Unselfish Gordon named USA Basketball's top athlete

“I didn’t quite get the defenses that some of the older guys did,” Gordon said. USA starting forward Montrezl Harrell “had already been in the Louisville program and understood the defenses, how to guard on-balls, how to guard screens.”

Besides, Gordon said, USA coach Billy Donovan of Florida wanted to start a more experienced lineup and have him be “a spark off the bench.”

That was an understatement.

Gordon wound up leading USA in both scoring (12.6) and rebounding (6.2) to earn MVP honors in the U19 World Championships, while the U.S. team romped through the event with eight blowout wins and a 9-0 record.

Gordon’s performance and willingness to sacrifice, plus his nine-point performance against international players in the Hoop Summit game, earned him USA Basketball’s male Athlete of the Year award on Tuesday.

En route to a perfect 17-0 start this season, the No. 1 Wildcats have seen many of the same traits in their well-decorated 6-foot-9-inch freshman forward.

Gordon starts for Arizona, but creates much of his own offense outside of alley-oop passes. He’s shown a willingness to play both forward spots and assume tough defensive assignments, and has described himself as a “glue guy.”

That overall package is so consistent with what Donovan told UA coach Sean Miller before the season that Miller said, “I could press the tape recorder and say the same things that Billy said to me.”

Which are:

“That Aaron Gordon is a winner. That he’s a fantastic teammate,” Miller said. “And when you describe his game, you don’t necessarily put your finger on one thing, but you learn to appreciate the whole — how he defends, how he runs the floor, the fact that he can pass and rebound.

“The way he scores is sometimes unique, but by the same token, in our game today, blends well with other really good players.”

There’s also this: Gordon is better than he was last summer.

Part of that stems from the U19 experience, which may have helped him as much as it helped USA Basketball. Gordon said he enjoyed the chance to pick the brains of older players, and found that their work ethic matched his.

He also enjoyed the chance to be a high-level gym rat all summer.

Yes, he even liked the practices.

“You get a lot out of practice,” said Gordon, 18. “I jumped at the chance to play U19 because you have two-a-days. Eat, sleep and play basketball. That’s what I love to do. That’s really beneficial.”

Gordon, who said it also expanded his comfort zone adjusting to European styles of play, didn’t stop practicing when he left the U19 event for Tucson in July.

He spent the second summer semester at UA and continued to work on his shooting, which Miller said has improved “remarkably” since then.

Physically, and maybe, mentally, he is shooting 50 percent from the field, but while he’s only made a third of his three-pointers and has hovered under 50 percent from the free-throw line, Gordon said his approach at the line has already changed. The San Jose, Calif., native hit two late free throws to help seal UA’s win at UCLA last Thursday, after missing two others in the final five minutes.

“I just feel different in my free throws altogether,” said Gordon, who is averaging 12.2 points and 7.9 rebounds a game. “My first two (at UCLA), I hit the back iron, and I thought they were going in. So the next time I was like, ‘OK, these two are definitely going in.’”

But while he’s tried to add to his game, Miller said, Gordon has also not subtracted. He’s still the same monster dunker he was in the McDonald’s All-American game, for one thing, as his SportsCenter Top 10 appearances suggest.

“He’s always on a quest to improve, and when you’re on that quest, sometimes you can forget what makes you so good — and that’s his ability to rebound among the best in the game, his ability to be really aggressive off the dribble,” Miller said. “It’s a balancing act.

“I’m sure there are times where he’ll say, ‘I’ve got to get back to what I do better,’ and yet at the same time, part of him coming to Arizona is to have things when he leaves here that he didn’t have when he came.”

Gordon has done that in an environment that does not foster patience. Not only has he been hyped as a member of this season’s freshmen elite, but he’s even had McKale Center fans sarcastically cheering his made free throws.

All that might suggest he must improve right here, right now, but Gordon remains on his own schedule.

“Everybody’s going to have expectations, but I don’t live for people’s opinions, and it’s kind of a daily thing where the pressure goes up and down,” he said. “But then I kind of relax myself by saying, ‘All we need to do is win.’

“That’s what I’m saying. If you win, and I think I know how to win with a team like this, then the pressure is nonexistent.”