While he’s been known to never take himself too seriously, Frank Kaminsky is fully capable of getting serious.
Especially when it comes to the massive steps he’s taken from Lisle’s St. Joan of Arc to Benet to Wisconsin and eventually all the way to Charlotte come October.
“I’m very proud of where I’ve come from and the journey I’ve taken to where I am right now and Benet and Lisle and DuPage County, as a whole, has been great to me,” Kaminsky said by phone on Thursday.
The ninth overall pick in June’s NBA Draft by the Charlotte Hornets, a little more than two months after helping lead Wisconsin to the national championship game, Kaminsky seems ready to turn the page.
Kaminsky earned numerous accolades this past season after averaging 18.8 points and 8.2 rebounds for a 36-win Wisconsin team that reached the Final Four for a second straight time.
But for this past spring’s winner of both the Wooden and Naismith Awards, his basketball education has received a jolt while participating in the NBA’s Orlando Pro Summer League July 4-10.
Kaminsky scored 19 points and pulled down 12 rebounds in the Hornets’ first game down in Orlando, a 76-74 loss to Oklahoma City, on July 4.
In the Hornets’ five games in the Orlando Pro Summer League, Kaminsky averaged 15.2 points and 7.8 rebounds while starting all five of Charlotte’s games.
“It’s going well,” Kaminsky said. “I’m learning a lot. Obviously, it’s a little difficult playing so many games in a short amount of time, but I’m learning game-by-game and picking up things about the game and working with the coaches closely, too, to analyze how I’m playing so far.”
Unapologetic for returning to Wisconsin after his junior year that saw him earn All-Big Ten First Team honors as the Badgers reached the Final Four for the first time since 2000, his NBA destination wasn’t a surprise.
“When you schedule workouts, you want to really work out for teams across the board,” Kaminsky said, “and if I knew Charlotte liked me at nine, it’s just the way it didn’t work out with scheduling, matchups and all that stuff to go work out there.”
“But I definitely knew that they liked me enough to draft me, so I wasn’t surprised at all. I’m very happy where I’m at. I’m going to get an opportunity to come in and help the team and obviously play some minutes as a rookie. I’m just excited about all that.”
The opportunity for Kaminsky to be drafted in the top 10 of the NBA Draft is one that was built over time.
From averaging just 4.2 points and 1.8 rebounds as a sophomore to what his final two years at Wisconsin featured, a jump translated not many outside Lisle and Benet saw coming.
Consider the school-record 43 points he scored against North Dakota in Nov. 2013 and the 28 points and 11 rebounds he got against Arizona to get Wisconsin to the Final Four in 2014 as a starting point.
His consensus National Player of the Year season in 2014-15 was the icing on the proverbial cake.
“I didn’t see him in high school,” ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas said in a March phone interview. “It’s a surprise from what I saw of him early on in his college career. I didn’t know he was going to turn out to be this good. Greg Gard, one of the assistants for Wisconsin, told me how good he thought (Kaminsky) was.”
“But Greg didn’t say ‘Someday, he’s going to be a National Player of the Year candidate.’ But he said he was going to be really good. He’s certainly done that and more. So he’s had an impressive career. But just because it wasn’t predicted doesn’t make it more impressive. If he was predicted to do it, it’d still be an incredibly impressive career.”
The Sporting News’ senior college basketball writer Mike DeCourcy concurred with Bilas’ assessment.
“When they get a guy, a big guy, you just assume that he’s going to be a capable college player by the time he gets on the floor,” DeCourcy said of Wisconsin in a February phone interview. “So that’s what happens with Jared Berggren and all the rest that went before. … But they just have managed to churn this group out of player after player.”
“Jon (Leuer) had a good high school rep. Of course, Brian Butch had an extraordinary high school rep and Greg Stiemsma had an extraordinary high school rep that was somewhat undermined by his injuries and such. But they’ve always had good big guys, so you knew Frank was going to do what Bo (Ryan) needed him to do. What has honestly surprised me is the level of dominance he’s achieved (in 2015).”
This past season, Kaminsky was the only player in Division I to average at least 17 points, eight rebounds, two assists and 1.5 blocks.
As the start of the 2015-16 NBA season in October gets closer, he knows the lessons he’s learned this week in Orlando will prove invaluable as he begins his NBA education.
“They keep telling me it’s a lot different than college now,” Kaminsky said of the Hornets’ coaching staff. “I knew that coming in that it’s a completely different game. You got to be good and you got to bring it every single day. It’s a job now.”
“When they ask something of you, they expect it to be done the right way the first time. That can be a little bit of an adjustment within itself, but I feel like I’m a smart player. I’m old enough to understand, know what the coaches want of me and how to go and do it.”
