WATCH MAKER
Sky’s the limit for worldly Thon Maker, who used Orangeville Prep as a springboard to a shot at success with Milwaukee Bucks,
MILWAUKEE— It has been a long and strange trip that has landed Thon Maker in the locker room of the Milwaukee Bucks, traversing one continent to another, big cities to small towns, this prep school to that prep school to another. A long, strange trip indeed. “Now finally that I’m here, I can look back and say I wouldn’t change anything if I got to do it again,” the seven-foot-one teenage prodigy said Friday night. “As I went through it, I matured, I grew.”
There have been so many stops made, so many experiences gleaned, that it would be impossible for the 19-year-old not to have matured beyond his years.
Born in South Sudan, he and his family escaped civil war to Uganda before being granted refugee status in Australia. A couple of cities and schools there, a prep school in suburban New Orleans, another in rural Virginia, a stop for a year at the Athlete Institute in Orangeville, Ont. — a peripatetic global sporting plod if ever there was one.
“Just going through those places, I just learned to interact with different people and learned to adjust real quick,” Maker said. “Keeping your work ethic in the back of your mind, and always looking back at what I went through and always using that.”
Using it to gain a maturity that belies his age. “That comes with how you manage going through the path that I took,” he said. “I managed through that and I still have a good circle, and they help me along the way.”
At the heart of all of Maker’s travels, all those moves, were his prodigious basketball talents — a long, lanky bundle of promise. The Bucks pulled off what was seen as a major draft night surprise last June by taking Maker 10th overall — most NBA officials thought he’d go 10 or 12 spots later — because they were intrigued by his combination of length and athleticism.
He hasn’t had the most blistering of starts because he’s more of a longterm project on a young Milwaukee team. Maker has played a grand total of 13 minutes in Milwaukee’s first 14 games as he bides his time.
“Thon has been great for us,” Bucks coach Jason Kidd told reporters this month. “He works extremely hard and it’s just a numbers game right now.”
A rookie season can be overwhelming for any player, and one with experience as limited as Maker’s could have a doubly difficult time. He had to petition the NBA just to be eligible for the draft after a “career” spent bouncing from prep school to prep school.
The nuances of the game have been difficult to pick up.
“You know in high school, you can stand in a zone and just put your hands up and this and that, but here . . . actually being in (the game) where you have to avoid a threesecond defensive call or be just basically moving is different,” he said. “You’ve got to defend, you’ve got to guard pick-and-rolls and also you’ve got to stay within your systems. That’s a big difference.”
It’s impossible to know what Maker will eventually become — there are far too many variables at play — but if he has shown anything in his 19 years, it is that he can adapt and react.
“I wouldn’t say frustration, because I’m getting better,” he said. “For me personally, as long as I’m getting better, I’m good. It’s not like I’m not being forced to work on my game, individually, all the time in practice.”