Billy Donovan has continued to recruit these types of players, and it is hard to ignore the trend of recruiting the sons of former NBA players. There also seems to be some correlation with how mature these sort of kids are as basketball players.
It also is a great blessing for the Gators to have much of the class of 2004 back on campus working out and playing pickup with our current guys this summer. Hopefully their work ethic will be contagious. It would be nice to see these guys' hustle rub off on the players in a very similar fashion.
Returning Players:
Nick Calathes had spent time working out and playing with former Florida Gator Jason Williams. Nick has developed a rare sense of the game that is beyond his years. A lot of that probably has to do with spending some time with NBA players like Jason Williams.
Jai has a brother, John Lucas III, that played at Oklahoma State and is remembered for hitting the game-winning shot that knocked out Jameer Nelson's previously undefeated St. Joseph's ball club while simultaneously sending Oklahoma State to the Final Four. He had a brief NBA career with the Houston Rockets.
Jai's father, John Lucas II, went to the University of Maryland, where he was an All-American as a basketball player and a tennis player. He had a 14-year NBA career that included an NBA finals appearance with the Houston Rockets in 1986. Jai's father later returned to the NBA as a coach with the San Antonio Spurs, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Philadelphia 76ers.
Jai came to Florida as an extremely smart and mature player who was able to hold his own his freshman year. He clearly had benefited from competition with his brother and his father's coaching. The only way that Jai may have slipped mentally last year was that he changed the way he played the game after he took a brutal hit in the lane during the Vandy game last year. However, I have heard that he is once again fearlessly attacking the lane like he used to.
In a year or two (or three):
Erik Murphy plays for the New England Playaz, who are coached by former NBA player John Carroll. Erik Murphy's father, Jay Murphy, was a former Boston College standout and NBA player. His coach John Carroll says that he is not surprised at how good Erik is due to the fact that his father was such a great player.
The great thing about Erik is his mature approach to the game. One example of this would be his game against Derrick Favors in the Peach Jam finals. One of the criticisms of Erik Murphy's game is that he has fallen in love with his jump shot and that he is too weak to play in the low post. Well, Erik made it a point to show to everyone that they were wrong. Erik took it to Favors, scoring all of his points down low in the paint while shooting an extremely high percentage.
Clearly, Erik has learned how to work on his game and become a better basketball player. The reason that Erik decided to go to Florida was the fact that he watched how Al Horford progressively got better each year. He says that he would like to see the same sort of progress from himself. He has a very mature attitude about it all.
Austin Rivers is young, but he has the nasketball I.Q. of a 20-year-old. He is a lot like Nick Calathes coming out of high school. There is just no one that is a close second when it comes to basketball I.Q. He is the son of former NBA player and current coach of the Boston Celtics, Doc Rivers.
A lot of college scouts say that Rivers is better than Brandon Knight, the top player in the class of 2010, and Kenny Boynton right now, and he is only a sophomore in high school. He gets to spend lots of time around NBA players, so it makes sense that his game would be at the top of the class and up there with the best regardless of class. He is by far the best player in the class of 2011.
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