In Hunter Dickinson, Kansas coach Bill Self may have met his perfect match

LAWRENCE, Kan. — As Bill Self stands near midcourt on the Kansas practice floor, he’s moving chess pieces, creating plays on the fly around Hunter Dickinson.

Dickinson catches a pick-and-roll pass from Dajuan Harris Jr. near the free-throw line and immediately fires a skip pass to Elmarko Jackson for a corner 3. “That’s how you play!” Self shouts.

Moments later, Dickinson operates around the top of the key and at the elbows, facilitating like Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic. When the Jayhawks coaches were recruiting Dickinson out of the transfer portal, they showed him film of Jokic and Sacramento Kings center Domantas Sabonis. The 7-foot-2 senior center, who starred for three years at Michigan, loved the freedom Self offered. Now Self is in innovation mode with the former All-American.

“The older you get in coaching, the more you get excited about new challenges and new things you can do offensively that maybe you haven’t done in the past,” Self told The Athletic earlier this month. “Hunter gives me a chance to explore my own personal ideas that can become more unique than what we’ve ever had in the past.”

Self is hyperbolic when talking about Dickinson. “Best” and “terrific” get thrown out frequently. He really cannot help himself. Whether it involves passing or post pins or 3-point shooting, he doesn’t temper expectations. “There’s a lot of different ways that he can score the ball probably better than anybody that I’ve ever had,” Self says.

Self looks refreshed and reenergized after a heart ailment kept him from coaching last postseason (Knowing the NCAA troubles were about to finally pass probably hasn’t hurt either). His drive this offseason was reminiscent of two years ago when Kansas got blown out in the NCAA Tournament by USC; he was in such a hurry to fix his roster back then that he started talking about what the Jayhawks needed in the postgame presser. He was convinced his team had to get more athletic to compete for a national championship. Remy Martin ended up being the transfer that provided another gear, and the Jayhawks won the 2022 national title. This offseason, Self believed his team was a scoring big man away from competing for the title.

“Our skill sets were too similar,” he says of a big-man rotation that included KJ Adams, Ernest Udeh Jr. (who transferred to TCU) and Zuby Ejiofor (now at St. John’s). “Athletes, runners, jumpers, ball-screen, run-to-the-rim, but not a throw-it-to-him, back-to-the-basket type of guy.”

In the transfer portal era of college basketball, you can find a quick fix, especially when you’re a blue blood. And when Dickinson hit the portal, Self saw him as the prototype. His pitch to Dickinson was simple: Come help us win another national championship, and you’ll be the focal point of everything we do.

When Hunter Dickinson tries to explain why he’s never been afraid to play like a true big man, it’s a window into what motivates him. He was shy when he was young, and he came across as somewhat timid on the court, which earned him a reputation as being “soft.” Dickinson comes from a family where being soft isn’t an option. His father is a retired police chief. He’s the youngest of three brothers. One time his older two brothers were, in his mother’s words, beating “the crap out of him.” Kathy Dickinson told her middle son, Grant, to be nice.

“He’s got to toughen up,” Grant said.

Hunter was 2 years old at the time.

“I want to make sure that however I play — if I’m good, bad, whatever — people can’t say I’m soft,” Dickinson says. “That’s why I feel like like I play the way I play, and I show the level of motion and toughness that I do, just because I don’t want to ever be labeled as soft. And so that’s why I go out there and play hard, wear my emotions on my sleeve, because I’m big and I kind of just embrace it.”

At times, he’s also embraced the role of instigator. He once stared down former Maryland coach Mark Turgeon after every made basket because he felt Turgeon didn’t seriously recruit him, even though Dickinson played high school ball at DeMatha Catholic in the Terrapins’ backyard. His trainer, Alex Harris, likens him to a WWE character. Google “Hunter Dickinson trash talk,” and the results go on and on. Just about every fan base in the Big Ten had a reason to hate him (possibly now including Michigan). One reason he left Ann Arbor — according to what he said on his “Roundball” podcast — was for more money via NIL.

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Meek: NIL doesn't make Hunter Dickinson a villain in transfer from Michigan to Kansas

Dickinson has been careful with his words since arriving in Lawrence. He hasn’t been on the podcast since May 30. He says he may still appear as a guest sometime, but he’s giving up his co-host duties. He was frustrated by aggregators who would take a 10-second clip without context and turn it into a news story.

“He’s gotten a lot of credit, and probably rightfully so, for speaking his mind,” Self says. “I love that. But I also think since he’s been here, there’s a seriousness to him that is wanting our play to do the vast majority of the talking.”

70 Questions with @H_Dickinson24 #RockChalk x #LateNight pic.twitter.com/bgAhgU56aH

— Kansas Men’s Basketball (@KUHoops) October 7, 2023

Every school recruiting Dickinson offered strong NIL possibilities, but Self put Kansas in the driver’s seat on the night of the Final Four by texting Dickinson the following stats: The Jayhawks had won the Big 12 in 17 of Self’s 20 seasons, never earning lower than a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Dickinson says he thought, “If I want to go to a winning program like I say I do and I want to be able to compete for a national championship,” then there was no better place to do that than Kansas.

