Frank Kaminsky is not just a big man who can shoot. He's a flat out shooter.
"I hear 'guys your size,' and that doesn't mean anything to me," Kaminsky told me after the workout. "I just play one way. I count on myself to make every shot. ... It's competition within myself to make everything. It's always been that way."
Kaminsky shot the lights out in his one-on-none workout. That shouldn't come as a huge surprise to those who followed him the past two years at Wisconsin. Kaminsky shot 42 percent from 3-point range this season as a senior and 38 percent as a junior. Still, his shooting prowess caught some NBA general managers off guard.
"I knew he could shoot it," one GM told ESPN.com. "But not like that."
Kaminsky said he's always been a great shooter. As a high school freshman, he stood just 6-foot-2 and was a wing. He grew to 6-foot-6 as a sophomore. He didn't hit big-man status until his junior year, when he reached 6-foot-9. By then his coach knew what Kaminsky could do from outside and created an offense that allowed him to roam the perimeter.
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People talk about D'Angelo Russell and Devin Booker as the best shooters in the draft. But Kaminsky is right there with them -- if not past them. It just so happens that he stands 7-feet tall.
Kaminsky flirted with entering the draft after his junior season. NBA scouts predicted he'd be a late first-rounder. But Kaminsky said he wasn't quite ready for the NBA.
"I knew I needed to get better. I wanted to go back to school, finish my degree and do more research by watching NBA basketball so I could see what I needed to get better at," he said. "It was like a free year to study for your final exam."
It paid off. Kaminsky was the college basketball Player of the Year. By virtually all accounts, Kaminsky will be lottery pick this year.
But why isn't he higher? He's a 7-footer who can stroke the 3 and play in the paint. He's had two incredible seasons at Wisconsin. Is it a little crazy that teams hold it against him that he's a senior? The NBA is one of the few careers in the world in which a 22 year old is considered old.
Kamisnky said he's frustrated by the age slight but that he understands. This season he played head-to-head against the two guys -- Karl-Anthony Towns and Jahlil Okafor -- who will likely go No. 1 and No. 2 in the draft. He averaged 21 PPG and 11.RPG in those two contests. Yet 10-plus spots in the draft separate him from them.
"I see the top-three picks, with the way drafts have gone in the past, as players with potential to be really good players for longer than potentially myself," Kaminsky said, before acknowledging that Towns and Okafor were better at 19 than he was. "If I had tried to go to the NBA after my freshman year, people would've laughed at me. Just where they are, their potential, if they went back to college for three more years, they'd probably have better seasons than I did this year."
Still, Kaminsky thinks he has a place in the NBA today. And he's not trying to be a back-to-the basket center like Okafor or Towns. He wants to be the next Dirk Nowitzki. "I'm going to try," Kaminsky said. "I see myself playing the 4. At least initially in my career, while I'm moving as well as possible. I feel like I'm shooting the ball well and moving well and I think that stuff translates just the way the NBA goes with pick-and-rolls, pick-and-pops, pick-and-fades ... there's a lot of room to operate. It's the trend and it's lucky for me that I play that way."
