ESPN article by Chad Ford;
CHICAGO -- O.J. Mayo
is drenched in sweat. His muscles are twitching. His trainer, Tim
Grover, is yelling in his ear, "Don't let it beat you, O.J. Don't let
it beat you."
Mayo is horizontal, in a push-up position, both hands on a yellow
medicine ball. The ball is sitting on a Power Plate -- a vibration
device that can shake the fillings out of your teeth.
He holds on. His facial muscles tense. The vibration continues. The burn sets in.
Meanwhile, Jay-Z's "Say Hello" is blasting in the background:
Say hello
To the bad guy
Hello
They say I'm a bad guy
I come from the bottom
But now I'm mad fly
Say hello
They say I'm a menace
That's the picture they paint
Hello
They say a lot about me
Let me tell ya what I ain't
Hello
Mayo finishes the grueling drill, which focuses on improving his
core, hops up and begins rapping the lyrics. Then he stops, turns and
looks at me with a smile on his face. And says:
"I'm not a bad guy, Mr. Ford!"
Everyone thinks they know O.J. Everyone.
Since Sports Illustrated profiled him as a seventh-grader, his name
has come to be synonymous with both the best and the worst of high
school and college basketball. Thousands of articles have been written
glorifying his amazing basketball skills on the court. Hundreds more
have picked apart his every word, his every action.
His confidence is interpreted as arrogance. When he shoots the ball,
he's selfish. When he passes it, he's criticized for not shooting it.
When he wins, he's showboating. When he loses, the fingers collectively
point his way.
He's been arguably the most scrutinized young player, on and off the
court, in the history of the game. Perhaps no basketball player, from
the age of 15 and on, has been under more pressure to be everything we
want him to be.
By the time he reached USC, the expectations were so high that his
strong freshman season -- he scored 20.7 points per game while shooting
41 percent from 3-point range -- was largely labeled a disappointment,
and even a disaster by some.
So when I walked into Tim Grover's A.T.T.A.C.K. Athletics Center on
Wednesday, I already knew what I was going to see: O.J. Mayo, the bad
man.
Except I didn't.
At 8 a.m., Mayo is the first person in the gym, working on his jump
shot before the rest of the pre-draft participants arrive. He's the
first one in the gym most mornings. According to those around him, it's
always that way.
In group workouts, Mayo dominates … not with his words or body
language, but with his play. The thousands of hours of jumpers have
translated into a shot that Mayo can make anywhere on the floor.
He can take his man off the dribble. He can finish at the rim. In a
3-on-3 game on Thursday, he made pinpoint pass after pinpoint pass.
When Gonzaga's Jeremy Pargo tried to get physical on offense, Mayo got in his grill and shut him down.
As he prepares for the draft and his rookie season, his day in the gym is long and draining:
By 10 a.m., he's in an intense weightlifting and core workout. Every 30 seconds, there's another drill.
At 11 a.m., he's back on the court with trainer Mike Procopio, working on his 3-point shot.
His mother sits patiently on the side, watching his every move.
She's determined to protect her son after allegations that O.J. took
money from Rodney Guillory, a former Mayo confidant and runner
connected with Bill Duffy Associates Sports Management.
After a 30-minute lunch, Mayo's back in the gym going through the same routine.
At 4 p.m., he's still sinking jumpers in a quiet corner of the gym.
He's been at this every day. In many ways, it's been his life since
the seventh grade -- preparing for something that everyone says he
should be.
"I love basketball," he says when I ask why he works like this. "Basketball is my life."
At the start of the college season, I had Mayo ranked as the top
pick in the draft. Despite controversies swirling around him, the
consensus from scouts who had watched him play for years was that he
was one of the most talented prospects in the past decade.
He was considered by some to be a smaller LeBron James or a young
Magic Johnson. Mayo's high school stats were off the charts. His teams
won three straight state titles and every game he played, his
opponent's goal was to stop him. They rarely did. He dominated the
competition.