The visit sealed it. Dickinson and his parents felt like KU had every little detail he wanted — including the heights of ceilings, showers, and counters at McCarthy Hall, where the players live. At Michigan, Dickinson showered at the basketball practice facility because the shower head in his apartment was too low. He couldn’t stand up straight in his bathroom or the hallway going to his bedroom.

“It matters,” Kathy Dickinson says. “People don’t think that’s a big deal. I’m like, I’m sorry. That’s ridiculous.”

“They know how to do things right,” his father, Tim, says of Kansas.

Self has a track record of putting traditional bigs in the NBA and presented a plan to change Dickinson’s approach. Dickinson has already been a dominant college center — a three-time All-Big Ten honoree with career averages of 17.2 points and 8.4 rebounds per game — but Self wasn’t content with getting the Michigan version of him. Self didn’t just watch Dickinson’s game film; he had Kansas strength coach Ramsey Nijem study Dickinson’s movements. Nijem then designed a plan to make Dickinson more explosive. Once Dickinson signed, Nijem shared the plan with Dickinson’s trainer.

The work has paid off. Nijem measures KU’s players weekly on a force plate, which determines how hard they impact the floor. The more force someone puts on the ground, the faster they’re going to be able to get off the court. Improvements lead to quicker twitching muscles. Most Kansas players improve by 8 to 10 percent in their first summer on the force plate. Dickinson improved by 20 percent, which was the highest rate on the team.

“That’s not the norm by any means,” Nijem says.

Dickinson is now 265 pounds, which is five pounds heavier than his listed playing weight at Michigan. But he looks slimmer. The goal is to help him get off the floor more quickly to catch lobs and also be able to switch directions faster, which will help him defensively.

“He moves different since he’s been at Kansas,” says Darryl Prue, a former Georgetown assistant who has trained Dickinson since he was in high school. “He was more prodding at Michigan. We do a face-up drill from the elbow to the old college 3-point line. Gotta take one dribble and finish. Now he’s taking one dribble, finishing to the rim hard — both hands, ripping the rim down instead of just barely dunking. And he’s getting there with so much speed.”

Dickinson also wanted to improve his shooting this summer. He made 42 percent of his 3s at Michigan last year but on only 57 attempts. In the Big 12, where there’s a lot of no-middle defense and big men must help force the ball toward the baseline, centers see frequent opportunities for pick-and-pop 3s. Former Oklahoma big Tanner Groves, for instance, attempted 2.6 3s per game in Big 12 play over two seasons. Self sees Dickinson taking about three a game.

Dickinson says he would make 400-500 3s per day this summer. Harris, who started training Dickinson in the third grade, says Dickinson would show up every night at his warehouse at 9 p.m. after all of his other clients were finished. Dickinson would spend the next two hours on the shooting machine.

“He’s so locked in,” Harris says. “Not to say that he wasn’t before; he’s just taken it to another level. He knows what he wants, and he knows how good he can be and he’s as focused as a person can be.”

The opening play of KU’s final game against the Bahamian National Team in Puerto Rico this summer plays on a laptop in front of Dickinson. He has the ball at the elbow and fires a pass over Eric Gordon’s head. The pass is clear of Gordon before he even raises his hands in response. Gordon has played 878 games in the NBA, but Dickinson and Kevin McCullar Jr. make him look like a college freshman.

“Once his hips opened up,” Dickinson says, narrating the sequence, “he was still in a gap stance towards me and Kevin was already going backdoor, and I knew that he wasn’t going to be able to react fast enough to get that left hand on it.”

Another play pops up on the screen. This time, McCullar enters the ball to Dickinson at the elbow and runs past him. Dickinson fakes a handoff, and McCullar continues toward the basket.

“Kevin dictates what happens,” Dickinson says. “When Kevin rubbed his man off me and I got a piece of him, I knew that Kevin was gonna be open over the top. It’s kind of just a matter of reading that little guy under the basket — if he comes over too much or not.”

It looks simple, but these calculations must be made in a split second. Most big men don’t process information this quickly.

“He makes the game easy for everybody,” McCullar says.

“From a basketball IQ standpoint, he’s a savant,” Self says. “He is ridiculously bright.”

The only real doubt about this Kansas team, which will likely open the season ranked No. 1, is the spacing with a potential lineup of Adams next to Dickinson. The 6-7 Adams was the team’s center last season, and while he has the size and athleticism of a wing, he made just two jump shots outside of 15 feet last season.

“People say, well, you’re gonna back off one of them on the perimeter. Well, back off Hunter? He’s a pretty good shooter,” Self says. “You back off KJ, now how do we utilize him in different ways? KJ is as good a ball-screen, short-roll, run-to-the-rim guy as probably there is in college basketball. How do we take advantage of those types of things?”

The early returns looked good in Puerto Rico. Adams and Dickinson took turns throwing lobs to each other, as one would short-roll and the other would sit in the dunker spot.

