I profiled two former great KU big men in Raef LaFrentz and Drew Gooden in my previous blog posts. Now, here comes another one who’s made his mark in the NBA while truly embracing his role as the consummate blue-collar player.
No. 8 Nick Collison
After dominating the Big 12 and earning first-team consensus All-American and NABC Player of the Year honors his senior season while leading Kansas to the national championship game, Nick Collison was deemed a surefire lottery pick in the 2003 NBA Draft.
It was just a matter of how high he would go.
With the No. 9 pick of the draft, New York went big by picking Georgetown power forward Mike Sweetney. Collison’s name was called three picks later by Seattle.
ESPN’s Dick Vitale said the Knicks made a huge blunder in passing on Collison, who averaged 18.5 points and 10.0 rebounds in 2002-03 while grabbing a whopping 23 boards in a game against Texas.
“He’s a gamer,” Vitale said during the draft broadcast. “I think the Knicks are going to certainly regret not taking him up there over Sweetney. This kid is an absolute gamer — makes shots, plays on the defensive end. He’s unbelievable on the glass. He was a double-double guy last year, just a flat-out winner.”
Fourteen years later, history shows Vitale was correct. Sweetney, who battled weight problems, lasted just four years in the NBA with New York and Chicago. Collison, meanwhile, has been a rock-solid “gamer’ for 13 seasons (he was injured his first year and didn’t play) with the same franchise that drafted him (Seattle moved to Oklahoma City in 2008-09), a rarity to play with one organization for so long in today’s game.
Throughout his career, Collison has endeared himself to the Thunder faithful, his coaches, management, teammates, and national media with his nonstop hustle and blue-collar play. A true winner, Collison has helped lead the Oklahoma City Thunder to one NBA Finals berth in 2012 and four Western Conference Finals appearances. Never a big stat guy, Collison’s true worth has come with all the intangibles, including fiery competitiveness, basketball I.Q., mean screens, drawn charges, post defense, and boxing out and rebounding, while being a great teammate and serving as an outstanding ambassador for the franchise.
Collison’s best years statistically were his third-to-fifth years in the NBA when he averaged 9.6 points and 8.1 rebounds in 2006-07, a career-high 9.8 points and 9.4 boards in 2007-08 (his 254 offensive rebounds ranked 10th in the league, while he also recorded 23 double-doubles) and 8.2 points and 6.9 rebounds per game in 2008-09.
The 6-10 forward’s production has dropped the last few years in the twilight of his career, playing in a career-low 20 games this past season and averaging 1.7 points and 1.6 rebounds in 6.4 minutes per contest. But Collison produced in the minutes he got, shooting an impressive 60.9 percent from the field. He ended the season at home against Denver on April 12 with six points, two rebounds and one assist, while receiving a huge ovation from the fans who have grown to love “Mr. Thunder” for what he’s meant to the franchise his entire career.
This may or may not have been his last game with Oklahoma City; Collison is a free agent this summer for the first time in his career and has no plans to retire yet at age 36.
“I plan to play for sure,” Collison said during his exit interview in April. “I wasn't sure going into the season how I would feel at the end of the year, but I still enjoy playing, and I enjoy being around the group. I enjoy being on the team, and I still think I have something to offer.”
He would certainly like to continue his career with the Thunder. Collison has loved every minute of his experience in Oklahoma City.
“It's just first class,” Collison told NBA.com on June 1. “The organization will always try to figure out the best way to do something, and they'll put in the work, the effort to try to do it the best way. That's all you can ask for as a player. The people that work here enjoy it and they're treated well.”
“I've been treated great here, and I've had great experiences here, and it's been the best basketball years of my life for sure playing here,” Collison added.
Oklahoma City General Manager Sam Presti thinks extremely highly of Collison.
“He represents the type of player that we want to ultimately have our organization embody,” Presti told The Oklahoman on March 29, 2014. “His fingerprints are all over the success of the organization, and those fingerprints will have a lot of staying power.”
The former KU All-American spoke to me in October 2010 before an NBA exhibition game against the Miami Heat at Sprint Center in Kansas City how he had to reinvent himself in the pros after being such a prolific scorer and dominating player in college. He just wanted to find his niche as a blue-collar energy player who defended, rebounded, and did all the intangibles.
“I think that’s what I have to do to be on the floor and that’s what I have to do to be productive,” Collison said. “I’ve been able to find a way to help a team. That’s what I wanted to do when I got to the league. I went into it knowing I can’t expect necessarily what I’ll be in five years, but hopefully I can find away to stick and fill a role, and I think I’ve been able to do that.”
He didn’t miss being a star at Kansas. Instead, he’s been the true role player playing with such star teammates as Ray Allen, Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant.