When he announced he was going to USC, many, Mayo included, thought
he'd be the catalyst to turn USC into another UCLA. It didn't quite
work out that way.
Head coach Tim Floyd decided to play Mayo off the ball. After having
been criticized for not being a team player, Mayo decided he needed to
show he could fit into a system. He passed up shots he'd normally take.
He didn't have the ball in his hands the way he normally did. Many of
his shots had to be taken with the shot clock set to expire after his
teammates couldn't find a shot.
Mayo's numbers were below expectations. So was USC's win total. By
January, NBA teams were pushing and shoving to get off the Mayo
bandwagon. Many claimed he was overrated. A number of scouts I spoke
with said Mayo was no longer even a top-10 pick.
But NBA scouts and general managers started to change their minds
after they went back and reviewed his tapes and numbers. Mayo's defense
began to stand out. He shut down Derrick Rose in a midseason matchup against Memphis and did the same to Arizona's Jerryd Bayless at the end of February. He averaged two steals over his last nine games.
The video also showed that Mayo began to settle down offensively.
After a miserable 10-turnover performance against UCLA, he averaged
just 2.1 turnovers per game. His 3-point shot started falling with more
regularity -- he shot 54 percent from 3-point range in his last nine
games. And he started scoring at a greater clip, scoring 24 points per
game.
Background checks found surprising things, too. Mayo scored 29 on
his ACT and made the honor roll at USC. Floyd gave glowing reviews
about Mayo's maturity and leadership on the team. There were no
off-court incidents that people could point to, and his humility and
calm demeanor, among those who know him, came through as well.
Most importantly, teams started to see not only "Mayo, the star" and
started seeing "Mayo, the survivor" -- a tough kid who has handled the
spotlight and criticism in the way stars should do, with grace and
aplomb.
By the time the news broke that a member of his inner circle alleged
that Mayo received gifts while still in college, NBA GMs largely
shrugged.
"After all that scrutiny, if that's all they can come up with, then
O.J. is in the clear," one GM said. "From all the evidence we can
gather, O.J. is a good kid."
Grover agrees.
"He's a hard worker," Grover said. "He works as hard as anyone. He's
a quick learner. He's great with the other guys. He's polite. He's
punctual. He takes nothing for granted. He thanks you for everything.
We've had zero problems with O.J. He's a great kid."
Grover has worked with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, and he
trained Dwyane Wade in similar pre-draft workouts. He says Mayo has a
similar "it" factor to those players.
"You have to love the game and work on it constantly," Grover said.
"The best guys are always in the gym. They're always learning and
perfecting their games. O.J. does that. "His knowledge of the game is
so deep. By January he will have picked up all the little tricks that
the veterans do. Some guys never pick that up."
Mayo tries to shrug off the compliments and the swirling criticism around him.
"I don't like to talk about myself," he says. "It doesn't matter
what other people think. I know that. I just want to play basketball,
this is my dream. I know I need to get better. I want to get better. I
know it takes hard work. I just want to win."
Two days in the gym watching Mayo make it clear that the hype,
adulation and focus on his weaknesses have created an unrealistic
picture of the man and the player, and caused many of us to miss the
basic facts.
There aren't any guards in the draft with a more complete game than
Mayo. He can defend, facilitate and score in multiple ways. And there
aren't many prospects more NBA-ready than he is. He's shown he can
persevere through the intense media and fan spotlight and other
distractions, too.
His charisma makes him a natural leader, and his poise on and off
the court is startling for a young man who has just played one year of
college ball.
But all of this doesn't mean he's without weaknesses. Mayo is still
caught in between positions -- he's unproven at point guard and
undersized if he plays the 2. He's a good athlete, but not an elite
one. His shot selection is questionable at times and he sometimes tries
to do too much. And he doesn't always lock in on defense.
But none of Mayo's weak suits threaten to derail his future in the
NBA. They may limit his potential to a degree, but it's hard to see how
Mayo doesn't succeed in the league.