Kelsey Bone's summer had all the tests of character and will in her club team's changes as well has her injuries. Her club team is regarded as one of the most talented teams in all the country yet they have had no major tournament championships to back that up last year. The next challenge was the club team's head coach and program director left at the beginning of the summer to take an assistant coaching position in the Pac-10 Conference. Now she had to deal with a new coach as well as her teammates dealing with a new coach. What these challenges provided was an opportunity to show her leadership ability as well as her talent.
As Glenn Nelson, the publisher of HoopGurlz.com, regularly points to, the leadership role rarely comes from the post position and even so, its typically leading by example. Bone does it vocally, physically and any other way she can impact her team. She is a motivator on the floor. When she pumps herself up she does it in a contagious fashion to bring her teammates up to her intensity level. She directs traffic on the floor, communicates with her guards on when she wants the ball and when she doesn't. She is the total package.
Kelsey Bone goes to work.
Her power moves in the paint are too much for high school players to handle. She's too strong and too good to be bothered by most high school defenders. Even against the elite posts at Nike Skills Academy she had the power to move bodies and score at the cup. This isn't purely strength but strength combined with getting low and maintaining leverage, staying explosive. Her interior offense isn't limited to just bruising drop steps. Her footwork is beyond almost any other post player in the high school level and is better than a lot of posts at the college level right now. She can drop step both to the middle or to the baseline and finish with a baby jump hook over her left shoulder or turn over her right shoulder for a turn around jumper. When she spins off of defenders she is so quick she typically gets an uncontested shot. Her area for improvement in this regard is simply slowing down. When she gets amped up she gets moving a little too fast. She still completes the moves and gets the shot off with good form but doesn't finish with the same consistency. She doesn't have to be in a hurry ever, she's stronger and quicker than everyone even when she's not going full speed. That is the biggest challenge for her is not trying too hard because she has gone into funks where she gets the shots she likes but they just don't drop and its usually from trying too hard or moving too fast. She has so many moves to create shots though that the prospect of her improving is mind boggling. Just how good could this kid be?
She started knocking down the mid range jumper with a little more consistency but as teams try to take the paint away and do so with multiple bodies waiting off her at the high post she will become even more of a force by converting the elbow and short corner jumpers. Any who have watched her when she's in the zone will remember her pose after knocking down an elbow jumper or turn around, leaving her finishing hand high in the sky for that extra few seconds - reminiscent of Wesley Snipes character in White Men Can't Jump right before he says "its hard work being this good". Another area for improvement is free throw shooting. Now she's not bad by any stretch of the imagination so take that image you have of Shaq out of your mind right now. She just needs a little more consistency because she's going to take a lot of trips to the charity stripe in college.
I think the telling thing about Bone is that she knows she's good and it's obvious she wants to be great. She wants to win. She wants to lead. She wants to dominate the opposition. She works on her game. She's come a long way. She shed her baby fat after her freshman year and took her conditioning to another level. Now she has one more challenge in front of her, taking care of her body. She's done so much work to get in shape and be an elite player but that entailed a lot of hours and wear on her body. She fought off ankle soreness this summer after overcoming knee soreness last summer. She's established her place as an incredibly gifted athlete, so taking her foot off the gas a little this next summer may do her some good. Her Willis Reed impression, playing injured to have her team's back was impressive and noble but she really doesn't have anything more to prove by overdoing it.
Mike Flynn of Blue Star summed it up well at the USA Basketball Youth Developmental Festival in reference to Bone, "If she isn't an Olympian, I don't know who is."
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Chris Hansen is the National Director of Scouting for Women’s Basketball at HoopGurlz.com. He leads the panel that evaluates and ranks girl's basketball prospects nationally for HoopGurlz. Chris has been involved in the women’s basketball community since 1998 as a coach, trainer, evaluator and reporter. He can be reached at chris@hoopgurlz.com [2].