{"id":527421,"date":"2019-03-11T16:06:05","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T20:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=527421"},"modified":"2019-04-08T17:20:16","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T21:20:16","slug":"rui-hachimura","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/the-magazine\/rui-hachimura\/","title":{"rendered":"Gonzaga Star Rui Hachimura Is Set to Make History \ud83c\uddef\ud83c\uddf5"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rui Hachimura<\/a> knew it was coming because it always happened. For two weeks, his life was straight out of Groundhog Day<\/em>. A 13-year-old junior high student at the time, Hachimura would walk into class, sit in his seat and just wait for that inevitable daily plea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou should join our basketball team,\u201d his friend would say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hachimura did not have any interest. Basketball was too hard, he\u2019d say, and like many other boys growing up in Japan, he had dreams of excelling on the baseball diamond. But after two weeks of the daily request, his priorities changed. He didn\u2019t care about which sport he wanted to play. Hachimura just wanted his friend to leave him alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t really want to play basketball, but he was so annoying,\u201d Hachimura says. \u201cI agreed to go one time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he got there, he met the basketball coach, who had a message of his own, one a little less annoying and a little more enticing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe first time I met my coach, he told me I could go to the NBA,\u201d Hachimura says. \u201cI was kind of stupid so I believed him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It sounded stupid because it seemed nearly impossible. No Japanese-born player had ever been selected in the NBA draft, and Yuta Tabuse\u2019s four-game stint with the Phoenix Suns in 2004 was the only time a Japanese native even got a taste of NBA action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Hachimura, the son of a Beninese father and a Japanese mother, is blazing a new trail. Now a 6-8 junior at Gonzaga, he is a projected NBA lottery pick in every 2019 mock draft you can find. He\u2019s already the first man from his country to play in the NCAA tournament and the fifth to ever play Division I men\u2019s basketball. As of March 11, he\u2019s averaging a team-high 20.6 points per game and has the No. 1 ranked Bulldogs (29-2) among a handful of teams with very realistic hopes of a national title. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot many people have ever done what he\u2019s trying to do,\u201d says Gonzaga assistant Tommy Lloyd, who recruited Hachimura. \u201cThis is probably the first player from Asia we ever looked at.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Hachimura didn\u2019t start playing basketball until he was 13 years old, it didn\u2019t take him long to get on Gonzaga\u2019s radar. At the 2014 U-17 World Championships in Dubai, he led all players in scoring average (22.6 ppg), which was enough to get the Bulldogs\u2019 interest. A year later, they secured his commitment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Above anything else, there was one reason why he wanted to go to college in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of my goals was to be in the NBA,\u201d Hachimura says. \u201cI knew if I didn\u2019t speak English, I really couldn\u2019t play in the NBA. I thought it was a good idea to go to college first.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Hachimura was a rising star in his own country, he knew relatively no English while he was in high school. He would often fake it or just avoid talking when others spoke English around him. This became a problem at Gonzaga, as he needed to reach certain collegiate and NCAA standards to play. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was No. 1 in everything he did,\u201d Lloyd says. \u201cHe had to improve his language skills.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hachimura eventually met the standards he needed to, but there was still a long way to go. In 2016, months prior to his enrollment, Hachimura told reporters that he understood 80 percent of English and could speak about 40 percent. Zach Collins<\/a>, his Gonzaga teammate during Hachimura\u2019s freshman year, remembers him being very quiet when they first met, and it was a few weeks before the two could have a conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe could understand you, but it was just him getting the words out that was more of a struggle,\u201d says Collins, now a member of the Portland Trail Blazers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As a freshman, Hachimura used every resource he could. When he wasn\u2019t at the athletic facility, he was at Gonzaga\u2019s English Learning Center. And in practice, he leaned heavily on Gonzaga\u2019s team video coordinator Ken Nakagawa, whose parents were both Japanese, to help him understand what the coaches were saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the first things he told me was that he didn\u2019t want to speak in Japanese at all,\u201d Nakagawa says. \u201cHe wanted everything to be English. I would just dumb it down to elementary school level.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t an overnight success. As a freshman in 2016-17, Gonzaga made the Final Four, but Hachimura played less than five minutes per game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was harder than what I expected,\u201d Hachimura says. \u201cThe culture is totally different. The language is different. I started feeling comfortable when I could communicate with my teammates and coaches.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That level of comfort wasn\u2019t fully achieved until after his first season. With the language barrier a little broken down, Hachimura could devote more of his time to improving his on-court skills. First and foremost, that meant getting physical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At 6-8 and 230 pounds, Hachimura had the frame to wreak havoc, but he wasn\u2019t used to playing that style in Japan. The Gonzaga coaches got on him for it, and midway through his sophomore season, in a road loss to San Diego State, things finally clicked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was the first time he used his body and tools to take advantage of his advantages,\u201d Lloyd says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From that game forward, Hachimura led the Bulldogs in scoring. And in his junior year, he has looked even better, opening the campaign with a career-high 33 points in a win against Idaho State and dropping 25 or more on four other occasions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was a better shooter and more skilled than we thought,\u201d Idaho State coach Bill Evans says. \u201cHe\u2019s going to make a lot of money some day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While a hefty professional contract seems like a formality at this point, it\u2019s the untapped basketball market of Japan that makes Hachimura one of the most intriguing NBA prospects in a long time. Although Hachimura is only half-Japanese, something he believes will hamper his marketability back home, he\u2019s the basketball star of a country with a growing interest in the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nakagawa says there is a big gap between basketball and Japan\u2019s more popular sports like baseball and soccer, but that gap may be diminishing. The B.League, founded after a merger between two former Japanese leagues in 2015, has increased the scope of professional basketball in the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there\u2019s Hachimura\u2019s already growing popularity. His success on the national team made him a celebrity among Japan\u2019s basketball community, and that has only increased since he left for Gonzaga, as a handful of his games are re-aired on Japanese television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The timing could not be more perfect, as Tokyo is set to host the 2020 Olympics. While that will bring many NBA stars to Japan, Hachimura figures to be front and center as the face of the national team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe general public has no idea who he is or what kind of significance he has to the game,\u201d Nakagawa says. \u201cI think 2020 will be another landmark opportunity to make basketball popular in Japan, and I think Rui will have a big part in that for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GRAB YOUR COPY OF SLAM PRESENTS THE GREATEST COLLEGE PLAYERS OF ALL TIME HERE.<\/a><\/strong>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Casillo is a contributor to SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @dcasillo<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photos via Getty.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rui Hachimura knew it was coming because it always happened. For two weeks, his life was straight out of Groundhog Day. A 13-year-old junior high student at the time, Hachimura would walk into class, sit in his seat and just wait for that inevitable daily plea. \u201cYou should join our basketball team,\u201d his friend would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":527525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49436,49435],"tags":[141,62482,61395],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-527421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-hs","category-the-magazine","tag-gonzaga-bulldogs","tag-rui-hachimura","tag-slam-220"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527421"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":527954,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527421\/revisions\/527954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527421"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=527421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}