2019 NBA Draft Prospects: Rui Hachimura preseason scouting profile

June 10, 2024

The Gonzaga locker room at the 2017 Final Four is packed, filled with hundreds of journalists, dozens of staffers and 17 Bulldog players, all waiting — some anxiously, some annoyedly — for the media to address them and ask questions.

Unsurprisingly, the group around All-American Nigel Williams-Goss features 50 or so reporters looking to speak with the unquestioned leader of the team. Freshman Zach Collins is a story too, as the 7-foot center has recently received hype in regard to the NBA Draft and has a decision to make about whether he’ll become Gonzaga’s first one-and-done player. Josh Perkins is known as a good quote, so he gets plenty of coverage, as does loquacious assistant coach Tommy Lloyd, who will play an integral role in the story we’re about to tell.

In the left corner of the locker room sits another player. He’s only seen 130 minutes of court time during the season, so obviously he’s not expected to play a role in the forthcoming championship games. American reporters don’t bother with him, but he’s still not alone. A mini-crowd of Japanese reporters stands around him, and he converses with them in his native tongue while I await my chance to get a question in.

After I do, he speaks in slightly broken, but impressively understandable sentences given that he’s only been in the U.S. for abut seven months. He tells me about how he ended up in America and some of his experiences playing overseas, and we part ways a few minutes and a few questions later with a handshake.

I’m surprised that I’m the only American media member to speak with him in this open locker room setting. After all, the teenager I just took two minutes to chat with is arguably the best long-term prospect at that year’s Final Four. His name is Rui Hachimura, and he’s about to take college basketball by storm before becoming the highest-profile professional basketball player ever out of Japan.

Before we get to the “why,” it’s worth explaining the how. How did Hachimura end up playing basketball while growing up in a baseball-crazed country? How did he get to a small city in eastern Washington, and how is he back at Gonzaga for a third seasons if he’s this good?

Indeed, Hachimura, born to a Beninese father and a Japanese mother, grew up playing baseball. He played for six years until he was about 12, pitching and catching for teams in Toyama, a city on the western coast of Honshu, the main island in Japan. He kept growing, though, and decided that baseball wasn’t for him. He wanted to switch sports, and he decided on track and field. But fate intervened in the form of a friend. He turned to basketball.

“The coach was very welcoming,” Hachimura said. “I hadn’t even played yet, and he looked at me and said, ‘You are on the team.’ And I said, ‘OK, I’ll talk to my mom.’”

From there, Hachimura realized quickly he was a natural due to his athleticism. In an effort to improve his skills, he watched YouTube highlights of high school players in America, including Jabari Parker and Andrew Wiggins. He mimicked what they did on the floor. He stole Wiggins’ spin move, for instance, and started using it to devastating effect. Parker’s one-dribble pull-up jumper also became a staple of Hachimura’s repertoire. It also helped that the coach who immediately allowed him to be on the team despite having never seen him play was also a remarkably supportive influence in spite of Hachimura’s rudimentary talent level.

“The junior high school coach told me every day I was going to the NBA,” Hachimura said. “I couldn’t even dribble or shoot, but he said, ‘You’re going to the NBA.’ And I’m stupid and didn’t know any better, so I believed him.”

Another reason that the NBA appealed to Hachimura: He always wanted to live in the United States. He tried to come to the States for high school, but without any connections it was too difficult to find a landing spot. Instead, he went to Meisei, a high school in Sendai, which is more 225 miles northeast of his hometown. He improved rapidly there and made Japan’s U17 World Championships team that competed in Dubai in 2014. That’s when things get a little bit crazy, and when his dreams started to become a reality. It’s also when Gonzaga and that talkative assistant coach get involved.

Getting to Gonzaga

Tommy Lloyd got into the coaching business nearly two decades ago after a couple of years of low-level pro hoops overseas. He was hired as a graduate assistant at Gonzaga in 2000 when he was 25. As a staff member making about $1,000 a month and supplementing his income by running summer camps, the aspiring coach got advice from Gonzaga coach Mark Few about how to make it in college basketball. “Find your niche in recruiting,” Few, a future Hall of Famer told him, so Lloyd set out to do just that. He was hired as an assistant the following year. Little did Few know at the time that those small words would spring the future of Gonzaga’s long-term recruiting success to life.

Lloyd saw an untapped talent source in Europe and had comfort there from playing professionally for a year in Germany. He started cold-calling teams to make contacts overseas, quickly racking up over $2,000 in debts on a calling card — a significant amount of money for the program back in the early 2000s when it was still firmly a mid-major in status. But Few saw the benefit in it and told Lloyd to continue. Eventually, Gonzaga struck pay-dirt. The Zags brought in players such as Ronny Turiaf, Domantas Sabonis and Elias Harris. They expanded to the Americas by bringing in J.P. Batista from Brazil, then fostered a pipeline of players from Canada, including Kelly Olynyk, Kevin Pangos, and Robert Sacre. Unquestionably, over the past two decades, no program has been as successful in finding talent outside of the United States as the Bulldogs. It all started because Lloyd saw a market inefficiency.

