WaltLongmire wrote:CrushAlot wrote:knickscity wrote:Stephen Curry 2.0. The team that drafts him will love him.
Agree. He looks really good. He is also one of the few guys that I have read scouting reports on where it talks about his leadership qualities.
Doesn't have the stroke or release to be Curry 2.0. Looks like a player though.
Just a snippet...
As former Murray State point guard Cameron Payne goes through his morning pre-draft workout at the IMG Academy in Florida, a number of insults are shouted at him.
“Nobody even knows who you are! You’re too small! You aren’t good enough to play in the NBA! No top programs recruited you out of high school! You can’t compete with the elite point guards!”
No, these aren’t haters or hecklers who are criticizing Payne. These are his IMG pre-draft coaches, yelling these things because the 2015 NBA Draft prospect loves to be taunted as he goes through his various drills and shooting exercises. The coaches also do this to see how he responds to the ribbing.
Rather than getting frustrated or distracted, the barrage of put-downs motivates him and he elevates his game. He clenches his teeth, and proceeds to hit shot after shot. With each make, he’s gaining confidence and yelling back.
“Keep talking!” Payne shouts. “I won’t miss if you keep talking. What else do you got?”
He loves following up each insult with a swish. After a little while, he steps far behind the NBA three-point line and continues to knock down jumpers with ease. Soon, he’s firing up shots with a lightning quick release and turning around to talk trash before the ball even goes in – Stephen Curry style.
As the verbal jabs keep coming and the shots keep falling, he’s no longer clenching his teeth or sporting a death stare. Now, he’s grinning and exuding swagger. He loves the reminders that he has been doubted his whole life, that nobody thought he’d be in this position. Yet here he is, several weeks away from turning his NBA dream into reality.
“It definitely fuels my fire,” Payne said with a smile when asked about this trash talking with his trainers. “I’m the underdog. I’ve been overlooked. When people say these things, it’s nothing new. I’ve heard it all before. I’m just here to do my Cam Payne thing.”
“I think it definitely motivates him and, look, he’s never been stopped,” said IMG Academy’s Head Skills Trainer Dan Barto. “His whole life he’s been told little things about his game, but he’s always found a way to succeed. Some of our coaches, who are former players themselves, have tried to get under his skin to see how high he can notch up [his game]. That’s something that a lot of the best players can do – the guys like Chauncey Billups, who I trained when I first started here, and Iman Shumpert, who I train every summer. Those guys have that same mode where as soon as you start talking trash, they’re like, ‘Okay, keep going. I’m going to show you. You’re going to end up looking bad.’ Cam is the same way.”
The insults directed at Payne seem laughable these days, since he was outstanding during his sophomore season at Murray State and he’s been equally impressive during the pre-draft process. Lately, he has been generating a lot of buzz and impressing NBA executives. He’s improving his stock and climbing draft boards rapidly, to the point that league sources believe he has a promise from a team picking in the lottery – perhaps even in the top 10. It seems inevitable that he’ll be selected very early on the night of June 25.
But it wasn’t long ago that some of those criticisms that were shouted were actually used to describe Payne and discredit his game, and that’s something he’ll never forget. He was a three-star recruit coming out of high school at Lausanne Collegiate School in Memphis, and he wasn’t even ranked nationally by some recruiting services. He was told that he didn’t have the size or talent to be a star in college, and bigger schools didn’t recruit him.
http://www.basketballinsiders.com/nba-pm...
