Eccentric. Peculiar. Offbeat.
There's something different about Sacramento Kings rookie Willie Cauley-Stein. From his ever-changing hairstyles to his endless array of tattoos, he is an individual and his passion for life is infectious.
During the draft process, Cauley-Stein was dinged for having interests outside the game. His commitment to being a great basketball player was anything but a guarantee, making a few teams in the NBA lottery pass him over.
But the Kings are more than happy that he was still available when they selected sixth overall. Cauley-Stein is a defensive force and, as the team is learning each and every day, so much more.
By his own admission, the 7-footer out of Kentucky came into his first training camp out of shape. Never again he promised, but it did nothing but feed into the narrative. It even shook the confidence of his head coach, George Karl.
He has moved past the slow start and quickly made an impact on a team with 10 new players. The adjustment period has been a roller coaster ride for the Kings, but when healthy, one of the few constants has been the play of their rookie.
When Cauley-Stein went down with a gruesome finger injury in the final seconds of the Kings' loss to the Boston Celtics in Mexico City on Dec. 3, there was concern that this would be a lost season for the Kings draft pick.
A month away for a rookie is not usually a good thing. But this is no typical rookie. Cauley-Stein hit the weight room, continued his cardio and hit the film room. When he returned to the floor, he looked like a completely different player.
“I’m not surprised, I was happy,” George Karl said. “He was paying attention and paying attention at a high level. I wouldn’t have said this three months ago, but I think his basketball IQ is impressive because of that.”
Following Tuesday’s practice, Cauley-Stein played 1-on-1 with a group of teammates before working with assistant coach John Welch and point guard Rajon Rondo. Rondo, along with a few others on the team, have taken over the mentorship of the young big.
The focus of this particular lesson was on Cauley-Stein’s approach to the rim off the dribble. Time and time again Rondo would pass it to the rookie and he would use a Euro-step or a switch of the hands to finish at the rim. With both Welch and Rondo critiquing his approach, Cauley-Stein got better on each take.
“In college, you can get away with a lot more stuff because you’re just far more superior (talent wise) than everybody else,” Cauley-Stein said. “But in the league, it’s like everybody’s on your level or higher.”
This is life for Cauley-Stein. He practices, practices some more, hits the weight room, and then comes back out to chat with the media. His job is to be an NBA player and despite the murmurs before the draft, this kid is hell-bent on becoming a star.
“For me to take the step that I want to take and the step that I think I need to take, I have to become an all-around basketball player or it’s not going to be fun for me,” Cauley-Stein said. “Playing this game won’t be fun for me if I don’t become the player that I know I can become and the player they know I can become. If I settled and was just a rim protector and an under-the-basket guy, then I cheated myself in life, that’s how I look at it.”
"Basketball is life" may seem like such a cliché, but the 22-year-old is buying in. This is his livelihood, but more than that, it appears to be his mission in life.
Cauley-Stein isn’t content with being a disruptive force on one end and a player you hide on the other. He sees more and he wants more. Coming out of college, he was a player that made his name for his ability to guard all five positions. He sees an avenue where he can be that player on both ends of the floor.
“I don’t want to be classified as a big man, I want to be a big guard, if that makes sense” Cauley-Stein said.
“If you can put the guard game with the post game, then it’s deadly,” Cauley-Stein added. “DeMarcus for instance, he’s a big man, but he has moves like a guard that you just can’t stop. That’s what I want.”
Cauley-Stein was overshadowed at Kentucky by one-and-done star talents like Nerlens Noel, Julius Randle and Karl-Anthony Towns. He has quickly settled into a familiar role in Sacramento alongside Cousins. He does the dirty work and they get the acclaim.
That could define him as a player. He could be a guy who fits in, who covers up the weaknesses of others. It’s what he knows and it’s what he instantly brought to a Kings team lacking a defensive presence.
