Jimmer Fredette is eternally eager, with these wide hopeful eyes, absolutely certain there is a place for him in the NBA that it must be impossible for teams to tell him no. So yet another one has given him a chance, this time the Denver Nuggets. He has come here to pursue that opportunity, in a fading arena located a mile of parking lots and warehouses away from the glow of the Las Vegas Strip. And this seems like an apt metaphor for him now: grasping for the dazzle he once had that is now just out of reach.
This must be strange for him to run the Summer League floor with men five and six years younger, watching the next great things gaze into the future the way he did four years ago. That was when Milwaukee picked him 10th overall in the draft, immediately trading him to Sacramento where he was supposed to be the next big thing too. Back then, he was a weekly show you couldn’t miss on late-night television, the guard from Brigham Young University hitting all those impossible shots until you held your breath and imagined he couldn’t hit any more. He was a single name then. Jimmer. You didn’t need to say anything more.
Those days are gone even if they still shout Jimmer’s name here. Micah Nori, the Nuggets assistant who is coaching their summer league team, laughed the other night when he heard his first cry of “Put Jimmer in!” early in the first quarter of the first game. Jimmer has had spurts of former greatness like the night he scored 26 points against the Grizzlies’ summer team, but mostly he’s been what he was in his brief NBA appearances: someone throwing up a lot of shots without enough of them going in.
And yet he keeps shooting because he is sure the shots will fall and that the Nuggets or another NBA team will see the points piling up and they will let him be Jimmer again, holding crowds breathless as he lofts ball after ball high into the air. He keeps shooting because just like the blaze of the Vegas strip outside, it seems close enough to touch. A good NBA career is just beyond his fingertips if he could only reach out a little bit more …
“It’s about finding an opportunity to play consistent minutes night in and night out,” Fredette said the other night after one particularly unremarkable performance. “I think I can play. I really think I can provide a team some good minutes of basketball. I can be a sparkplug that can come in, I believe I can do that in this league I just have to find the opportunity. It happens for a lot of guys so I’ve just got to stick with it.”
Then he smiled and his face dimpled as he smiled. He nodded and you felt for any general manger who tells him this probably won’t happen.
Scouts who have watched him here say nothing much has changed from the failed chances with the Kings, Bulls, Pelicans, Spurs and Knicks. At 6ft 2in, he’s too short and too slow and not good enough defensively to play in the league. Players like him must be able to do at least one thing so great that teams have no choice but to keep him on their rosters. For Jimmer, that would be shooting and yet as a pro he has been a decent shooter, but not a great one. In college he was another Steph Curry. The problem in the NBA is that he doesn’t have Curry’s agility, dribbling skill, ability to break free to shoot or drive inside and get rebounds. He’s a shooter who’s never been able to shoot over quicker, taller defenders – a college sensation who never translated to the NBA.
Still, he is without a doubt certain there is a role for him in the pros. He imagines himself as a kind of sixth man, coming off bench, curling around screens, sliding open to hit jump shots. He believes he can do this night after night in city after city, hearing the crowds shout his name as the ball flies off his hands. At least this is a change for him from his other chances when he reportedly urged teams to run the offense through him the way BYU did. “He knows who he is now,” Nori said.
“You get better (as you get older),” Jimmer said the other night. “You get more confident, the game slows down more, you know when you’re going to get your shot off, defensively you become better so you definitely get better as you get older, you get smarter and you are more confident.”
The NBA people definitely think there is a place for him, but that place is Europe. Over there he would be a star. Over there he would be Jimmer. Over there Italian or Spanish teams would fight to sign him, paying good money for his jump shot. The players would be a little slower there, a little shorter. It would be like BYU. But so far he has refused. He is being much like another college sensation in another sport, Tim Tebow, who insisted on only playing quarterback in the NFL instead of Canada where he had a chance to be great again.
Jimmer hears lots of talk about Europe. Like Tebow with Canada he squelches it. His focus is the NBA he says.
Last year he saw what could happen when he got an opportunity to play all the time. He played 35 minutes a game for the Knicks’ Development League team in Westchester and was ninth in the league in scoring with 21 points a game. He was the MVP of the D-League All-Star Game. At times he was impossible to stop. Then the Knicks called him up and signed him to a 10-day contract. He played in two games, scored seven points and was gone.
Who knows if this is his final chance at the NBA. Many people thought that had happened when the Spurs cut him in training camp last year, then the Knicks gave him a shot. Maybe there is always an opportunity for Jimmer because he is Jimmer and he is so sure of himself and the fans keep shouting: “Put Jimmer in!”
“Oh, of course I get mad,” he said when asked why he is smiling given the way his career has gone. “But I’m just trying to control my emotions and keep an even keel through the course of my life. I don’t want to get too high or too low. I think I’ve had better times than others but keep a smile on your face and continue to work hard. I’m blessed to be able to do what I do and I go out there and hopefully an opportunity will arise.”
How can anyone tell him no?
He smiled again.
“(College) was a great time in my life but people go through ups and downs in life no matter what profession that you do,” he said. “You got to continue to roll with the punches and keep your head down and know that there is another opportunity out there for you and you never know when you are going to get your shot.
“So keep the positive mindset and keep doing that and things will work out.”
Even if it is hard to imagine that they will.
