Future NBA draftee training here

Don’t look now, but the country that taught us the game of basketball is starting to send players to the Philippines for training, and the first trainee is a future NBA first-round pick.

Larry Turner, a 6’11", 235-pound center from Tennessee State, arrived in the Philippines July 18, and is now training under the strict eye of Kirk Collier, skills coach of San Miguel Beer and Ginebra in the PBA.

"Larry’s college coach (Cyrus Alexander) was in college when I was a coach, and I was his skills trainer," Collier explains. "And he worked really hard; he had a lot of success. When he got Larry, Larry didn’t have that good a junior year. They said that he was an athlete, he was big, he was strong, but his skills weren’t that good."

Collier was contacted by Alexander’s then-assistant Jamal Brown, who has since been appointed head coach of South Carolina State University. Collier, who coached college basketball and ran basketball camps in the US, insisted that Turner, who averaged 4 points and 6 rebounds a game in his junior year after transferring from the University of Oklahoma, spend at least a month to six weeks here to get measurable results.

"In college, he has to play the five (center) position. So I’m working on his back-to-the-basket skills: his sealing, his footwork, make him able to use both hands, pivoting, up-and-under, quick spin, those kinds of things," Collier elaborates. "But if he makes it to the pros like the NBA - or even if he comes over here to play - he’s going to play a lot more four (power forward) or even a little bit of three (small forward). So he’s got to work on his face-up moves, too."

Tennessee State is expected to go far in the Ohio Valley Conference, but a large determinant of that will be the performance of their big man, who is built like NBA All-Star Ben Wallace, with a work ethic to match.

"My coach basically told me coach Kirk was the best," the amiable Turner recalls. "And now I know why. He knows basketball; he has a great understanding of the game, he’s very defined in the drills. So it’s going to work out fine."

"What I’m really going to focus on is teaching him the rhythm of the skills," Collier adds. "Once you get the rhythm of something, you’ll get a comfort level. So he’s going to get a lot of step-by-step teaching, but also a lot of repetition to support that. I think his biggest asset - aside from being athletic - is that he’s willing to learn, and he’s a purposeful worker. He doesn’t do a drill just to do it. He does a drill to get something out of it. I was elated to learn that he’s a quick learner, and that he has a high basketball IQ."

Aside from individual skills and plyometrics, Turner is also working out with the big men of both San Miguel and Ginebra, which Collier knows to be essential in his full absorption of what he is being taught.

"You have to have a culminating activity for your drills. You can drill, drill, drill, but you have to be able to apply that in a game. In the practices against Ginebra, against San Miguel, he gets to go against somebody and apply the skills he’s learned," says Collier, who first came to the Philippines five years ago as a skills coach for Red Bull. "You can learn the drill, but you won’t have the confidence to do it in a game until you’ve done it against someone playing defense."

The immediate goal is for the quick and muscular Turner to make a big impact on his college team, and the results have been very encouraging. Three NBA franchises already took a cursory look at him even before he came to the Philippines. But Collier believes that if Turner averages 15 to 16 points and 10 rebounds a game his senior year, most NBA teams will take a serious interest in him. Turner himself is hoping to be picked in the first round, though it doesn’t matter to him which team selects him.

"I’ll be blessed just to make it into the NBA," he says. "From there, we’ll see."

And when that happens, they will be surprised to find out that Larry got his moves from a coach in the Philippines, and may soon turn up on our shores (and Kirk Collier’s doorstep), for more of the same.