Stephon Castle is coming off of a great rookie year.
The San Antonio Spurs guard won Rookie of the Year after averaging 14.7 points and 4.1 assists per game. That was following a year after he won a national championship in his lone season at UConn.
He says the biggest adjustment to the NBA was the “speed” of the game.
“I’d probably say the speed of the game,” Castle told ESports Insider in an exclusive interview. “It took me a little minute to catch up to it, especially with how good players are in the NBA. It’s hard to stop guys. The offense is really overlooked with how good players are in the league. You have the eighth guy on the bench coming in and it’s hard to stop him as well.”
One of the most challenging things of making the adjustment from college to the pros — for both the NFL and NBA — is finding a way to fill all the free time on your hands between practice and games. Castle attributes that as one of the biggest adjustments.
“Just catching up to the speed of the game, the physicality of it, and then finding things to do,” says Castle. “Outside of basketball, you know how much free time we have when we’re not on the court, not working out. We have a lot of downtime to just sit and think about these games. That’s where some of the older guys on my team last year kind of helped me with getting my mind off of basketball.”
Castle Wants To Improve Shooting Efficiency
The key part of his game that Castle wants to improve upon is his shooting. His efficiency can definitely be improved considering he shot 42.8% from the field and 28.5% from beyond the arc. His effective field goal percentage was also the lowest on the team at 47.6%.
“With live reps, I feel like that’s the best way you can learn is to keep seeing different defenses,” says Castle. “Different variations, options, and on a different possession. Just repping it out, really with a lot of defenders, just getting a lot of shooting reps.”
The Spurs showed substantial improvement over the prior two seasons last year, winning 34 games. During the previous two seasons, they had won just 22 games each year.
They’ll fully usher in a new era with Gregg Popovich no longer entering the season as the team’s head coach for the first time since 1996. Popovich had been the team’s head coach since December of 1996, emerging as one of the best ever by leading the franchise to five championships.
San Antonio promoted Mitch Johnson as the full-time head coach after he went 32-45 as the interim coach.
“Just to take my time with things, don’t rush anything,” says Castle. “I only played five, six games with Coach Pop. But on that short scale, I feel like I learned a lot from him. Trying to run my way to things, not speeding my way to things, just taking time with it and just letting it come. I feel like that’s what I did last year in the workouts.”
Castle Talks Dan Hurley, Paige Bueckers
Although Castle is just 20 years old, he’s already played with two legendary coaches. One is obviously Popovich and the other is arguably the best coach in the college game today in Dan Hurley. Hurley led UConn to back-to-back national championships, with Castle being there for the latter one as the team’s second-leading scorer.
“I have spoken to him recently, I was up there and played with their new team this year not so long ago,” says Castle. “From Coach Hurley, I feel like the biggest thing I learned playing under Coach Hurley was listen to the message that he was giving out, and not really the tone that it was coming in. I don’t know if you watch any Coach Hurley practices, but it’s a lot of screaming that happens. Just being able to take a take a message from that, apply it to our game and not really let it shake us is probably what I learned from him.”
Castle happened to play at UConn at the same time as one of their greatest basketball players ever, Paige Bueckers. The 23-year-old was the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA Draft this year and recently won the Rookie of the Year award after winning the national championship — which is the exact same formula as Castle.
“Yeah definitely, I’m super cool with Paige,” says Castle of his relationship with Bueckers. “She texted me when I won Rookie of the Year, and I told her she was next and here we are. We both won it. Super happy for her, I was happy she actually got out of UConn with a natty too. We’ve been on the same path.”
He says that the two crossed paths their “fair share” during his lone season at UConn.
“I’ll say our fair share,” says Castle of how often him and Bueckers crossed paths. “Our practice facility was split up, so we didn’t see each other as much unless we were in the training room or getting food. But we’re still super cool.”
