Colorado University Athletics
'Hybrid' King Ready To Do A Little Bit Of Everything
October 23, 2015 | Men's Basketball
BOULDER — On a dreary Wednesday morning, as press gathered in the tunnels of the Coors Events Center for Colorado basketball media day, George King had the CEC's main court to himself. He shot around in sweatpants and a warm-up jacket — first free throws, then 3-pointers and a few one-dribble pull-ups.
King shoots on this court nearly every day, but he hasn't played a real game on it in almost two years. He's had a non-traditional career arc for a college basketball player — he played as a true freshman, then redshirted and sat out last season. He practiced with the team, lifted with the team, watched film with the team and was always a part of the team. But during games he sat on the bench, in a polo shirt instead of a jersey, a bystander to a season gone awry.
“It was very tough,” King said. “I think the hardest part was just sitting, knowing that you can't play, and watching the guys go through adversity, and you can't do anything about it. You can pep-talk them, but it only goes so far.”
As painful as sitting out was, King and his coach, Tad Boyle, think it was the right decision. And it's not like he took a year off. Not playing gave King extra time for film and weights. His mental understanding of the game has caught up with his physical gifts.
“Coming up, playing ball, all I did was played, played, played, know what I mean?” he said. “I'm actually studying the game, seeing the game from a coach's perspective. Now I know where the ball needs to be moved, I know what's a great shot, what's a bad shot.”
King's gotten stronger, because a schedule free from the rigors of 30-plus games allowed him to lift more often than he otherwise would have,
“When the team's out, their game day is my game day, too,” he said. “Not literally, on the court, but in the weight room. Guys are at home sleeping, getting pregame sleep, I'm in the weight room with Josh Fortune. We were lifting. We worked out twice as much, and because of that I picked up a lot of strength.”
Now, King is less than a month away from playing basketball — real basketball — again. The team that went 16-18 without him is almost unrecognizable; the Buffs return only two full-time starters from last year and are working four new players into their rotation.
King could see the most playing time out of all of them. Like his team, he's vastly different from the last time he stepped on a court. As a freshman, he scored only two points and shot just 28 percent from the field in five minutes a game, and no one really knew what kind of player he was. We still don't know what position he'll play.
“George is a really athletic wing, one of our bigger wings that we have,” fellow wing Josh Fortune said. “He can play different positions, from the two to the four.”
That might sound strange — a 6-foot-6, 225 pound player, who was recruited as a guard, playing power forward — but that's where basketball is going. In King, Fortune and junior forward Tre'Shaun Fletcher, Colorado has three wing players who should play significant minutes. The Buffs will want them on the court together at some times; for that, they'll have to play small.
“Small ball, I guess that's kinda the modern-day basketball,” King said. “Coach just says I'm a hybrid guy. I don't really have a position. I can play the two through the four. Yesterday, Tad pointed at myself and Tre, saying that we need to learn, literally, all five positions.”
The Golden State Warriors won an NBA title last season with 6-foot-7 Draymond Green — who came into the league playing small forward — as their starting center. They set off a revolution of “positionless basketball,” in which all five players on the court can dribble, pass and shoot.
The Warriors had the league's best offense and best defense; the amount of skill they put on the floor at once was unguardable, and they made up for their defensive size deficiency with quickness and a scheme that switched every screen.
Colorado will never play to that level; the Buffs obviously don't have Green or Steph Curry. But they are adopting the Warriors' “switch everything” ethos. That should improve upon last season's three-point defense, which ranked ninth in the Pac-12.
Switching helps deny three-point looks because it neutralizes any screening that an offense tries to do, and makes off-ball actions for shooters far less effective; even if the offense sets a good screen, the screener's defender will be with the shooter every step of the way.
“Now we're switching, we can guard the three-point line a lot better, and because we have guys like myself, Tre, Josh Fortune, who can guard multiple positions, that's gonna help us,” King said.
It's easier to switch with small lineups — like with King, Fletcher and Fortune on the wings — because it gives teams several quicker, more athletic players who are around the same size. That reduces the potential for unfavorable mismatches, such as when a big man switches onto a guard.
Switching could create a favorable offensive mismatch for King if he's guarded by a smaller or slower player. That would give him a chance to break out his post game, which he says improved more than anything else while he sat out.
“I always had a little post game in my game, but by sitting out it's really been highlighted because I've been working on that,” King said. “So that's the biggest thing that I think is gonna shock a lot of people in the Pac-12. I'm gonna be able to post a lot of guards, guys my size, or guys bigger than me, and go around them.”
The Buffs will need King to be that kind of matchup nightmare if they want to return to the NCAA Tournament. His coach thinks he can be.
“He's so big and strong, he can get perimeter players to the rim, even post them up and overpower them,” Boyle said. “He can take big guys away from the basket; he shoots the ball well from the perimeter. I'm glad we've got him for three more years.”
Don't expect Colorado to play small all the time — bigs Josh Scott and Wes Gordon will probably start most games, and the Buffs may well be better with those two on the court. The Buffs went small for stretches of last season because of injuries to their frontcourt, and Boyle was adamant that he disliked playing small.
And even the Warriors played most of last season with a traditional center. But they had small ball in their back pocket for when they needed it. That kind of lineup versatility is crucial to high-level basketball success. And, for the first time in a several years, Colorado has that ability. Small ball could grease
Colorado's offense against teams that play them big. It can also help the Buffs keep up defensively with smaller, quicker teams, like Iowa State, their opening-night opponent.
And when George King takes the court in that game — on Nov. 13, in Sioux Falls, S.D. — it will be about more than small ball or switching or posting up. It won't be for practice or a shootaround. For the first time in almost two years, it will be for real.