In practice, it’s more of the same. On one possession Dickinson gets the ball on a short roll and looks like he’s taking an elbow jumper, but it’s an alley-oop to Adams. Self then has them flip positions, with Dickinson at the four and Adams at the five, and this time it’s Adams delivering the alley-oop to Dickinson.

“The best thing about KJ is he doesn’t really care who scores,” Dickinson says. “He’s so unselfish, that as long as Kansas scores, he’s happy.”

The same could be said for Dickinson. He’s an aggressive scorer from the block when he gets a one-on-one matchup, but as soon as he senses a double team coming, he looks to pass.

Adams can stand in the opposite short corner, and if his man is the extra defender sent at Dickinson and the pass is on target, there won’t be much time to recover because Adams gets off the floor so quickly. Watch as Adams’ man doesn’t even fully commit to the double; he slightly cheats over, and Dickinson recognizes it.

“When you have two unselfish guys who are just trying to make the right play,” Dickinson says, “it can be really hard for defenses to guard, especially in close quarters.”

The bigger key for the Jayhawks: how their perimeter players fare in catch-and-shoot situations. McCullar is a career 29.8 percent 3-point shooter, but he’s made adjustments to his shot, eliminating a pause at the top. Adams has also worked on his shot and made 2-of-3 3s in Puerto Rico. It’s unlikely he takes many, but if Adams can make wide-open ones, defenses will at least have to pay attention to him. KU also added Towson transfer Nicolas Timberlake, who shot 41.6 percent from 3 last season, and another shooter in Australian freshman Johnny Furphy. Freshman Elmarko Jackson, who’s likely to start, is also a capable shooter.

Whenever Dickinson, Adams, McCullar and Harris are on the floor together, the execution is so precise that it seems like KU is getting a good shot nearly every possession. They’ll make extra passes in a crowded paint, and it somehow works. Harris plays like everyone else is moving in slow motion. Self says he believes that his presence is the biggest reason why Dickinson chose Kansas, and their two-man game in the pick-and-roll already looks in midseason form.

“He’s so savvy out there,” Dickinson says. “He’s an old-school point guard who just makes the players around him better. He’s gonna make sure that your game is elevated.”

Dickinson says the most fun he had playing basketball was in the summer of 2018, when his Nike EYBL squad — loaded with future college stars like North Carolina’s Armando Bacot, Duke’s Jeremy Roach and Villanova’s Justin Moore — won the Peach Jam. This group reminds him of that team. His favorite year at Michigan was his freshmen season when the Wolverines had a great passing team full of guys with high basketball IQs.

He’s found something similar at Kansas. That was on display last Tuesday as Self installed his two-game (or high-low) offense, which was once his staple when he played a more traditional frontline. “Two-game making a comeback,” Doc Sadler, the former Nebraska coach who has returned to Self’s staff after a 10-year absence, tells two visitors on the sideline.

Self hasn’t run the offense nearly as much since he’s gone small, but with the way Dickinson and Adams can pass and play off each other, it makes sense to go back to it.

It usually takes time for Self’s bigs to master the art of the post pin, but Dickinson already knows how to use his lower body to carve out space and he has terrific hands. “He’s got potential to be terrific at it,” Self says.

The Wolverines got Dickinson some angled catches in the post, but nothing like he should see at Kansas. In three seasons in Ann Arbor, he finished 53 possessions with a post pin, per Synergy’s tracking. In Udoka Azubuike’s final season at Kansas, he had 75.

Self’s only real concern with Dickinson is his defense and offensive rebounding when he’s playing on the perimeter. Self wants his new big man to block more shots — his block rate hovered around 5 percent at Michigan, while Self’s best defensive bigs (Azubuike, Jeff Withey and Cole Aldrich) have usually been around 10 percent. Dickinson will also be asked to be more aggressive in pick-and-roll defense than he was at Michigan.

While he raises everyone else’s level offensively, he believes the other four Kansas starters could do the same for him defensively.

“It’s like playing with four cornerbacks out there,” Dickinson says. “They’re just jumping passing lanes, getting steals, just playing crazy. If they go for a steal and don’t get it, I’m just going to try to help them out and cover for them. It’s something that I’ve never seen before personally. I think we have a chance to be super special.”

At practice, he carries himself like a veteran. After one recent sequence, Self tells him that “as good as this was on (the offensive) end, it was just as crappy on this end,” referring to a bad ball-screen hedge on defense. Dickinson is unbothered.

A few minutes later, when Self goes to instruct the scout team, Dickinson jokingly yells, “We didn’t want you to coach us anyway.”

That is far from the truth. And it’s what Self might love most about the big fella. He’s always asking questions, wondering why Self does things a certain way. He’s absorbing everything, and he’s ready for the games to begin.

Dickinson was so antsy to get to Kansas in mid-May that one day he pulled up YouTube clips of games at Allen Fieldhouse.

“I just wanted to feel something about the University of Kansas. I got goosebumps,” he says. “There’s a true investment in the sport around here. At Kansas, the standards are if you get to the Final Four, it’s kind of what you should do, and if you win a national championship, that’s a successful season. That’s what I wanted. I don’t want the bar to be set low. I want the bar to be set high.”

(Photo: Courtesy of Kansas Athletics)

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