How KU basketball star freshman Gradey Dick honed his 3-point shot — alone in the dark
It’s dark out, but Gradey Dick refuses to go inside.
He’s out late, practicing his shot. He can barely see, squinting to see the First Team basketball goal in his family’s backyard court in Wichita, Kansas.
Dick, who was 10 then, was hell-bent on gaining an edge on his older brothers, Brodey and Riley. Everything was a competition, even free throws.
It’s darker now, but he no longer needs the light. He’s relying on muscle memory and imagination. Dick visualizes the bright orange rim and white-striped backboard and lets it fly. His ears perk up as he hears the “swish” of the made basket. He’s one rep closer to beating his brothers in their next shooting competition.
Now, Dick, 19, is a star freshman for the No. 5-ranked Kansas men’s basketball team (22-5, 10-4 Big 12 entering Monday night’s game at TCU) and a favorite among Jayhawks fans. The long nights he spent outside paid off. Dick is one of the toughest individual assignments for any college defender.
Dick credits the muscle memory from the long nights in his younger years in helping hone his shot. Whether under the bright lights of Allen Fieldhouse or in the solitude of his backyard court, his father Bart’s advice still rings in his ears: “If you can shoot in the dark, you can shoot in the light.”
The kid who grew up with a Bill Self bobblehead in his room now has the Hall of Fame coach calling Dick the “best freshman shooter” he’s ever had. Dick entered the weekend averaging 14.7 points and 4.9 rebounds while shooting a blistering 42.7% from three-point range.
By comparison, Ochai Agbaji, a first-team All-American who led KU to a national championship last season, shot 40.7% from three-point range. Ben McLemore, who was selected in the NBA Draft lottery after one playing season at KU, shot 42.0%.
Draft experts project Dick as a lottery pick, which he appreciates, but he remains focused on helping Kansas win another championship. He doesn’t know how long his tenure in Lawrence will last, but Dick wants his legacy to revolve around his work ethic and ability to do the dirty work.
“People will sometimes just see some offensive stuff from me,” Dick told The Star. “But I want to be remembered for how hard I played and trying to do everything I could to win.”
The younger years
Gradey Dick finally had enough.
Every time the elementary-aged Dick drove the ball inside, his brothers showed no mercy. In those moments, the age gap disappeared. Instead, the satisfaction of blocking their younger brother, Gradey, was too much to pass up.
It forced Dick to get creative — and to expand his shooting range. From a young age, Dick’s shot was aesthetically pleasing and natural.
Still, Bart and Carmen, his parents, preached fundamentals. Carmen played college basketball at Iowa State and pro ball overseas.
His parents saw promise in Gradey’s shot. They didn’t want him to ruin his form, so they kept the backyard hoop lower than 10 feet. That way, he could perfect his technique rather than having to heave the ball with all his strength just to reach the rim.
Bart used to coach Gradey when he was little. The two focused on balance and the follow-through on his jump shot.
“We worked on the Mikan drill a lot,” Bart said about the drill in which players run from one side of the rim to the other, starting with layups before stepping back and taking shots from farther and farther out. “Just go from left side to right side. As he got better with that, we would time it. … See how many he would get in 30 seconds.”
Basketball wasn’t the only sport Dick excelled at early on. He won the Kansas City Chiefs’ punt, pass and kick competition.
Still, basketball was his best sport. His youth team in middle school qualified for the Adidas Junior Gauntlet Finals, so the team traveled to California. Dick was one of the few players to qualify for a select Adidas camp. Little did he know at the time, he played with current Kansas teammate MJ Rice.
Slowly, Dick’s basketball stock was rising.
In eighth grade, he scored 30 points against Dallas Pro Skills, a well-known Nike AAU team. That’s when Bart realized his son was special.
But this good? Best freshman shooter in the Bill Self era good? Let’s just say his parents aren’t too surprised.
“I’m not being boastful or anything, I just knew that as hard as he had worked and the sacrifices he had made (it would pay off),” Carmen said. “He left his high school (Wichita Collegiate) as a junior to go to another school.
“That’s what he told us, ‘That’s what I need to be the best I can be. To do that, I need to go to Sunrise.’ He left — he moved out and he didn’t live with us for the last two years of high school. He’s made those sacrifices. I absolutely thought he could be the best.”
Sunrise Christian Academy was about five miles away from the Dick residence. Gradey could have lived at home, but both he and his parents felt it was important for him to be on his own.
Not only did it immerse Dick with the team, it allowed him to grow more independent. Dick essentially had a two-year head start of living on his own. But if he needed, he had the safety net of parents close by.
Sunrise Christian coach Luke Barnwell had open practices, but Bart only showed up four times in Gradey’s junior year. Bart wanted his son to grow on his own.
During Gradey’s senior year, Bart would go once per week at the end of practice to rebound for his son.
Ultimately, the decision to go to Sunrise paid off. Dick was named Gatorade National Player of the Year his senior season and hit the ground running in college.
“I still think he would be a really good player if he hadn’t went,” Bart said. “If you would have told me before he went there he would be National Gatorade Player of the Year by the end of his senior year...
“I knew he was good and he would do fine. But just being on that stage, playing that (top) competition, the day in, day out of practice, going against top guys and doing that in the season prepared him really well.”