“That’s the fun part about it,” the wild-eyed rookie said. “I don’t feel like you can stop me. You won’t stop me from doing the things I want to do. That’s how strong my will power is. Like, I’ll break my finger, but I still got the block though. Go mark it down. I broke my finger, but I got the block. I got another stitch in my finger and I got the block.”
His goatee bounces as he works himself into a lather. His fingers are already scarred just 34 games into his rookie season. He still has stitches above his right eye from taking a shot from Portland Trail Blazers big man Noah Vonleh.
Cauley-Stein's spirit is nothing short of contagious. He is an energizer on the floor and a sponge off the court. He works tirelessly at his craft, be it in the weight room, film room or on the practice court.
“My whole mentality my rookie year is nobody outworks me,” Cauley-Stein said. “That’s going to build the foundation. As soon as I become a vet, I already have that niche on me, like, you’re not going to outwork him, so what do you do now? You can’t outwork him, so he’s just going to keep coming back -- he’s going to come with another wave, another wave and that’s the kind of thing I’m trying to build now. It’s like an unlimited amount of waves that’s just going to come and come and come.”
When he gets going, there is an intensity that you seldom see in a player his age. Gone is the early-season talk of expanding his brand. “Trill” has been backburnered. This is a player that is undergoing a metamorphosis of sorts. From green rookie to NBA warrior in mere months.
Maybe it was the fact that he shunned the pro game twice to stay at Kentucky. He says he thought of his junior year in college as his rookie season at the next level. He went to coach John Calipari and asked him to teach him the NBA game so he would be ready when his name was called.
That decision allowed him to learn another powerful lesson. A 38-0 start to his final college season gave him a taste for winning.
“We won like 50 games in a row and then you come in and losing is foreign to you after that,” Cauley-Stein added. “I got here and I wanted to cry the first time we lost and then I realized we 80 games and was likes, damn, we’ve got 80-something games, it’s not really that big a deal.”
He has no interest in losing. It’s no longer in his DNA. He played on a team filled with stars. He and three of his college teammates were selected in the first round of the 2015 NBA draft. Another two went in the second round. This group of blue-chippers learned how to give up parts of their games for the betterment of the team.
“I just know how to win, I know what it takes to win,” Cauley-Stein said. “It’s a lot of team stuff though. It can’t be one player, it can’t be two players, it’s got to be five players and everybody’s got to be on the same page and everybody’s got to want to sacrifice for each other, otherwise it doesn’t work.”
Forty-eight games into the 2015-16 season and the Sacramento Kings are still learning something that their rookie mastered in college. He doesn’t ask for plays to be called for him. He knows his job is to play goalie, rebound, and bring enthusiasm to the court. He is a cog in a wheel -- and a quiet one at that.
He wants to win in the worst way and he wants to be great. He doesn’t care about the labels that others have put on him in the past. He cares about taking his team to the next level.
“It humbles you, but it also drives you,” Cauley-Stein said. “You want to feel that. What Golden State is doing, what the Spurs are doing, they’re feeling that. If we felt that, it would be a whole different team. Even when we won five games in a row, you started to feel that and we were like, dude, we have to keep on winning, because this feeling -- not only does it light everybody else up, but it lights the whole city up.
"And then you stop playing for yourself and you start playing for your teammates, and then you start playing for your city, and that’s when it becomes powerful. When you’re playing for your city, that’s when you just don’t feel like you can be stopped because you’ve got 70 or 80,000 people on your back too.”
If that description doesn’t give Kings fans goosebumps, I’m not sure what would. Sacramento has stumbled into a gold mine and this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Cauley-Stein is willing to take a back seat to Cousins and others, at least for now. He has big plans for the summer, including adding even more nuances to his developing offensive game. He doesn’t care about personal accolades and he knows his impact on the floor goes far beyond the stat sheet.
He also understands that players with his size and skill don’t come along every day. He sees how good DeMarcus Cousins is and he's set his sights there.
Willie Cauley-Stein is eccentric, peculiar and offbeat, but he also doesn’t have a ceiling. If you’re betting against him, you’re probably going to lose.
