T.J. Ford's progress

Here's a nice little article about T.J. Ford and what he's been working on over the summer. We'll see how everything goes Friday when UT plays Georgia.

http://www.austin360.com/aas/sports/extra/bkc_2002/1113ford.html

Here now stands the second coming of T.J. Ford.

Do you see the difference a summer makes? He casts a broader, more chiseled shadow over the basketball court he roams. His shooting form approaches the purity he sees at night when he closes his eyes. The slithering sophomore point guard for the fourth-ranked college team in the country is sturdier, stronger and surer of shot. He leaps higher. He runs longer. He knows more, sees more, thinks more. He imagines more.

And after a disciplined summer of adjustment and change, the 19-year-old Ford wants more, which is why he spent all those hot hours in the company of weights, and which is why he launched as many as 1,000 shots a day in the solitude of Gregory Gym while the rest of the student body was watching The Real World. Ford's world is a different kind of real. This is his basketball team. He intends to lead it to faraway places. This is his show. He believes this is his time. How different is T.J. Ford in his second year at the University of Texas? He even cut the Allen Iverson-style cornrows, he says, to project maturity and growth.

"A year makes a difference," Ford says. "I'm carrying myself a different way. I do different things. I'm a different person this year."

Here stands Ford, a year removed from a freshman season during which he played an average of 32 minutes a game on a tender ankle and still led the nation in assists — the first time in NCAA history a freshman had ever done so — with 8.27 per outing.

He bagged more steals than an Enron officer. He made a steady 77.5 percent of his free throws.

Ford also contributed 10.8 points a game. But the fact that he shot only 41 percent from the field for the season weighed on his mind last spring after Oregon nicked Texas in the NCAA round of 16. With the close of the final news conference of the season, the consensus Big 12 freshman of the year found Texas Coach Rick Barnes and confessed that he wanted to — needed to — improve before the first game of his sophomore year.

Barnes leveled with Ford. "You're gonna have to shoot better." "Let's start Monday," Ford told his coach.

So here stands last season's third-leading scorer for the Longhorns, after a summer spent keeping his elbows in and weight distributed evenly.

"I got in the gym," he says.

Barnes instructed Ford to begin at the beginning. Ford stationed himself under the rim and moved out.

"I threw up a lot of shots," he adds.

Off the screen. Off the dribble. Off the pass. "I worked on all that."

A black nylon bag lay nearby. Ford wanted to eliminate sidespin he created with his left thumb, so he retrieved from the bag a paddle he attached to his palm. He wanted to get the ball out on his fingertips, so he fetched a padded shooting glove for his right hand. He wanted to fire with his arms tighter to his body, so he used an elastic wrap that connected his elbows. He wanted more arc. He wanted a shallower angle on his wrist ****. He wanted better balance. So he centered himself for hours on end and practiced tedious, old-school set shots from windmill-slam range.

"Every day," Ford says.


A change of habits


Here stands the high-school sensation from Houston who could be playing the point right now for nearly any NCAA Division I team in the land.

He never really thought much about mechanics. He never thought so much about how to shoot. He just did.

Certain habits resulted. Ford got away with them in high school, but the college game is different, as he found out. That's why he devoted his summer to shooting form, weightlifting and pickup games at UT, Huston-Tillotson and other courts around town. That's why he learned to respect the contents of the black nylon bag his coach had filled for him.

"We were trying everything," Barnes says. "People talking about it (his shooting) made him more determined than ever."

Ford recruited team managers and trainers to shag balls. He moved slowly out from under the rim, planted himself at the free-throw line then floated out to the perimeter. He ripped threes. He ripped baseline jumpers. He pretended there was an opponent in his face, which sometimes produced moves he cannot reconstruct in conversation. "Whatever move I do, I do," Ford says. It's instinct.

And it's as natural as the first year he played basketball at the YMCA in Baytown. Ford was in kindergarten. He played after school. By the time he was 9, he was playing with teenagers. By the time he was 15, his father, Leo, had him in adult games. By the time he came to UT, Ford had led Sugar Land Willowridge High School in Houston to 62 consecutive wins to end his career there. The run included back-to-back Class 5A state titles.

"I always played ahead of my age."

Then he came to college and Big 12 ball. "I didn't know what to expect," Ford says. "Every game was new. Every practice was new."

Ford strengthened over this past summer, adding 15 pounds to his lithe frame to achieve a playing weight of 165.

His running vertical jump used to be 39 inches. Now it's more than 44. He once squatted only 175 pounds on the ankle he injured in the opener against Arizona last season. Earlier this year, he more than doubled that weight, squatting 355 pounds as the bar bent on his back. And he squatted it three times straight.

"He's the most explosive kid I've ever worked with," says Ford's strength coach, Todd Wright. "He's like a fine race car. You're not going to make him a whole lot faster, but you find a way to keep him tuned."

After all of the work, after all thousands of shots over the summer, here stands T.J. Ford. The veteran.

Can you see the difference?

Can you hear it?

In practice, Ford is louder than he used to be, barking directions, admonishing, complimenting, "just trying to push people," he says. "At the same time, they're trying to push me."

Just listen to them.

"Last year he led by example," says senior forward Chris Ogden. "This year he's doing it vocally."

"He knows what to expect," says Jason Klotz, a sophomore center.

"Always been a leader," says senior forward Deginald Erskin.

"The floor general," says junior guard Brandon Mouton.

"I think it's a combination of confidence and knowledge," says fellow second-year guard Sydmill Harris. "If you don't know what you're doing, it's hard to tell other people what to do."

"That's a big part of his job," adds junior center James Thomas. "That's the main thing: the belief and the trust in him. I don't think a lot of teams have that. He will make the pass. He will hit the open man. He will take the shot."

Here stands T.J. Ford. Complete.