Taking his training to the next level
In eighth grade, Dick was still relatively unknown. That all changed one afternoon inside a Lawrence gym in 2018.
He walked inside the building with Ty Berry, a top recruit at the time who ended up at Northwestern. They both were there to work with Peter Danyliv, a famed skills coach and owner of 90/10 Training, where Danyliv has worked with a plethora of future NBA talent.
By the end of the workout, everybody in the gym knew the gangly eighth grader’s name.
“Man, he was a freak,” Danyliv told The Star. “He was dunking the ball and getting up there. I was like, ‘S—t, OK.’”
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But Dick’s initial scouting report wasn’t all positive.
“His footwork was super messy,” Danyliv said. “I’m talking about moving with the ball and off the ball. I thought he was a good player, but he’s very raw.”
The first step was fixing his footwork. It made a huge difference in his jump shot.
The player whose footwork needed work eventually became, as evaluated by 247Sports recruiting analyst Brandon Jenkins, “a knockdown shooter that demands the defense’s attention.”
“He is one of the better shooters in the country,” Jenkins wrote of Dick, who was ranked No. 21 nationally and as a five-star recruit in the 2022 class, per 247Sports.
And he’s only gotten better.
Nowadays, Dick, listed at 6-8, 205 pounds, ranks in the 96th percentile of on-the-move three-point shooting, according to ShotQuality. He continues to work with Danyliv once every two weeks in the offseason but upped it to once a week until arriving in Lawrence last summer.
Danyliv tailors his drills around what Dick needs to succeed at KU. He’s familiar with Kansas’ system, having trained multiple current and former Jayhawks, such as Christian Braun, now with the Denver Nuggets in the NBA.
Braun, by the way, shot 38.6% from three in his final year at KU and 37.8% for his career — both short of Dick’s freshman mark.
So what’s next?
Dick continues to work on his movement off the ball and ability to maneuver by defenders after a shot fake. Then there’s the scoring package, as Dick practices shaking players off the dribble and finishing with floaters and hook shots.
Danyliv believes Dick’s biggest weakness is his lateral quickness, so that’s on the agenda, as are makeshift film sessions.
Specifically, Danyliv sends Dick highlights of former NBA player Chandler Parsons. He believes that’s what Dick could look like at the next level, but on a potentially bigger scale if he continues to develop.
Even so, Dick has come a long way from the teenager that set foot in Danyliv’s gym four years ago.
“It’s day and night, bro,” Danyliv said. “Honestly, when I first saw him, I knew he was going to go play at a big school. What they see now is almost like a finished product. ... All that improvement came from living at the gym.”
In fact, even Danyliv is a little surprised by Dick’s freshman season, which began with a 23-point outburst against Omaha that has been topped three times since, including a career-best 26 points in a win at Oklahoma State last Tuesday.
“I knew he was going to come in and be special, but he took off at a level I didn’t see coming,” Danyliv said. “I thought it would take him some time to adjust, but he’s just such a high IQ player. … He’s a perfect fit for that system.”
Seeing his dreams unfold
Dick wasn’t sure if it was real. He looked around and tried to take it all in — his childhood dream was becoming a reality.
His parents and three siblings sat in the stands cheering him on, along with some 16,295 others who sat inside historic Allen Fieldhouse.
KU basketball’s season tipoff event, Late Night in the Phog, was about to start.
“I remember my first shot in front of fans,” Dick said. “My arms just felt like air. I felt like I shot that over the backboard, but it was just normal.”
That was the last time he overanalyzed a shot — make or miss.
“I keep a mental note of not remembering anything,” Dick said. “Just having a short-term memory, I feel like that’s important as a shooter. Everything is not going to go your way. … I don’t let that affect me and I move on to the next play.”
Even when Dick is going through a rough shooting stretch, he never strays from his routine. He tries to make 500 shots on non-game days no matter what.
Before games, Dick focuses on film and works closely with Kansas video coordinator Brady Morningstar, a career 41.3% three-point shooter at KU on far lower volume (2.4 attempts per game) than Dick (5.5 per game).
Dick’s teammates realize how special the sharpshooting freshman is.
“The amount of time he puts in on his shot after practice — he’s just in the gym all the time,” KU guard Kevin McCullar told The Star. “He’s tall, so he can get it whenever. It’s a high-release, so it’s hard to guard, too. It’s great.”
Dick is constantly watching film of NBA Hall of Famers and superstars. He tries to keep his release point high like legendary sharpshooter Reggie Miller, while eight-time All-Star Paul George and two-time scoring champ Tracy McGrady inspired his scoring arsenal.
Ultimately, Dick has that irrational “it” factor. It’s a quintessential mark of any great shooter.
“Honestly, as a shooter, it’s just confidence,” Dick said. “A lot of people take that for granted because it’s just kind of a word thrown around a lot, but it’s really important. If you get down on yourself, that’s just going to make shots not fall.”
It also helps when you’ve had a childhood-worth of experience shooting in the dark.
“On the other side of it, you can’t control your shots,” Dick said. “If you put in the work and are prepared for each game, you have the confidence. I believe every one of my shots is going in whether they do or not.
“If they aren’t, shoot that next one.”
This story was originally published February 19, 2023 at 6:00 AM with the headline "How KU basketball star freshman Gradey Dick honed his 3-point shot — alone in the dark."
