U-M's Caris LeVert reassured by Kevin Durant: 'You'll be brand new'
Michigan guard, recovering from a foot injury, remains optimistic as 15 NBA teams talk to him, including Pistons
CHICAGO – Every conversation for Caris LeVert starts the same.
With each of the 15 teams he’s met at the NBA draft combine, they spend the first half asking the same questions: How’s your foot? When will you be better? Why does it keep happening?
The repetition can be mind-numbing and depressing. But a different discussion has kept LeVert sane and confident.
Meeting with Oklahoma City Thunder star Kevin Durant -- who shares the Roc Sports Nation agency and had the same doctor, Martin O’Malley, operate on his foot -- was reassuring.
“He said, ‘Once Doc finishes with you, you’ll be like brand new,” LeVert said today at the combine. “Stay with the course. It’s a long process. Don’t get anxious.”
Hearing from a star such as Durant would be a star-struck moment for many players, but LeVert is adopting the mentality that he belongs in the NBA.
“It felt good -- he definitely was one of my favorite players growing up,” said LeVert, whose high school nickname was “Baby Durant” because of his long arms and varied skills. “I’m going into the NBA now, so that’s either a teammate or someone I’m playing against.”
Seeing Durant’s recovery after his surgery last spring, almost exactly a year before LeVert’s, should soothe NBA teams who are only watching LeVert hobble around Chicago on crutches with a boot on his left foot.
Like Durant, LeVert’s injury was to the fifth metatarsal of his foot (a Jones fracture). LeVert’s injury was to his left foot, though, and Durant’s to his right.
The Jones fracture is slightly different than the two surgeries LeVert had on his left foot the previous two years, but he now has a defined recovery table.
There’s about a week more on crutches, 4-5 more weeks in his boot and then maybe a month until he’s full speed, likely in July.
“I got some X-rays a couple weeks ago and they look good,” he said, adding he went through the medical exam at the hospital this week and the teams will see his tests from that. “Everything’s healing up on time.”
Most of his work in Los Angeles these days is ball-handling and weightlifting so the teams he’s met, including the Detroit Pistons, have focused on his injury recovery and his background, growing up, developing and emerging.
After his sophomore and juniors seasons at U-M, LeVert sought NBA feedback and decided to return to school, hoping for a splash senior season. That didn’t happen, as he injured his foot Dec. 30 at Illinois and only returned to play one half of one game the rest of the year.
Those first two months of action put enough film out there to make him a tantalizing point guard at 6-foot-7.
U-M coach John Beilein points to that Illinois game, before the injury, when LeVert was showing off his point guard skills.
“Do you remember the play against Illinois?” Beilein said today. “He drove baseline, and they covered those two guys. He went underneath and threw a wraparound with his left hand. That was like an ‘ah ha’ moment for me.”
Beilein always thought LeVert would be an intriguing point guard at 6-foot-7. Even with the injury, LeVert is hearing his name all over the place, from as high as the No. 18 pick to as low as No. 45. The best sign, though? Having 15 teams want to meet with him and showing interest.
“It sucks not being able to be out there but I was in college for four years, so they probably know my game inside and out,” LeVert said. “I’ve heard that I’m a combo guard this week, honestly. They said point guard, shooting guard, small forward, all of those things.”
The mere fact that NBA teams are talking about that makes LeVert optimistic. He’s gotten used to waiting over the past two years.
Just attending the combine and answering questions about entering the NBA is more than he imagined four years ago. When his current agent Joe Branch began approaching his mother and brother after his freshman year at U-M and starting the conversation, it seemed more realistic.
And because Branch waited to approach LeVert until after his season was over, there was respect for the process.
Now, everything is real.
“I was just trying to go D-I through high school and when I got to Michigan, that slowly became a dream of mine, a goal of mine,” LeVert said.
Contact Mark Snyder at msnyder@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @mark__snyder.