Mt. Laurel native, Rider grad Thompson helping Kings rebuild

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on November 26, 2008 at 7:39 PM, updated November 26, 2008 at 8:33 PM
There's no reason for Jason Thompson, left, with teammate Donte Green, to hang his head -- the rookie is one of Sacramento's bright spots this season.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The essence of the NBA life didn't really dawn on Jason Thompson until Monday night, when the Kings were playing at Portland. He was minding his own business, jogging upcourt in a congested transition, when suddenly an elbow appeared out of nowhere and smashed him in the mouth.

Wait, don't say it: It had to be Joel Przybilla, notorious klutz of the Great Northwest. Or maybe one of the Spanish kids -- they all play that way over there.

"No, actually, it was the French kid, that scrawny (Nicolas) Batum," Thompson said, with both humor and embarrassment. "Out of nowhere, he nails me, and I'm like, 'What the heck. . . ?'"

And what did Thompson do about it?

"Ah ... nothing," he said. "I kept playing, and thought about going at him, but I missed a shot, and it kept bleeding and I had to come out. And the guys we had in there were playing well, so ..."

His line that night: Zero points in 18 minutes. The Kings played well but lost. And the rookie who was making the entire league take notice over his four previous games -- averaging 14 points on 56-percent shooting, and 8.5 rebounds -- learned perhaps the first valuable lesson of his 16-game career:

Sometimes you're the hottest rookie in the league, and sometimes you're reduced to a helpless spectator with a bleeding mouth, TKO'd by an inadvertent elbow.

And this was just three days after he rolled up 19 points and 12 boards against the same Blazers team.

"That's just the NBA," Thompson shrugged.

There won't be many nights like that one for the Mt. Laurel native, however. The Sacramento organization knows it. His teammates know it. And Thompson himself knows it.

Because as the Kings' rebuilding program enters its third year, they'll take the positives where they can find them. And Thompson, by most accounts, has been the brightest light of another grim, injury-filled season that continued with Wednesday night's meeting with the Nets at ARCO Arena.

"He's hungry. He soaks things in like a sponge. He wants to play, he wants to succeed, he wants to make this team a better team. And he knows his potential," teammate Mikki Moore said Wednesday. "He's not the average lottery pick type guy. Some of those guys think they know everything. Not with him. He asks questions, and that's a good thing."

For the record, one of those questions is not, "What am I doing here?"

The 22-year-old from Rider University -- that great Lawrenceville institution that hadn't produced an NBA player since the Truman Administration (somebody named Herb Krautblatt) -- has very little time for self-doubt. He plays without ego, but he also plays without fear -- that comes with being a 6-11, 250-pounder who can run and jump with anybody in the league -- and he's heard since his arrival that he has the potential to be one of the most versatile big men in the business.

Consider this: He's starting at small forward right now, because the Kings have run out of healthy wings. Given that he was 5-11 just seven years ago (and 6-7 as recently as his senior year at Lenape High), the skills required to play the three-spot were already a part of Thompson's game.

"If he can guard a 3, he can play the 3," said Kings coach Reggie Theus, who will nonetheless use his rookie at all three frontcourt positions. "He shoots it well enough. He runs the floor, handles it well enough, passes it well enough, that he can be a multifaceted player."

"I went from shooting guard for two years in high school to the starting center as a senior," Thompson said. "So having those guard skills, having a good amount of handle and shooting a lot, then growing into a big man's body -- you end up with an inside-outside game with dribbling ability."

But why is this coming so easy, even for the No. 12 pick of the draft? Didn't he expect more games like the oh-fer in Portland, instead of the 11-and-7 he gives the Kings nightly while playing out of position?

Hasn't he learned anything over the past two months that he wasn't prepared for?

Of course he has: "It's mostly about how your body feels, how you have to take care of it," Thompson said at Wednesday's shootaround. "We've played 16 regular-season games, and eight preseason games -- that's pretty much a college season right there.

"I know how tired I was last year at Rider. But now it's another level, and you have to learn how to stay mentally and physically strong, and get used to the travel, and get used to playing guys who are a lot more experienced and just as quick and strong as you are."

Everyone's first impression of this kid -- not the player, the person -- is the same: Wow. Engaging, charismatic, telegenic, speaks in complete sentences. The son of an exec in the UPS technology department (his dad) and a medical case manager for school employees (his mom), Thompson was always given the freedom to pursue his NBA dream. He played in China with a MAAC All-Star team when he was 17. He was invited to all the major camps after his junior year at Rider -- even matching up with the headliner at the LeBron James Camp in the summer of '07 at Akron.

"That was the eye-opener for me," Thompson said. "I was a prospect because of the numbers I put up, but they were still saying, 'Oh, he's from a small school, he's not tested.' That's what I had to deal with. I had to prove that summer that I was one of the best in the country, and at that camp, I held my own against all the best college players, I thought. Went at LeBron a little bit, too."

Which leads to the obligatory cliche alert: Thompson still won't forget where he came from, because he understands how rare it is for a guy to play for the Rider Broncs one year and then match up with Tayshaun Prince or Stephen Jackson the next.

Yes, he said, he still carries the mantle for every small-school player with the same dream.

"You don't hear about many (NBA) people coming from Rider," said Thompson, whose brother Ryan -- a junior with the Broncs -- figures to be in some NBA camp in a few years. "It's good to be one of the few guys in this era to come from a school that size. It can be a great thing, too."

He cites a poignant example: Recently, Thompson received a letter from a high-schooler in Virginia, who was being recruited by a few medium-sized Division 1 schools, but mostly smaller ones in his home state. The writer told Thompson that he had become his touchstone.

"So he told the bigger schools that he's going to pass down and go to the smaller D-1 school," he said. "He said he wanted to stay local and stay at a smaller school. He said that because of me, he knew he had a chance. And that means a lot: That's the impression I want to leave with kids -- it doesn't matter the size of school you go to. If you have talent, they're going to find you."

He paused there, perhaps reflecting on yet another lesson of an NBA life.

"I mean," he said, "do you know what it's like to have an influence on kids' lives like that?"