TJ Warren’s rise from NC State to NBA scoring leader
Dwayne West has seen the warning signs before.
Before T.J. Warren’s time at N.C. State, before he played for the Indiana Pacers and long before the NBA’s restart in the bubble in Orlando this season, West knew when his former player was about to get hot. He saw it when Warren scored 47 points against the Russian International Team as a youngster. West witnessed it again when Warren scored 43 against an opposing AAU team.
It’s a small, subtle sign that West looks for, a certain bounce in Warren’s step. And if West sees it early in a game, he knows whomever Warren is playing against could be in trouble.
Warren, who played under West at Garner Road AAU from the time he was 12 until he was 17, has been the talk of the NBA lately. The 6-8, 215 pound forward, who played for the Wolfpack from 2012-14 and was the 2014 ACC Player of the Year, leads the NBA in scoring in the bubble, averaging 34.8 points per game.
Warren is shooting 60.5 percent from the field and 55.6 percent from three. In the Pacers’ first game after its restart on Aug. 1, Warren exploded for a career-high 53 points. He has scored 30 or more in four of the five games in Orlando, including 39 Saturday night in a 116-111 win over the Los Angeles Lakers.
TJ Warren’s first season with the Pacers
This is Warren’s sixth season in the NBA, and his first with the Pacers after spending five seasons in Phoenix. Before the NBA suspended play in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, Warren was averaging 18.7 points.
In the Pacers’ opening game against Philadelphia on Aug. 1, Warren began his breakout. West remembers the start of that game.
“I think he hit a three, then he hit a post up turnaround for a short mid-range shot,” West told The News & Observer Sunday morning. “Then he had a transition when he was on the wing and they dumped it off to him for an and-one. Then he got the ball coast-to-coast and he finished it, I was like, ‘oh boy,’ it’s going to be a long day for them jokers.”
West saw the hop. That same hop he sees when Warren is about to score at will.
“It’s very light,” West said. “When he shoots it, there’s a little hop, a little thing he does on his back pedal or when he takes that first step after the shot that tells me he’s feeling it. I saw that.”
Wayne Wooten didn’t notice the hop, but like West, he knew Warren was due to become a breakout player sooner or later. Wooten runs the Ultimate Basketball Association Summer Showcase, a summer league held in Garner where Warren led his team to consecutive championships the summers of 2018 and 19.
UBA rosters are filled with former and current college players, G-League journeymen and a few active NBA players like C.J. Williams and twins Cody and Caleb Martin, also former N.C. State players. Over those two summers, Warren never missed a game and attacked the Sunday contest like it was an NBA game, averaging more than 30 points.
“He was diving on the floor in the summer league. Loose balls, he’s going to get it,” Wooten said. “He was playing harder than those guys and like I said, he never missed a game. Even if he had to fly back he never missed a game. He takes it very seriously.”
Getting traded
Wooten and West both said that when Warren wasn’t playing during the summer league, he was still in the gym working on his game. His goal last summer was to improve his three-point shooting. West said Warren spent time trying to get some “kinks” out of that shot. Wooten saw Warren shooting threes from half court with ease.
Against the Lakers Saturday night, Warren hit a long three over Anthony Davis as the shot clock expired to put the game out of reach. Since being in the bubble, Warren has averaged four made threes per game and made 20 of 36 three-pointers in five games.
At the UBA title game last summer, Warren started the game hitting the first eight shots — all threes — from the floor. He finished with 45 points. Scoring has never been an issue for “Tony Buckets,” who averaged 24.9 points per game as a sophomore at N.C. State in 2013-14. After then earning ACC Player of the Year, Warren left college for the NBA and was picked 14th overall by the Suns in 2014.
Warren started five games his first two seasons in Phoenix before going in and out of the starting lineup beginning the 2016-17 season. With more minutes, his scoring average went up, peaking at 19.6 per game. On June 18, however, the Suns traded Warren to Indiana for a second-round pick and cash considerations.
Playing in the bubble
West believes being in a basketball-only environment plays a huge role in Warren’s improvement.
“In that bubble it’s all about basketball,” West told the N&O. “That ties back into T.J.’s mentality. It’s all about basketball for him.”
After watching Warren play the previous two summers, there is no doubt in Wooten’s mind that Warren can score on anyone in the NBA. Now Warren believes it too. He proved it with his shot over the Lakers’ Davis, who has led the NBA in blocks three times.
West said now that Warren is playing better consistently, his energy is a little different, in a good way, but he refused to say Warren is in a zone. Being in a zone relates to someone operating in a way that isn’t normal for them, West explained. That’s not the case for Warren.
“T.J. has always operated here,” West said. “ T.J. has always done it, I just think the things around him and the circumstances have made it blossom. I wouldn’t say he’s in a zone, I would just say that’s who he is and that’s what he does.”
