Shawn Long overcomes hurdles to be Sun Belt's next NBA hopeful
Over the last decade, the Sun Belt has strangely become a hot spot for NBA scouts. Shawn Long is just the latest to get noticed, even if it took one heck of a journey for him to get there.
By
Sam Vecenie
•
11 min read
Over the last decade, the Sun Belt Conference has strangely become a hot spot for NBA scouts.
In each of the last three drafts, a player from the league has been taken within the first 40 selections. And even prior to that, the league also had players selected in 2010, 2008 and 2005. Kind of weird, right? Six picks in the last decade is more than any other mid-major league, with the Ohio Valley coming in right behind it with five.
Given that modicum of success, it should come as no surprise that the Sun Belt has yet another NBA Draft prospect in its midst this year. Louisiana-Lafayette's Shawn Long has been on scouts' radars for a while after averaging a double-double in each of his first three seasons. He's a voracious rebounder, has the ability to face-up and knock down 3-pointers, and even has the ability to put the ball on the floor. Plus, he has the kind of frame and body NBA teams look for in power forwards at 6-foot-10, 245 pounds with 7-1.5-inch wingspan.
So yeah, Long's the real deal. But it wasn't always this way. In fact, it's been a pretty wild ride for the self-described "simple dude" to even be in this position.
"I never even thought I would play college basketball ever," Long told CBS Sports. "I just never thought about it. I was just playing basketball. I just liked to play basketball."
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Long grew up in Morgan City, Louisiana, about an hour's drive southeast of the Louisiana-Lafayette campus on the Gulf of Mexico. Particularly, he grew up in the part of the town he referred to as "Across the Tracks," which he said is the most popular part of town, but also the place that can be the most troublesome.
"It’s a small town, everybody knows everybody," Long said. "Not really much to do besides either get in some trouble or play basketball, and luckily I chose basketball."
Playing sports at a young age helped Long and his group of friends stay on the right path, but he was hardly a prodigy. Long was a late bloomer for a variety of reasons. During his early teenage years it seemed that one tragedy after another struck Long's life.
When he was 12 years old, his father died of cancer. That made Long decide to give up the game of basketball for about a year during what is typically some of a young player's formative years learning the game.
"My father was my biggest supporter, so when he died it kind of just took me a while," Long said. "So I just kinda left the game alone for a little while."
"It's something he still struggled with when he got to campus at Lafayette," Louisiana-Lafayette assistant coach Kevin Johnson said. "We talked about it, and it's something that would come out any time he'd feel frustration. You could just see when he got here that he was a young man that really missed his father, and I can identify with that as a 50-year-old man who just lost his father. So it used to come up in conversation."
Right after Long decided to pick up the game again, another tragedy struck. His grandmother, who he was quite close with, died. And that made him reconsider priorities in his life again. It's not that he ever "gave up" on basketball, but imagine being a 14-year-old kid who just lost two of the most important people in his life within under two years. Then sprinkle in that he's growing up in a town with a lot of trouble if you want to go and find it during the formative years of his adolescence. It's enough to really nail down how impressive it is that this situation didn't go in a different way.
"I just talked with my high school coaches and stuff," Long said about how he got over the tragedies. "I didn’t give up on basketball, but at that point I was really just like ‘whatever’ about it. They motivated me and got me back in the gym and stuff. They didn’t give up on me even though I was really hard-headed. Just the things I was dealing with in my life, I didn’t know how to deal with them."
His high school coaches had another thing to work out as well beyond the emotional state of his teenage years. Long was tall for a freshman in high school at around 6-3 or so, but he was overweight.
Weight problems were something that Long struggled with during the early years of his life.
"I was kind of fat for most of my life," Long said with a smile as he showed CBS Sports the picture seen here. "But my high school coach got some pounds off me, and then I had a late three-inch growth spurt."
That got Long up to around 6-7, and it's when he started playing the post. It wasn't perfect at the start. After all, adjusting to getting taller often involves that awkward phase of growing into your body and learning how to use all of the new angles that you're resigned to. But once that happened, that's when playing college basketball became a real possibility for Long.
He blew up on the AAU circuit during the summer between his junior and senior year of high school, ending up playing on the same team as other Louisiana stars like current Baylor forward Rico Gathers and current Northwestern State point guard Jalan West. Eventually, Long bounced up to his current height of around 6-10. That combination of factors led to offers from SEC and Big 12 schools, and ultimately Long chose Mississippi State to start his college career.
"I was young, and when you’re that age the biggest school is always the best," Long said. "This time, it wasn’t the case."
Long ended up being immediately unhappy at Mississippi State. It was Rick Stansbury's last year there, and it's fair it was pretty hectic as Renardo Sidney's issues took up a big portion of Stansbury's time. There was also more news that affected Long's life: he found out right after getting to Starkville that he was about to become a father to a son. So Long decided to transfer at the semester break of his freshman season. And that's where Johnson came in.
Johnson had recently been hired by Ragin' Cajuns coach Bob Marlin as an assistant before the 2011 season. Johnson, a former Morgan City resident not only had a pre-existing relationship with Long's family, but he grew up on the same street as Long's mother, Carolyn.
