December 25, 2007 - Thompson's focus on winning / By: Craig Haley / The Times of Trenton
Thompson's focus on winning
LAWRENCE -- Jason Thompson was laughing with teammates while doing what he often does after Rider basketball practice:
He was working on his half-court shot.
"Will you hurry up and make it so we can get going," said someone who knew a reporter was awaiting an interview with Thompson.
The senior center's next shot swished in.
Indeed, good fortune is at Jason Thompson's fingertips.
The 6-foot-11 3/4, 253-pounder is the best player in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. He craves to be a member of the conference's best team, which would mean Rider will head to the NCAA Tournament come March. School records already are falling to him and on June 26 his name likely will be called out at the 2008 NBA Draft.
What Rider's Tommy Dempsey doesn't want is for Thompson to be in a hurry to get to his future. And when the third-year head coach sits in his office chair and often hears Thompson laughing with his teammates through the locker-room wall behind him, he thinks the 21-year-old star remains a kid. Albeit, a big kid.
"The one thing that he's done a tremendous job of is to focus on the here and now," Dempsey said. "We had some long sitdowns during the summer and before the season. I still think this is the best basketball year of his life, in a lot of ways. There's no business, he's a really good player, on a good team. He's a senior; right now he's ahead of (the) pace to graduate, so he doesn't have a lot of academic pressures. He's playing with his brother (Ryan), he's playing with some of his best friends, his family's 25 minutes away, they're so involved.
"Beat that."
THE AUDITION
During each Rider game, Jason Thompson plays on a stage. NBA scouts are watching almost every time. No performance flies under the radar. If he doesn't get a double-double, the question is why. If he goes for 23 points, 21 rebounds and seven blocked shots, as he did against Delaware, the question is what's next?
It's an attention not usually seen at Rider, where the last NCAA Tournament appearance occurred in 1994, when Thompson was in the second grade.
"Jason always puts a lot of pressure on himself," Dempsey said. "I always say, 'Enjoy this. This is great.' He's afraid to let people down, he's afraid to not take us to the NCAA Tournament, he's afraid to not get drafted ... All he needs to do is relax and do what he does. He's playing great, he's having a great year, he's having more fun, I think, than ever. But he puts a lot of pressure on himself, and that's why he plays with a lot of emotion. He's a perfectionist.
"He's going to have a lot of things that are going to be hard on him starting at the end of March, when it's time to sign with an agent, when it's time to get ready for the pre-draft camps, all of the unknown. And where is he going to be picked, and is he going to be picked? And does he have a guaranteed contract? I know that stuff is going to drive him crazy."
There's nothing maddening about Thompson's game. Despite being the target of opposing teams' gameplans, he avoids foul trouble and stays on the court to dominate games. He was the only returning player in Division I to have averaged at least 20 points and 10 rebounds last season, and this season he has had seven double-doubles in Rider's 8-4 start, for season averages of 19.8 points on 53.4-percent field-goal shooting and 11.3 rebounds. He also had 33 assists and 37 blocked shots.
Having grown 10 inches through his four years at Lenape High School, and going from a guard to a center, and then adding nearly another four inches as well as 50 pounds in college, Thompson is still realizing his potential.
"One of the things I've said to some of the NBA scouts," said Rider athletic director Don Harnum, Thompson's head coach as a freshman, "is, 'Don't forget that Jason's still getting better. So if you're projecting him, project where he's going to be at 25 because it's not even close where he was at 17 versus where he is at 21.' And big guys tend to get better as they go, a little bit later blooming, later developing. I think his best days are when he's 26, 27."
THE GOAL
Despite the hoopla at Rider that it might have its second-ever NBA player some 60 years after Herb Krautblatt, winning the MAAC title is first and foremost in Jason Thompson's mind. The NBA is down the road, and will be there when it's time. Reaching the NCAA Tournament is now, and it's Thompson's last chance to grab it.
"I try not to worry about (the NBA)," said Thompson, which, of course, his head coach will say is not true, "because it's not just about me, it's about my team, and me trying to help my team as much as I can win a championship this year.
"So I'm really not worrying about the NBA right now, but that's definitely one of my goals. And to do as much as I can to help my team. And for me leading my team to a championship will help my status."
Ryan Blake, assistant director of scouting for NBA Scouting/NBA Media, would agree with Thompson.
"I get this question quite a bit, especially at Portsmouth (Va.) and our pre-draft camp," Blake said, "we have guys that come over and say, 'What should I do to prove to the teams that I'm an NBA caliber player?' Basically, it's just winning. When you start focusing on the individual abilities, then you lose focus on the game.
"And I think that's key for what he's been doing here. He's proven that he can win. When you get a guy who may not be shooting well, but he's making the right passes, the assists, he's in there rebounding, you make a team more valuable because it's not just one person. And Rider's not one player by any means. It's a well-coached team and you've got a number of really good players on the team. And if he can make someone else better, that makes him a valuable commodity towards the team."
During Thompson's freshman season in 2004-05, Rider tied for the MAAC regular-season title and reached the conference tournament title game, only to get blown out by Niagara. The Broncs don't have a good history in the MAAC Tournament and will have to weather the always rugged 10-team field from March 7-10 in Albany, N.Y., to reach the NCAAs.
But already Thompson is seeing his team take steps toward realizing their goal. The Broncs, which had not beaten a major-conference team since the 1982-83 season, have defeated Penn State of the Big Ten and Rutgers of the Big East.
"One of the reasons is because our defense has improved," he said. "Not being a stat guy, we lead our league in field-goal percentage defense. And that just was one of our focuses. When you come (to practice) during the preseason, you're like, 'ah, man ...' because you just have a practice of like all defense -- you don't even touch the ball. But when you have that type of mentality ...
"The offense is going to come. We all know we're good scorers and we all improved our game individually. When we get stops and get rebounds and we run, we're really a tough team to stop."
THE SHOT
The reporter waited patiently, hoping Jason Thompson would sink that half-court shot.
Which, of course, he did.
"That makes three!" Thompson said enthusiastically.
Three, it turned out, from about 10 tries. Not too shabby.
"He does that every practice," Tommy Dempsey said with a laugh. "I say, 'You haven't taken one in four years and you're always working on it.'"
Jason Thompson, still a kid? Well, not really. But at Rider he can still enjoy life like a kid in the proverbial candy store.
Contact assistant sports editor Craig Haley at chaley@njtimes.com.
