Jimmer Mania

Everyone knows his strengths: shooting, scoring, and more shooting and scoring.

Everyone knows his weaknesses: lack of height, defense, and athletic ability.

Yet, after working out for the Kings, the potential first-round pick showed his defense and athletic ability might be better than expected.

Preparation is the key according to his uncle, who’s also his strength and conditioning coach:

“He’s feeling really good about his workouts so far. He’s feeling very confident. He’s had great physical conditioning.”

“He’s really zoned in right now. This is what he’s worked for his whole life, and he’s not going to let it slip away. The fun part about watching him is he brings it when he really needs to bring it.”

Taft, who is dubbed “The Speed Guy,” voiced in the Deseret News the most shocking results Fredette would deliver to scouts at the combine is his speed.

On par with his uncle’s thoughts, Fredette produced the third-best lane agility time of 3.21 seconds, ahead of guards Brandon Knight, Kemba Walker, Isaiah Thomas and Nolan Smith.

“I was very excited he did as predicted, but I wasn’t surprised at all,” said Taft. “I’ve worked with Jimmer so long and worked with some very talented athletes and Jimmer is so efficient. If you watch some of the clips of his drills in the lane at the combine, you saw how efficient he is with his movements. He understands what it means to position his upper and lower body when doing these types of drills.”

“He did what I knew he could do. It’s funny because when I talked to him, he said it was easy for him because he’s done it so much and we’ve spent a lot of time with it over the years. With others it is more difficult because it’s foreign to them, especially when they are being tested. He said he could have done better, he could have performed a little better if his foot hadn’t slipped, but he’s such a competitor he knows he can bring it when he needs to.”

He also looked crisp, and a lot quicker than Kings’ brass might have envisioned, on defense. Offensively, he had some moves that had Jerry Reynolds, Pete Carril, and the whole row of Kings members laughing and shaking their heads at how good he was. At one point he probably drilled 15 consecutive 20-foot pull-up jumpers.  Needless to say, they were blown away by Jimmer.  Taken, to the point, he could be the front runner to be chosen by the team at #7.

“It was actually comical to see how much (co-owner) Gavin Maloof seemed to be enthralled with Jimmer. While Tyler Honeycutt’s athleticism was impressive, both Maloof and Petrie went directly up to Jimmer afterwards and spent a considerable amount of time with him. I didn’t see them even speak to the other five players.”

Heading into workouts with Utah and Phoenix, mock draft pundits have Jimmer selected anywhere from as early to Sacramento to out of the lottery.  After the workouts, I suspect him to be scooped up by the Kings at #7 if Kemba Walker is unavailable (drafted likely by Toronto at 5).

The NBA Draft is on June 23.