The future

Wrapped my work week in time to break up the drive to Charlotte with a pit stop at JP Kuhlman’s 7:30 tip in Jacksonville.

I used to do this stuff for full-time work, believe it or not, so it wasn’t a totally unfamiliar feeling walking into the small, crowded Providence School gym and finding a spot to sit with my legs dangling off a stage behind one of the baskets.

Felt like going to watch, say, Raymond Felton in little Latta, S.C., or Gerry McNamara in Scranton, Pa., or Kevin Bookout in wherever that was in Oklahoma … or one Brendan Winters at Worcester Academy in Massachusetts.

Now, before I say anything about the Davidson-bound guard from North Florida, I have to say this: Back when I did this for a living, I always, or at least with very few exceptions, considered a first watch just that and only that.

I mean, LeBron James was an NBA All-Star waiting to happen when he was 16 years old, and one watch was more than enough to know that, but LeBron was, and is, as everybody knows by now, a freak.

But most of the time?

I want to see a kid once just to see how he moves.

Then can I start to get a feel for what he can and can’t do, what makes him go, etc., on a second watch, or a third, or a fourth, and so on. That’s when context and perspective starts to happen.

All that said, then, some quick thoughts after my first watch of the future Wildcat:

Tough to gauge. Kind of impossible to make any sort of meaningful evaluation. He played about half of the game because the final was 87-35 and could’ve been a lot worse.

He made a couple threes early and missed a few later. Airballed one of them. His face didn’t change.

Missed a few runners in the lane and an elbow stop-and-pop off the dribble.

Probably finished with 12 or 14 or something like that.

He threw consistently crisp, smart passes.

He looked like a responsible rebounder on the defensive end.

No headband, no wristbands, white mid-calf tube socks. Just playing the game.

He was on the bench near the end of the second quarter when the score was 55-22 and he stood and he clapped and he gave his teammates high fives when they came out of the game.

Again, though, the competition was truly atrocious. For a while in the first quarter, I thought University Christian might not score -- like, not at all. The team’s coach was a young balding man wearing sweatpants.

Anyway, the game ended, I said hello to JP and wished him luck and merged back onto 95 North.

Onward.