The fire ignited within Chris Singleton when he dropped to the 18th pick in the NBA Draft in April didn’t burn out during the lockout.
“I feel like it’s right after the draft now,” Singleton said Monday after joining Verizon Center workouts with some of his Wizards teammates. “Just a period of time, I didn’t even feel it was there. I went back to school and all that. I still carry that. That, and my family been pushing me. I’m going to put everything on the line.”
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Singleton didn’t lose sleep over the lockout, insisting to everyone who asked him about it, “You never know.”
Instead of worrying, he devoted his time to finishing another semester at Florida State – he’s got one left to graduate – and working on his start-up clothing line.
But at 6-foot-8 and 230 pounds, with the ability to guard three positions, rebound, run the floor and hit an occasional three-pointer – all of which he did on Monday, with ease, to be quite honest – Singleton expects to prove that lottery teams who passed on him, like those who criticized him when he was younger, were mistaken. His first chance is just 10 days away when the Wizards host Philadelphia in their first exhibition game.
“Coming out of high school, they said I didn’t play hard,” he said. “That’s one thing, when I went to college, I talked to coach and basically, I pushed myself, tried to get in the best shape I could be.”
With Singleton, Rashard Lewis, Trevor Booker, Jan Vesely, and perhaps Mo Evans and/or Josh Howard, the Wizards are overflowing at the small forward position, and Wizards head coach Flip Saunders joked last week that he could put five 3’s on the court at once.
“I look at what position you are by what you can guard, and the guys that we have can guard multiple positions,” he said. “Singleton can guard 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, Vesely and Booker can guard different positions. So we don’t have anyone where you can say this is the only position he can guard.
“We have a lot of flexibility up front. We don’t have a lot of duplicate players. They don’t share the same strengths and weaknesses. As a group they’ll complement each other, and I think that a lot of times they can play together.”
While Singleton made cameo appearances all over the country during the offseason to work out with his new teammates, because of the lockout, hehasn’t had the usual offseason exposure to his new head coach that rookies would expect and instead to had to rely on a brief offseason instructions.
“Right after the draft, me and [fellow rookie] Shelvin [Mack] had a chance to spend time with the coaches,” Singleton said. “They basically told us what we can do to earn playing time. We went back and tried to work on that, in this off period. They say training camp is going to be basically conditioning, I feel ready for that.”
Getting a long-awaited NBA paycheck won’t hurt either.
“This is a dream come true,” Singleton said. “The dream really didn’t start until probably, the 11th grade, when people started talking that I had a chance of being in the NBA. I have a shot now. It’s time to show up.”
