How James Bouknight rose from little-known to NBA lottery pick after two years at UConn

Like a machine, James Bouknight put up one shot after another, identical shooting mechanics, identical arc, identical results.

A day after the NBA draft combine in Chicago, Bouknight, who left the UConn men’s basketball program after his sophomore season, put on his own show for interested teams. He skipped the agility drills and scrimmages during the week to meet with team representatives and focus on his “pro day” June 26 to confront the biggest question mark hanging over him. Could he shoot the 3?

He hit 19 in a row before a miss, belying his 29.3 percentage last season at UConn during which he had an elbow injury that required surgery. Bouknight’s stock has risen since.

“We never questioned James’ shooting mechanics, his ability to knock down shots,” said Kimani Young, UConn’s associate head coach who was among the first to spot Bouknight’s ability in 2017. “He played with a heavy load. Then going through the injury and coming back, he came back with a ton of pressure on him.”

Bouknight’s final games at UConn left some disappointment. He went a combined 10-for-30, 1-for-9 on 3s with seven turnovers against Creighton in a loss that eliminated the Huskies from the Big East Tournament, and Maryland in a first-round NCAA Tournament loss.

It proved to be a temporary delay in his rise from face-in-the-crowd teenager to player projected to be picked near the top of the NBA draft Thursday. Whatever his shortcomings at UConn, the pace and spacing of play in the NBA figures work to Bouknight’s strengths.

“An explosive vertical athlete, craft finisher around the rim,” wrote Matt Babcock and Derek Murray of BasketballNews.com. “Bouknight is capable of filling up a box score with points in the blink of an eye. … He has the potential to become a primary offensive option in the NBA.”

After the season, draft analyst Chad Ford, author of the NBA Big Board newsletter and podcast, said Bouknight was widely considered the second-best pure scorer in the draft behind Jalen Green.

“He’s quick off the dribble, can score from anywhere on the floor and is a creative finisher at the basket,” Ford said. “There’s always room for players like that in the NBA. His draft stock has dipped a bit after he struggled to score with any real efficiency after returning from an elbow injury in mid-February.”

Ford had Bouknight No. 18 on his board.

Projections of where Bouknight might be picked, scattered from No. 7 to 17 in late June, have become much more uniform. With the draft days away, nearly all analysts have him going in the top 10 with some as high as No. 5 to the Thunder. In NBA.com’s most recent consensus Bouknight is projected to go either No. 7 to the Golden State Warriors, where he worked out last week, or No. 8 to the Orlando Magic. Earlier in July, he worked out for the Charlotte Hornets, who pick No. 11.

After finishing up the spring semester at UConn, Bouknight moved to Miami to work full time with skills coach Ronnie Taylor. He has not only sharpened his shooting but added more muscle to his 6-foot-5 frame and 80¼-inch wingspan.

Bouknight shot 45.7% percent from the floor across two seasons at UConn and went 32% on 3s and 80.2% from the line.

“I found [his workout] to be run at a terrific pace, and Bouknight showed his competitiveness and work ethic,” Babcock reported after watching one of the sessions in Miami.

“I give him all the credit,” Young said. “Once James made the decision to put his name in the NBA draft, he’s treated it like a job. He’s worked his butt off countless hours in the gym, countless hours in the weight room. He has stayed connected to coach [Dan] Hurley throughout the process. I think he understood, ‘Hey, I’m trying to make a huge jump and I have to put the work in.’ He’s done that.”

Bouknight, 20, has already made a monumental jump. Unlike most projected top picks in the draft, he was not considered a future NBA player at a young age. From almost out of nowhere he lifted himself to this position in just two seasons at UConn, one truncated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Brooklyn native, Bouknight didn’t get much attention during his time at La Salle Academy in Manhattan and was about to move to better prep school competition at MacDuffie School in Massachusetts when Young first saw him in August 2017.

“He was at a live event at Westtown (Pa.), like a combine that PSA (ProScholars Athletics) does every year at the end of the summer,” Young said. “I saw him, and I saw this long, athletic, instinctual player making all kind of splash plays all over the court. I was like, ‘Hey, that’s it, that’s the kind of under-the-radar guy I want to recruit.’”

Young, an assistant at Minnesota at the time, contacted Bouknight when he got home and shortly thereafter offered a scholarship. A few months later, Young left to join Dan Hurley’s staff at UConn.

“It was a perfect storm for us because Dana Tate, who was a senior at MacDuffie, was committed to play [for Hurley] at Rhode Island, so Coach Hurley was always keeping an eye on Dana Tate and got to see this talented young player [Bouknight] pretty much all fall, winter and, prior to his taking the UConn job in the spring.”

Young and Hurley agreed on their assessment and stayed after Bouknight even after he injured his knee. “Coach and I had seen him enough to know that where we were. We needed to recruit a guy with his level of talent,” Young said. “We knew it was an injury he’d be able to come back from, and we weren’t scared away at all.”

Bouknight committed to UConn in September 2018 before his senior year at MacDuffie. When he got to UConn he was finally beginning to rise in rankings. Hurley raised eyebrows in October 2018 when he told the audience at the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce breakfast that Bouknight could be an early entry to the NBA.

Then came the arrest before his freshman season. Bouknight was arrested near campus after an auto accident and faced multiple charges, including evading responsibility, interfering with a police officer, traveling too fast for conditions and operation of a motor vehicle without a license. He was suspended for the first three games of the season. Bouknight, who completed the accelerated rehab program a year later, never had another slip-up.

“He handled it as best as anybody his age could handle it,” Young said. “That incident was literally the only thing we ever had to deal with in two years. Never once late for class, never once missing a study hall, never once being thrown out of practice.”

Bouknight debuted for UConn in the Charleston Classic on Nov. 21 and midway through his freshman season he was starting, sparking a late-season Huskies surge, finishing his freshman season averaging 25.9 minutes, 13.0 points, 4.1 rebounds, 1.3 assists. He returned for his sophomore year, but it was clear he’d be going to the NBA sooner rather than later. In his sophomore season, Bouknight scored 40 points against Creighton in his Big East debut and averaged 18.7 points, 5.7 rebounds, 1,8 assists and 1.1 steals.

“UConn was everything he needed,” Young said. “That’s the reality. Dan handled him like a guy with his potential should be handled. He was hard on him, he set a high standard for him, he never let him perform below that standard. That was on a daily basis, right until he walked out the door.”

Hurley and Young will be at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn Thursday to share in the moment when Bouknight is drafted. Unless the projections and all the experts are far off, he will be the highest-drafted UConn player in at least nine years after Andre Drummond went No. 9 in 2012.

“Once you get past five in that draft, I think you have to really seriously think about taking him because the NBA is for guards who create their own shot, who can score at all three levels [3-pointers, mid-range and at the rim], guards who can make difficult shots,” Hurley said.

Dom Amore can be reached at damore@courant.com