"He was at Mississippi State in the summer, and his mom had already said to me he was miserable," Johnson said. "I said to her 'Carolyn, the school year hasn't even started yet.' So that conversation ended there. But then after he decided to transfer and got his release, she reached out to me a second time and that's how this came about."
"Bring my baby home," is what Carolyn said, according to Marlin. And that's exactly what happened.
But it wasn't exactly smooth sailing it first at his new university. Long was back home around a lot of his friends, which provided plenty of opportunity for distraction. Also, Long's son, Jace, was born around that time. Finally, his mom and sister were having some health issues, and that took up a lot of Shawn's time mentally along with his son. Basically, there was just so much going on in Long's life that basketball ended up being placed on the backburner yet again.
"That whole time, I was dealing with a lot of things in my personal life," Long said. "So it could have went sour quickly. But coach stuck with me and gave me support that I hadn’t had in a while."
All of the things going on in Long's life though ended up benefitting him that summer though. He was able to apply for hardship waiver from the NCAA, and had it granted. That meant Long was able to play from the jump in his freshman year in Lafayette, and boy did things go well. He averaged 15.5 points and 10.2 rebounds, the only freshman in the country to average a double-double. Those numbers took another leap in his sophomore year up to 18.6 points and 10.4 rebounds per game, and he even added in 2.7 blocks. That was the year Long and his roommate Elfrid Payton led Louisiana-Lafayette back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2005.
It was after this season that Long, the kid who thought he'd never even play college basketball, realized the NBA was actually a possibility. Payton was drafted 10th overall by the Philadelphia 76ers and promptly traded to the Orlando Magic.
"Even during my sophomore year I never thought about the NBA," Long said. "Like, I knew I wanted to play in the NBA, but I didn’t realize how realistic a goal it was. When I saw Elfrid get drafted I thought maybe I got a chance."
Those thoughts led Marlin to sitting him down and making sure he was in the right space mentally before his junior season.
"We talked about it and I told him just because Elfrid got selected that doesn't mean you're next," Marlin said. "You gotta put the work in. And I thought Shawn was listening to a lot of different people and had a lot of people coming at him. Then he didn't get off to a good start his junior year after suffering a foot injury. I think that made him realize 'hey, I have to work at it to make it happen.' And he's done that since."
Long's numbers slipped a bit as a junior, but he still averaged a double-double due to that incredible rebounding ability. This year though, things have been better. He's averaging 18.2 points and 11.9 rebounds per game, and his efficiency has also taken a leap. Long's led the Sun Belt in PER each of the last three seasons, but his 31.2 rating this year is a career high.
What does his coach attribute that to?
"The biggest thing he's improved upon has been his work ethic," Marlin said. "Things came easy to him in high school. He's learned how to work and be consistent in his approach to the game. He loves basketball and he's tried to learn more from an Xs and Os standpoint these last couple of years by studying film and trying to make himself a better player through that."
Even with these great numbers and consistent production though, another one of his coaches thinks he has even more in the tank still. "To be honest with you, I expect more," Johnson said. "I don't think Shawn has reached his full potential. He's 6-10, 250 pounds, he has unbelievable ball skills, an unbelievable knack for rebounding the ball. I coached (Atlanta Hawks forward) Paul Millsap at Louisiana Tech, and Shawn has a better knack for rebounding the ball than Paul. He just doesn't have the motor that Paul had. I used to tell him all the time I'm waiting for him to have a 40 and 20 game. You can walk on the floor and close your eyes and get 16 and 10. That doesn't impress me. My expectations for Shawn are through the roof, and I want him to realize his dreams. Coach Marlin always says I get the reputation of the bad uncle and that I'm hard on him, but I want him to be the best he can be and that's what I truly believe."
That's a lot of weight on the shoulders of a kid that didn't even think he'd play college basketball, has lost two of the people most important to him in his life, and has a son to take care of. But Long takes it in stride, and knows that he still has a long way to go to improve.
"Coming from where I’m from, you’re born knowing you’re not always going to get a fair shake at everything," Long said. "So I just gotta keep working hard, keep pretending I'm not mentioned in the same sentence as the NBA."
And that personal life that for so long plagued him off the floor? It's in the best place it's been in a long time as he's past all of the tragedy and has adjusted to becoming a father.
"I love it," Long said about being a father. "He wants to be just like me. I smile when I look at him, he looks just like me. He wants to play basketball, that’s all he wants to do."
The Sun Belt seems to be in good hands as far as having another player reach the NBA.
Even if it took one heck of a road to get there.
| Sun Belt Players taken in recent NBA Drafts | |||||
| Year | Player | School | Round | Pick | Team |
| 2015 | R.J. Hunter | Georgia State | 1 | 28 | Celtics |
| 2014 | Elfrid Payton | Louisiana-Lafayette | 1 | 10 | 76ers |
| 2013 | Tony Mitchell | North Texas | 2 | 37 | Pistons |
| 2010 | Jeremy Evans | Western Kentucky | 2 | 55 | Jazz |
| 2008 | Courtney Lee | Western Kentucky | 1 | 22 | Magic |
| 2005 | Orien Greene | Louisiana-Lafayette | 2 | 53 | Celtics |
