Monty Williams, the Phoenix coach, walked from L.A. Live to Staples Center for Friday’s practice.
Just ahead of him was Cameron Payne, who had left Thursday’s loss to the Clippers after he turned an ankle.
With every normal step Payne took, Williams felt better.
At this point, Payne is a “possible” for Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals on Saturday night. If he gets to “probable,” the Suns do too.
Payne is an unlikely barometer. He was an NBA washout two years ago, forced to spend two uncomfortable games in China. Now he comes off the bench for either Chris Paul or Devin Booker, and not as a placeholder.
When Paul missed Games 1 and 2 in the COVID-19 protocol, the Suns won both anyway, and Payne scored 29 with nine assists Tuesday.
“We didn’t have an answer for him,” said Ty Lue, the Clippers’ coach.
He is a left-handed slasher with a 6-foot-7 wingspan, even though he’s 6-1, and he benefits from the warmth of other Suns, making the open shots they provide. More than that, Payne has gone from first-round bust to boom, a cliché in reverse in a league that hands out second chances about as often as it calls a palming violation.
“It’s been a scary roller-coaster career,” Payne said earlier this season. “You can be out of this league in a heartbeat. I don’t want that to happen again.”
Booker was the 13th pick of the first round of the 2015 draft, an astounding steal by former general manager Ryan McDonough.
Payne was the 14th pick, by Oklahoma City, from Murray State. He was trapped by the depth chart, and he couldn’t stay healthy, so the Thunder sent him to Chicago in one of those shuffle-the-furniture trades that helps nobody but the capologists.
The Bulls got a couple of middling years out of him and waived him. A Bulls “source,” dwelling in the comfy womb of anonymity, was quoted as saying, “We knew after the first practice that he couldn’t play on an NBA level.”
The next phase in the spiral is usually the 10-day contract, and Payne signed two of those with Cleveland, then signed another with Toronto. The trap door opened and Payne fell to the Shanxi Loongs of the Chinese League. The club sent nobody to the airport to pick him up, and his hotel room wasn’t big enough for his luggage. He wasn’t there long.
The Texas Legends of the G-League, affiliated with the Mavericks, then signed Payne, 15 games before COVID-19 ended their 2019-20 season. Payne went to dinner with Legends coach George Galanpoulos.
“He was very self-aware,” Galanopoulos said. “He owned the setbacks that had happened to him. From the first day, he was the hardest practice player, gave us incredible defense, played very hard. We didn’t have an extensive playbook, but he picked it up quickly, and within 2-3 days he was calling his own game. It’s a pretty ‘coach-y’ term, but he was locked in.”
Everyone wants out of the G-League, but there’s a proper way to do that. Payne averaged 23.5 points, including 39 against the Spurs’ Austin affiliate, He also averaged 10 assists and seven rebounds.
Then the courts went dark and no one went anywhere.
But Williams had been an Oklahoma City assistant, and he remembered Payne. The Suns signed him shortly before the Orlando bubble. They were so behind the curve that they went 8-0 to finish the regular season and still didn’t make the playoffs. Not all the teams they played took the games seriously. Payne did, and averaged 10.9 points and shot 51% from three.
Payne cemented his position in training camp last fall and contributed 8.4 points and 18 minutes per game in the regular season.
“A lot of it was learning how to be a pro,” Galanopoulos said. “He was a lottery pick for a reason, and his effort was good. But it’s being on time, getting treatment, taking care of your body, getting workouts in. He knew about those things before but maybe he didn’t internalize it, and soon he was out of the league.
“What impressed us was his ability to mesh with the guys, and you see him doing it in Phoenix. When he comes in, he gives them a jolt.”
The Suns beat Chicago twice this season, and Payne brought nine points off the bench each time. After the second win, he retweeted what the Bulls had said about him and topped it with, “Goodnight!”
Now the NBA Coach of the Year studies Payne to see that he’s walking normally, and then sleeps well.
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Author: Mark Whicker