Kendall Marshall: "I Can Adjust to Any Situation"
by: Joseph Treutlein - Director of Scouting
May 31, 2012
An interview with North Carolina point guard Kendall Marshall, discussing his training regimen in Florida, what he's working to improve on, his relationship with his teammates and coach Roy Williams, how he prepares for games, his injury, the transition to the NBA, and more.
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US Presswire
Joseph Treutlein: To start off, can you talk to us a little bit about what you're doing to prepare for the draft right now?
Kendall Marshall: Right now I'm down at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. I've been down here since my last final, which I think was on the fourth [of May]. I've just been working every day, rehabbing every day. The main thing I'm trying to do is just take care of my body. I don't just want to prepare for the NBA draft; I want to prepare for an 82-game season. So, a lot of flexibility, a lot of stretching; learning the right way to take care of my body over time. And of course, rehab. It's been hard to do everything on the court with my wrist and elbow, but I've been able to shoot a lot, still do workouts, a lot of left-handed. I almost wish I would've broken my left hand so I would've been able to get a lot better with my right hand, but it happens like that sometimes. That's pretty much what I've been doing -- the same schedule every day.
JT: What does your typical daily schedule consist of?
Kendall Marshall: A typical day is breakfast at 8:00. Rehab from 8:30-9:00, then we start warming up and stretching, then we have a field workout, which is a lot of motion, agility, working on becoming quicker -- things like that we do outside. We go out there for about an hour to an hour and 15, then we go into the gym. We do basketball workouts, a lot of ball screens and a lot of shooting. Dan Barto does a great job with us. We go to lunch around 1:00, then we get a little break from 2:00-4:00. At four we come back and we have different vision testing or group settings where we prepare for interviews, things that make you appealing, things like that. At 5:15 we weight lift -- four days a week: upper body two days, lower body two days. We have another basketball workout after that, which can either be playing, shooting, or working out -- we never know until we get there.
JT: That sounds pretty intense and has to be kind of tiring. It sounds like you're basically working 12 hour days.
Kendall Marshall: Yeah, that's about right. I wake up every day at 7:22 and I usually get home around 7:45, so it's a full day, but it's great because we're isolated, there's no trouble we can get into down here -- it's all about working hard and getting ready.
JT: We've heard there are a lot of other players down there preparing -- how does that help you out? Is the competition good there?
Kendall Marshall: It helps out a lot, because when you're around people that are all pushing to accomplish the same goal as you, it makes you work harder. A little ongoing joke we've got down here is who's working hard, who's taking who's money. Given that we're all professionals, that's realistic -- you don't want anybody outworking you and taking your potential money. So we've got guys down here like Moe Harkless, DJO [Darius Johnson-Odom] from Marquette, Bernard James, just to name a few. And we all push each other, so I think we'll all have a good showing in this next month and hopefully everybody makes a roster.
JT: What do you think your biggest strengths are as a player and how would you sell yourself to an NBA GM?
Kendall Marshall: If I were to sell myself… well, I'd ask I my teammates to do it. I feel like if you want to know about a player you should ask who he plays with or who he plays against and they'll give you an honest evaluation. Now I can sit here and say I do a great job of running a team, getting my teammates involved, and ultimately winning -- those are the things I take pride in and I think my teammates would be able to vouch for that.
JT: Have you been keeping in touch with Harrison Barnes, John Henson, and Tyler Zeller as they've been preparing for the draft?
Kendall Marshall: Not so much Z[eller]. He's on his own a lot. But me, John and H[arrison], we talk pretty much every day, whether it's what players we're working out against, who's good from these small schools that you don't hear about too often, and the crazy workouts we're all going through, so we're all sharing stories.
JT: Looking to the NBA, is there anything you feel you could really improve upon or the thing you're spending the most time working on from a skills perspective?
Kendall Marshall: Definitely. I definitely want to become a consistent, knockdown shooter. The last thing I want to be is a liability for any team I'm playing for. I feel like I'm blessed with a gift of getting my teammates involved, but that's not going to matter if guys are defending 10 or 15 feet off of me. And also, working on my body and becoming more flexible -- I think that will help me become quicker on defense. You know, being able to keep guys like Tywon [Lawson], Derrick Rose, and Russell Westbrook, these highly explosive guards -- I'm not trying to shut them down, but I want to be able to contain them and do a good job staying in front of them.
JT: You obviously excel with your point guard game and passing ability, which made your scoring game take a backseat at times. Do you think some people undersell your abilities as a scorer because of that?
Kendall Marshall: It's tough to say. One thing I think I do a great job of is I stay in my lane. Whatever I'm able to do, you're going to see it, but I'm not going to try anything crazy that I can't do. I feel like that's one area if I just do what I'm supposed to do, as opposed to going out here and just showing people I can score 25 if I wanted to.
JT: Can you talk a little bit about how you prepare for the game as a point guard, balance your scoring and passing, the pre-game work you put in watching film and game planning?
Kendall Marshall: A big thing for me is matchups. I feel like the easiest way to score is when you have mismatches. So I want to attack mismatches as much as possible, whether I see that in film or the first couple times down court, a sub comes in -- I want to exploit matchups as quickly as possible. I was blessed this year to have players who were usually better at their position no matter where we wanted to go, so my teammates definitely made it easy for me to prepare for games because they were prepared.
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