James Ennis, the reigning Big West Player of the Year and currently an NBA Draft prospect, still gets star-struck.
The former Long Beach State guard/forward, who graduated this spring after putting together an impressive senior season for the 49ers, was working out for the Los Angeles Lakers when he saw someone familiar.
“When I met Kobe [Bryant], I think my heart skipped a little bit,” Ennis said. “I didn’t know how to react, but it was cool.”
Meeting the Lakers’ star is one of the many perks Ennis has enjoyed while preparing for this year’s NBA Draft, which will be held on June 27. Ennis said he has worked out with 12 teams, including the Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers, New York Knicks, Oklahoma City Thunder, Brooklyn Nets, Chicago Bulls, Sacramento Kings and Houston Rockets.
John Rothstein of CBS Sports tweeted last week that Ennis “will be in play for the Rockets” at the 34th pick, but Ennis said while he thinks all of his workouts went well, he hasn’t heard anything from any teams.
“I wish,” he said. “No feedback yet. I’m just continuing to keep working.”
Ennis has been working on reaching the NBA for a very long time. He is on the doorstep of a dream that has been many years in the making.
“When I first started playing basketball, I would say I was probably in fifth grade,” Ennis said. “Growing up I was a skateboarder, roller blader, biker. But once I moved to Florida, no one skateboarded and just played basketball and football, so I gave up skateboarding for basketball.”
The choice has proven to be a good one. Since money issues forced Ennis’s family to move from California to Texas to Florida and back to California, he has honed his basketball skills at multiple levels of competition.
Ennis said he first began to see his NBA dream as a possible reality during his sophomore year at Ventura College. There to witness it all was Ventura men’s basketball coach Joey Ramirez.
“James [Ennis] can fill a stat sheet,” Ramirez said via email. “We just tried to get him to focus on the little things. I would always challenge him defensively because he has the ability with his size and length to guard many positions. He embraced that and improved.”
Ramirez said that like every player he has coached, however, it wasn’t just about basketball with Ennis.
“I remember when I first met with him,” he said. “Our meeting didn’t have much to do with basketball. It was about life. He is a very soft-spoken young man. He knows what he wants in life. He has great talent, but when you get to know him, he’s more of a great person.”
Ennis’s personality has remained the same since coming to LBSU. He doesn’t give off the egotistical, cocky image that so many talented athletes do. Every morning he tweets something along the lines of “good morning, thank God for another day,” and every evening he says goodnight to the Twitter world with another thank-you.
When he gets on the basketball court, he lets his playing do the talking.
Ennis electrified the Walter Pyramid this year with highlight-reel dunks that earned him a spot in the NCAA slam dunk contest. He was a model of consistency, scoring at least 10 points in every game of the 2012-13 season.
Before then, he was an important role player on the senior-led 2011-12 49ers team that earned a spot in the NCAA tournament.
“Me coming in as a junior playing with a bunch of seniors, just me being able to do what the coach asked me to do, basically playing my role,” Ennis said, “doing whatever it took to help the team out. I didn’t have a problem with that.”
Ennis’s role changed overnight, though, as Casper Ware and three other starters graduated and left Ennis as the lone returning starter. He took over as a constant force on a team defined by inconsistency and earned the Big West Player of the Year Award.
“I had a lot of fun with all the seniors,” he said, “and I knew that the following year coming up, I had to work extremely hard in the offseason because I had a bigger role, and I’m a senior, and it turned out well. I shocked myself actually, being Big West Player of the Year. I thought the guy from UC Davis would win it, [Corey] Hawkins.”
Since finishing his senior season, Ennis has traveled across the country to attend workouts, invitationals and the NBA combine. When asked what his favorite thing about the experience has been, he joked “room service.”
“Just getting a chance to play against other really good players and being able to compete at a high level,” Ennis said on a more serious note. “That’s been the most fun, just knowing that you can play with anybody.”
Ennis is currently ranked 57th in ESPN’s top 100, projected by nbadraft.net to be drafted 35th overall by the Philadelphia 76ers and projected to go to 54th overall to the Washington Wizards by draftexpress.com.
“He has always had a very high skill level,” Ramirez said. “I am more proud of James [Ennis] the person. He is one of best people I have come across. This opportunity is well deserved.”