“I never had a stretch where I looked back longingly on the days where I scored 20 points per game,” Collison said.
Collison, though, said it was a learning curve when he entered the NBA.
“I don’t think it was an adjustment in terms of I felt something was missing, but the actual things I was doing was different,” Collison said. “I wasn’t catching the ball in the low block a lot and playing with my back to to the basket a lot. I had to find other ways to find offense. (I was also) guarding a lot of pick and roll situations, which I didn’t do in college so I had to learn how to get good at that.”
He has always been great at sacrificing his body and drawing charges, leading the NBA in that category in 2009-10.
"He likes it in his own crazy way,” former OKC coach Scott Brooks told The Oklahoman in March 2010. "It gets him juiced up. It he gets one it gets him fired up to get two in a row. He’s probably the best I’ve ever been around. Ten years from now when he’s close to retiring, he’ll be doing the same thing.”
Brooks, indeed, loved Collison’s competitive fire.
“You could put him for five minutes or for 35 minutes, he’s going to give you everything he has,” Brooks told The Oklahoman during the 2014-15 season.
Collison has always made OKC better when he’s on the floor. ESPN’s Tom Haberstroth wrote on the website on Jan. 25, 2015, that “as far back as 2011, Collison has been known as a ‘No-Stats All-Star’ in the same ilk as Shane Battier for his lofty plus-minus that placed him among superstars. Collison does a ton of positive things -- sets screen, takes charges, boxes out -- that aren't picked up in the box score. And he takes great pride in that.”
Collison, who has served as a great mentor in his latter years to the young Thunder big men, feels lucky the Oklahoma City fans deeply respect his hard work. The crowd roars when Collison makes one of his patented hustle plays.
“I feel like they really appreciate what I do, and I know that’s rare for a player like me,” Collison told The Oklahoman in March 2014. “A role player like me who averages four (points) and four (rebounds) or whatever it is, no one really thinks twice about him. But I know that I have kind of a special place here. So I really appreciate that.”
For his NBA career, Collison has played in 895 games (177 starts) and averaged 6.0 points (5,328), 5.2 rebounds and 1.0 assists in 20.7 minutes per game while shooting 53.3 percent from the field (No. 35 all time) and 72.6 percent at the free throw line. His 11.1 offensive rebounding percentage ranks No. 42 all time while his 114.6 offensive rating is No. 59. Meanwhile, Collison’s 54.1 2-point field goal percentage ranks No. 10 among active players and No. 33 all time.
According to basketballreference.com, Collison has earned $57,993.990.
This Iowa Falls native’s NBA career was all made possible by what he accomplished at Kansas, where Collison enjoyed a magical four-year career from 1999-2003. He led Kansas to two Final Fours, including a trip to the national championship game against Syracuse in 2003. Collison ranks as KU’s second all-time leading scorer, third-leading rebounder and fourth-leading shot blocker, the only Jayhawk to be listed in the top-four in those three categories.
Collison’s No. 4 jersey was retired in Allen Fieldhouse on Nov. 25, 2003.
Collison told me he loved playing for head coach Roy Williams, who made him better both on and off the court.
“He was huge for me and my development,” Collison said that day in Sprint Center in 2010. “Coming from high school to college, it’s a huge transition for everybody, whether you’re a basketball player or not so to have a mentor like that was big for me evolving as a person and as a basketball player. Basketball wise, I picked up a lot of good habits that have allowed me to play at this level, and allowed me to stick around at this level. Preparation, certain things actually on the basketball court. Toughness is a big thing I got from him.”
Williams called Collison a gem to coach.
“With Nick, you tell him something one time, show him how to do it, explain what you want him to do, then go on to something else because you’ll never have to show him again. He was the most fundamentally sound player I’ve ever received out of high school,” Williams told The Oklahoman in December 2010. “His dad did a great job with him in high school. That was a great foundation for him. He had more post moves than anybody I’ve ever seen since Kevin McHale. On top of that, he’s one of the fiercest competitors I’ve ever seen, so coachable. ... I don’t know if I’ve ever had anyone easier to coach than Nick Collison.”
Williams recalled one of his favorite stories regarding Collison, how he helped spur the Jayhawks to an Elite Eight victory over Arizona in 2003.
“I kneeled down in front of the team and said a couple of little things,” Williams related. “I said, ‘Anybody got anything to add?’ and Nick said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to the Final Four. If you guys want to go along with me, get your act in gear.’”
KU got in gear and marched to the national championship game before falling to Syracuse. Collison ended his collegiate career with 19 points and 21 rebounds, the second-most rebounds in a championship game and the most in 47 years.
While it was a bitter loss, Collison relished his college years.
“I really had a great experience in college,” Collison said. “I would recommend KU, I would recommend playing for coach Williams. The stuff I went through was great for me.”
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