Through these experiences, Lloyd has built up an expertise of where to look to find the diamonds in the rough. And yet in Hachimura’s case, despite the fact that Japan has produced only five Division I scholarship players over the past two decades, Lloyd didn’t exactly have to scour the globe. Rather, all he had to do was look at the top of a statistical table.

Hachimura broke out at the 2014 U17 World Championships. Sure, the United States won the tournament, including a game in which it beat Japan by a seemingly impossible score of 122-38. Even still, Hachimura scored 25 of Japan’s 38 points, including all but one of its 17 first-half points. He led the tournament in scoring at 22.6 points per game on a respectable 43.7 field goal percentage, given that he was Japan’s only scoring option. So doing his due diligence on events such as this, Lloyd noticed Hachimura’s name and set out to find some tape after he caught an interview in which the Japanese star said he wanted to come to the United States.

Lloyd liked what he saw in the brief highlights he found, so he started to do research. He figured out what high school Hachimura attended, found someone who spoke English there and explained why he was reaching out. Then he found out what Hachimura’s grades were like, what his English was like, and whether it was even a possibility that he would qualify for the NCAA and meet Gonzaga’s admission standards. No one at Hachimura’s private high school knew what the standards were for the NCAA, so Lloyd had to explain exactly how Hachimura would get eligible. In 2015, the academically strong school sent Hachimura on unofficial visits to Arizona and Gonzaga, as Joe Pasternack, then a Wildcats assistant, had also caught wind of Hachimura’s impressive exploits.

Based on first impressions, Hachimura seemed as if he was more taken with Arizona.

“That was crazy,” Hachimura said of the trip to Tucson. “It was so many young people in one place. Then after, I came to Spokane. I remember that I was cold, and thought there’s no way I’m coming here.”

But Lloyd stayed after it. He kept emailing and checking in with the recruit. Hachimura did his own research and began to understand the successes of Gonzaga’s international students. And wouldn’t you know it, fate lent its hand in securing Hachimura’s future again. Gonzaga had a game in Japan versus Pittsburgh at the U.S. Marine Corps’ Camp Foster in Okinawa on Nov. 14, 2015. Most people remember that game for the floor being such a slippery disaster that it had to be called at halftime. However, Lloyd remembers the trip a bit more fondly.

“Right after that game, I flew to Sendai, and saw Rui play with his high school team,” Lloyd said. “That was the first time I saw him in person, and from there I offered him a scholarship. We didn’t know if he was going to qualify or get into school because of the English. But we really liked him.”

Hachimura committed to Gonzaga about a week after that, signed his papers and sealed his future NCAA status.

Scouting Report: Finishing touches at Gonzaga

After a confidence-building session with the Japanese national team in the summer of 2017, Hachimura showed up ready to contribute. He had a better grasp on the English language, had a better balance between academics and basketball, (mostly) understood what the coaches were telling him and simply had a better feel of how to work within a team concept. He came off of the bench because Gonzaga’s frontcourt was loaded with pieces from the previous year’s Final Four team, but still made such an impact that he was named first team All-WCC.

Hachimura averaged 11.6 points and 4.7 rebounds per game, and his per-minute numbers were outrageous. He put up 22.4 points and 9.1 rebounds per 40 minutes, leading the team in scoring per minute while also shooting 56.8 percent from the field and posting a 62.4 true-shooting percentage.

The keys that hold Hachimura’s game together are his unique strength, quick first step and ability to extend his strides to cover long swaths of the floor to the bucket. The ability to grab rebounds and lead the break has always been there, as his role with the Japanese youth national team was always to be a primary initiator. With that in mind, it’s easy to see why, instead of patterning some of his game off of Wiggins and Parker at an early age, he now watches Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kawhi Leonard. He showed similar skills at Gonzaga last season, but he augmented them with the little things and team play that the coaching staff so desperately wanted.

He’ll still grab and go, but at other times he’ll run the floor hard, use his unnatural strength for a player his size and establish early post position against defenders who are often smaller than him. At 6-foot-8 with a 7-2 wingspan and a 225-pound frame that continues to put on muscle mass without getting overweight, he has a combination of grab-and-go skills and post footwork that is difficult to stop.

