” Self says.
Minutes later Self is recounting a 15-minute scrimmage from the day before when Dick made six straight shots.
“He doesn’t have to dip to shoot,” Self says, meaning when Dick catches the ball, he doesn’t lower it before going into his shot. “Release is high. Hard to block. He feels like he’s open at two feet, where other people feel like they’re open at four feet.”
Dick put up ridiculous shooting numbers in his senior season at Sunrise, making 70 of 143 (49 percent) 3s. This one skill is reason enough to make Dick a regular in the KU rotation as a freshman. He is the perfect complement to the Jayhawks’ veteran wings, junior Jalen Wilson and Texas Tech transfer Kevin McCullar. Both can shoot but are at their best driving downhill. Point guard Dajuan Harris, who will likely start alongside those two wings, is not a shooter and prefers playing setup man. So there’s a need for a knockdown shooter in KU’s lineup, and Dick’s gravity could potentially help similar to the way Wilson and Christian Braun both benefitted from playing with Ochai Agbaji.
Self is masterful at using the gravity of a shooter to open up driving lanes.
This is how Sunrise Christian coach Luke Barnwell designed his offense last season. He realized he could use Dick in the same fashion the Golden State Warriors use Steph Curry, theorizing that the fear of Dick getting off a shot would open up the floor for everyone else.
“It got to a point where we realized his pin-down or his stagger is going to be our most dangerous thing to cover,” Barnwell says. “And so we started just kind of running him all over the place and try to get people to chase him around and then we played behind it. At times, he’d take a tough one or two, and we kind of had to live with that a little bit, because you wanted him to be aggressive. And he’ll shoot a bomb. And I told him, ‘Man, you got to shoot a 25-footer a time or two, so people have to pick you up higher.’ And that opened up a lot for us.”
These actions are hard to guard because if Dick’s man doesn’t stay attached or the screener’s man doesn’t cheat to help, then he will make you pay. The most dangerous shooters are those who can shoot off the move.
This is where Agbaji got so good last year. He no longer was just a standstill catch-and-shoot guy; he could come off a pin-down and drain a 3. And if his defender stayed attached, he got really smart at reading that and would curl toward the basket. Dick has shown the ability to do this as well. And if his defender runs him off the line, he’s capable of attacking a closeout.
“He’s our best 3-point shooter,” Self says. “I think that will continue if he works at it. The thing about him is that I think has been very positive is he wants to be a player.”
The way Self talks about Dick is reminiscent of how he used to talk about Braun, who always wanted to be known as more than just a shooter and became an elite slasher and cutter his junior season.
Similar to Braun, it’ll be easier early on for Dick to make an impact as a shooter, but eventually the scouting report will dictate that he needs to score in other ways as well. Barnwell sees this as one of the two areas he needs to continue to progress. The other is his finishing at the rim. “He tries to be cute instead of physical,” Barnwell says.
It’s not like the physical tools aren’t there, however. During KU’s combine-like testing, Dick had a 40-inch vertical jump this fall. And the tape shows that off too.
Dick also got a head start on seeing different looks defenses will throw at him to try to run him off the line. Barnwell says it benefitted him that Sunrise played in a league — the NIBC — for the first time, and that meant their opponents had real scouting reports. The NIBC has teams full of high-major talent, and the coaching is as close to college as you’ll see at the high school level. At Kansas, he may no longer be at the top of every scouting report, but opponents are going to prioritize limiting his clean looks.
“His jump shot is unbelievable, and he’s got to start using that as his advantage,” Barnwell says. “Teams are gonna run him off, like play him no-3s, so he’s gonna have to be able to catch and drive it and make plays off the catch when the advantage is already there on the catch. And the other thing he needs to do, which I think he’ll be able to do, is become a good cutter as well, because he’s gonna get up-the-line coverage on him, because he’s a shooter and he’s got to cut to finish.”
This is where Braun and Agbaji really improved last season, which took Kansas’ offense to another level. Self is also good at setting up his shooters who get overplayed. Somehow the Jayhawks constantly pull off this blind pig set, where the big catches at the elbow and immediately hits the wing on a backdoor cut.
Here’s KU pulling it off, followed by Sunrise running a similar action for Dick.
Self is going to steal several buckets a game through sneaky sets like this, but his best offensive teams have thrived with guys playing off each other and moving the ball until a great shot presents itself.
“We think we can run some stuff to get him looks,” Self says. “But on the flip side, we think he can score out of just how we play too. We ran stuff to get Och looks, but Och was really good knowing how to play with the others in order to free himself. I think Gradey is starting to figure that out.”
The best two teams Self has had when the guards played off each other were 2016-17 and 2017-18, which statistically are the best two offenses he’s coached. Those two years he had a shooter in Svi Mykhailiuk, who had the type of pull that Dick could create.
It’s floated to Self that coaching Agbaji last year could help prepare him for coaching Dick. He quickly swats that down but then brings up Mykhailiuk.
“Coaching Svi certainly does,” Self says. “Svi’s a little bit more bouncy, but Gradey’s a little bit longer. From a shooting standpoint, it would be a pretty good competition.”
Mykhailiuk had a real connection with Devonte’ Graham, and those two playing off each other led to some beautiful basketball. One of KU’s favorite late-clock plays in their final year together was a pick-and-pop or ghost screen and pop that set up Mykhailiuk for a 3.
This is a quick-hitter that Self likely will dust off, because Dick is already used to running it.
“His ability to come from like underneath the dribbler and then exit out and get squared and make a 3 is impressive, because that’s a hard shot,” Barnwell says. “Where you’re underneath the ball and your momentum is going away from the rim, that’s a really difficult shot.”
Shooting and scoring are obviously areas where Dick is most ready to make an impact, and Self has high expectations. He says he believes Dick “can step right in and be a consistent mid double-figure scorer right off the bat.”
Self would not say this if he didn’t believe Dick can survive on the defensive end as well. Barnwell says that Dick needs to get better at playing to scouting report and being able to see actions develop away from the ball, but when it comes to hustle plays and being willing to take it on the chin, he points to two game-deciding charges Dick took in two of their marquee wins.
“He’s a gamer,” Barnwell says. “He wants to win. He’d be the first to dive on a ball. He’ll be the first to take a charge. He’s not afraid.”
That’s the kind of stuff that Self loves. It’s not easy for freshmen to earn his trust, but the freshmen who are willing to make those extra-effort plays usually win him over.
Dick will have competition for perimeter minutes from fellow freshman M.J. Rice and returning guards Bobby Pettiford and Joseph Yesufu. But whoever occupies that fourth spot on the perimeter needs to be able to make and take shots.
That was one area where Robinson had to evolve. He did not play with supreme confidence until his second year in the NBA with the Miami Heat when he realized the true value of his shooting. “Duncan in the NBA is the most confident version of him we’ve ever seen,” his grassroots coach Mike Crotty told me last spring.
It also took Mykhailiuk a few years in college for his confidence to come.
But Dick? “He’ll let it rip no matter what,” Barnwell says.
Barnwell told him last season that he could not pass up shots, basically convincing him that would hurt the team, and it appears that’s carried over in his short time with KU.
“He’s got a toughness about him,” Self says, “that I don’t think he’ll remember his misses, which I love.”
(Top photo: Courtesy Kansas Athletics)
