CHICAGO \u2014 Kylan Boswell\u2019s NBA dream started to develop when he was in the fifth grade growing up in Champaign.<\/p>\n
His evolution into a five-star recruit in high school gave credence to the idea. At 18 years old, ahead of his sophomore season at Arizona, first-round projections had started to formalize.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not the draft reality the now 21-year-old Boswell currently faces. His draft stock has changed during the course of his college basketball career, and he understands where he sits on most NBA draft boards.<\/p>\n
A late second-round pick. In the best-case scenario.<\/p>\n
What hasn\u2019t changed, however, is Boswell\u2019s internal belief \u2014 an underlying confidence \u2014 about what he can yet achieve.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere I\u2019m projected is not a concept to me,\u201d Boswell said. \u201cI know I can belong in the NBA. I know I can have an impact in the NBA. The trust in all of that is huge.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t give a damn what pick I am. I don\u2019t care what team I go to. At the end of the day, if my path didn\u2019t come and I go undrafted, getting the chance to play in the NBA is the goal. I think I put myself in the best position I can to get to that point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boswell has been on the go since Illinois\u2019 season ended in a Final Four loss in Indianapolis in early April. California has become his home base again \u2014 much like it did during his formative high school years \u2014 but he hasn\u2019t even seen the West Coast that much.<\/p>\n
Boswell wound up an all-tournament team selection at the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament in late April after flashing as both a scorer and facilitator. An invitation to the NBA draft combine followed, where he put up solid results in both the anthropometric and strength and agility testing this week.<\/p>\n
Boswell met with nearly all of the 30 NBA organizations in Portsmouth, Va., and added meetings with the Minnesota Timberwolves and Indiana Pacers on Wednesday in Chicago. The last piece is individual or small group workouts with interested NBA teams \u2014 something Boswell saved for after the combine.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was purposefully to get in better shape,\u201d Boswell said about putting off workouts until later this month. \u201cThe whole thing is being right, physically, when those teams want me to work out. Even if I need to go back-to-back, I\u2019ll have the right physical capability to do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll get back to California, prepare for another week or so and then I\u2019ll have a bunch of my workouts back-to-back. The feedback (from the meetings), a lot of them like me. The main thing they want to see is just my effort on both ends of the court and facilitating the best way I can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boswell\u2019s realistic grasp on his draft stock is matched by his understanding of the role he\u2019ll play at the next level. That it will be a specific role \u2014 something he embraced during his two years at Illinois playing in backcourts alongside one-and-done first-round NBA picks Kasparas Jakucionis and Keaton Wagler.<\/p>\n
\u201cSelflessness, I feel like that\u2019s been just kind of my character the last two years just growing as a person and as a man,\u201d Boswell said. \u201cNo team is going to take me (for a primary role). Every team has a superstar, a guy that\u2019s a scorer for them. It just shows I can operate within a system.\u201d<\/p>\n
That ability to adapt, to sacrifice, stood out to Andrej Stojakovic in his lone season as Boswell\u2019s teammate at Illinois.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis adjustment and his mindset playing with different players throughout his four years, that\u2019s something you look at and think to yourself, \u2018Not many college players are willing to remain humble and stay confident in their role and how much it\u2019s adjusted throughout the four years,\u2019\u201d Stojakovic said. \u201cA lot of people can pout, put their head down and start complaining. \u2026 Very proud of him no matter what he does in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boswell\u2019s immediate future includes a continued emphasis on conditioning work after he leaves Chicago and the combine. He views the dual abilities of guarding 94 feet and still being able to the pace offensively as a necessity to present his best self to NBA organizations.<\/p>\n
Rediscovering his jump shot after two seasons of struggles from three-point range at Illinois is a close second.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinding my (expletive) shot would be nice,\u201d Boswell quipped. He shot 27 percent from deep across two seasons in Champaign after shooting 38 percent combined in two seasons at Arizona.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting the ball to drop in the rim again would be awesome, but that\u2019s going to take a lot of work,\u201d he continued. \u201cI have the utmost confidence in myself. I came into college and my whole high school career was known as a shooter. It\u2019s somewhere there. I\u2019ll figure it out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever team I get with, I\u2019ll sit down with the shooting coach and see if he has any tweaks. I genuinely have no idea. I never lost confidence in myself. The last two seasons, it just didn\u2019t drop at all the way I wanted it to, but, at the end of the day, staying persistent in my work ethic and staying confident in myself will be a huge thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 Kylan Boswell\u2019s NBA dream started to develop when he was in the fifth grade growing up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,172092,590,85],"class_list":["post-672751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-illini-sports","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}