His first step is super quick, and his ability to get on balance for floaters and layups is sublime. It works in both post plays where he can back-spin to beat defenders and in spot-up situations where he can beat defenders in isolation. And if the team gets him the ball on the move, due to his first step and long strides, it ends in a shot at the basket. Away from the ball, he began to learn how to time his back-cuts better, and now he has a better understanding of where the soft spots in defenses are so he can get space to score. He’s not the best vertical athlete, but his length affords him the ability to finish in the lane at a high level. Basically, when he was on the floor, Hachimura acted as a focal point of an offense without necessarily dominating possession.

But none of this makes him a perfect prospect, nor is he a surefire lottery pick. Hachimura had significant defensive lapses last season, even as he improved in the Zags’ scheme. He wasn’t always there in help defense. He might miss a rotation at times. It was the biggest reason why he didn’t play as a freshman, as the language barrier was too difficult to breach in regard to getting him consistently in the right place. But here’s the other thing: His combination of strength and athleticism makes him a switchable playmaker defensively. His instincts for the ball are high. It’s part of the reason he gets out of position. It’s not out of laziness, it’s often out of a desire to get into a passing lane and make a play. The upside is there as soon as he gets the fundamentals down.

Additionally, his jumper remains a work in progress. It’s pretty stiff with little leg bend, and it’ll often flatten out with little arc. That can be an issue as he tries to extend his shot from the midrange — from where he’s comfortable — to the 3-point line, from where he’s made just 28 of his 107 attempts over the last four years for Gonzaga and Japan. This might be the biggest concern NBA teams have. He’s not quite seen as a Giannis-level talent at this stage who can get away without a jump shot, so the ability to shoot is critical in his development. The sky is the limit in many ways for Hachimura, but it’s not a certainty either. There’s still a long road ahead.

“Every game was a learning thing,” Hachimura said. “Every game, I tried to learn one little thing. If I make a mistake, I tried to fix it for the next game. I got more used to playing with those guys. I got more used to the system.”

Despite those flaws, it was unquestionably a successful season because of those experiences.

Following a year such as that, Hachimura could have declared for the NBA Draft and seen where the pre-draft process would have taken him. (Executives who spoke with The Athletic last April believed Hachimura had a chance to be selected after the mid-point of the first round, but that would have depended on his workouts.) Instead, he decided he was not ready yet, so he stuck to the plan of being in Spokane for three years. He decided not to test the waters and instead to prepare to head overseas to play with the Japanese national team as it tried to qualify for the 2019 FIBA World Cup, one year before the Olympics head to Tokyo.

Global footprint

One aspect of Hachimura hasn’t really yet been discussed, and it’s in regard to his global footprint. Already, he is something of a celebrity in his native country. It’s why the media followed him at the 2017 Final Four despite the fact he wasn’t playing, and it’s why he’ll be followed by media all season in Spokane. The Gonzaga media relations staff is expecting him to have a camera crew around him all year. Japan is ready for a basketball star. The country needs one. And he’s the best prospect the country has ever developed; plus, he’s already been instrumental in its recent success.

When he returned to Japan this summer for the national team qualifiers against Austalia, Iran, Taiwan and Kazakhstan, he was arguably the team’s best player along with Nick Fazekas, a naturalized citizen and a former NBA second-round pick . Hachimura led the team in scoring in two of four games, all victories — including one against regional powerhouse Australia. But balancing the culture in America and the Far East is something he is uniquely cognizant of now that he’s become a more talented, mature player.

All of this comes with a certain degree of pressure, especially considering that the NBA and the Olympics, where Japan has qualified as the host nation, have the potential to make him not just a star in his homeland, but to thrust him into global recognition. Naturally, Hachimura has thought about this. Before games, he might even worry about it. But when he goes on the floor, all of it disappears. There’s nothing but him, a ball, a hoop and his teammates.

“I felt pressure, but I know that I just kind of have to do it,” Hachimura said. “That’s what I have to do. I want to work my way up. I think I did a pretty good job (this summer). As a team, we were really nice. I’m really excited for the work up to the Olympics in 2020. I know I have pressure, but it is what it is.”

In that vein, Hachimura should be better equipped than most to deal with the pressure that comes with a collegiate star turn. Those around him feel similarly after having seen him around the program since the end of last season. When I saw Lloyd this summer in Orange County at the adidas Summer Championships, his message for me was simple: “Rui is ready.” The Gonzaga staff genuinely believes he is poised to be a terrific player for a team expected to compete to cut down the nets in 2019.

If he bookends his time at Gonzaga with another Final Four run, this time as an integral piece, expect him to become a household name as he becomes a potential first-round NBA Draft pick and as he leads Japan into the Olympics on his home soil. Heck, even if he doesn’t, the cat most likely is going to be out of the bag by the time the Zags finish up their monstrous non-conference slate.

At the very least, Hachimura can expect an awful lot more attention than what he’s received in the States so far. A star is about to be born in Spokane, even if it took a circuitous, meticulously planned path for him to arrive.

(Top photo by Douglas Stringer/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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