By Brent Schrotenboer, UNION-TRIBUNE
Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 5:54 p.m.
/ ASSOCIATED PRESS
Former San Diego High star Jeremy Tyler played in Tokyo last season.
Jeremy Tyler
- Age: 20.
- Schools/teams: San Diego High, Maccabi Haifa (Israel), Tokyo Apache (Japan).
- Height: 6-9 without shoes, 6-10½ with shoes.
- Weight: 262 pounds.
- Wingspan/reach: 7-5 / 9-2½.
- Body fat: 9.25 percent.
- Max. vertical jump: 33.5 inches.
- Max reach (with jump): 12-0.
- Stats: Playing in only 10 games before leaving Maccabi Haifa in midseason, he averaged 2.1 points and 7.6 minutes. In Japan, he averaged 9.9 points and 6.4 rebounds before the season was cut short by the earthquake/tsunami.
- Honors: Rated the No. 1 junior in the country by several high school recruiting services before skipping his senior year to turn pro. Initially committed to Louisville.
- Upside: Excellent athleticism and agility for a big man, with good range on his jumper and good anticipation in blocking shots. Can handle the ball and run the floor. He just turned 20, and has two years of professional experience. Some scouts say he seems to be growing up.
- Downside: Had a reputation for short temper in high school, and for immaturity that led to his early departure in Israel. And he couldn't average double figures or command major minutes in a second-tier Japanese league.
- Projected pick: Late first to mid second round.
--MARK ZEIGLER
Jeremy Tyler stepped off a plane in Tokyo last year, still staggering from the most difficult time of his life.
It was September 2010. In the previous 17 months, Tyler had dropped out of San Diego High to play pro basketball overseas. Then his brother James faced an assault charge stemming from a gang-related shooting in southeastern San Diego. After that, Tyler played on a pro team in Israel, where he averaged "about two points, two rebounds and two temper tantrums a game" according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
"Most Israeli basketball fans remember Jeremy Tyler as the American teenager who was a total disaster," the newspaper said of Tyler's tenure in Israel.
Tyler's quest to make it to the NBA appeared doomed by these events until something changed last year. He signed with a new team (the Tokyo Apache in Japan), worked with a former NBA head coach (Bob Hill) and did some growing up. Now he just might land in the first round of Thursday's two-round NBA Draft, just as he had planned when he decided to skip his senior year of high school two years ago.
"The question regarding his maturity is born from his inability to trust anyone," Hill said Tuesday in an e-mail. "Once Jeremy knew he could trust me his behavior patterns got better. He can be very endearing and mature when he wants to. When he came to San Antonio to do his pre-draft work I told him he had to make the folks at the hotel he was staying at really appreciate him. They moved him to a bigger room and started doing his laundry!!!!"
His ongoing story presents a riddle this week for NBA general managers. Is there a superstar inside him, still needing to be coached out? Or was he merely a high school star spoiled too soon? He just turned 20 on Tuesday and still has that 6-foot-11 NBA body. But how much will it take to mold a mature NBA mind?
The jury — and the journey — have provided mixed clues.
"He's not going to be a first-round pick," NBA Scouting Director Ryan Blake said this week. "There is a risk factor."
On the other hand, Blake said, "Some general managers may have done more homework and may have a better feeling."
NBA first-round picks get a guaranteed three-year contract. Second-round picks do not, though all that could change in a new labor deal.
Given those stakes, a player with Tyler's limited background is considered a major gamble for an NBA team in the first round. Yet big payoffs can come from big bets. It mostly depends on how the NBA perceives his future in relation to his past:
--In high school, two of his coaches were fired amid allegations that they broke rules by recruiting high-caliber players to the team in an effort to keep Tyler happy. The coaches denied these allegations. But the drama was ongoing. Since his sophomore year, a Los Angeles filmmaker has followed Tyler with a camera in hopes of selling a documentary about Tyler's NBA pursuit. Meanwhile, more people looked to cash in on him, including event promoters and an apparel company, leading Tyler to wonder whom to trust.
"The larger story is about him overcoming all these obstacles on the way to his dream," said Jordan Ehrlich, who is involved in the Tyler film. "The parallel story is all these issues in high school and pro sports, the problems that came along."
--Tyler made national headlines in April 2009 when he announced he would turn pro overseas. His goal then was to ready himself for the June 2011 NBA draft, the first time he would be eligible to join the NBA, according to league rules. The plan was for Tyler's older brother James Tyler Jr. to move with him overseas and help support his international transition.
But that changed after July 2009, when James Tyler Jr., then 19, had a criminal charge filed against him in San Diego County. It stemmed from an incident in December 2008, when two teens were fatally shot as they walked home from the party. Authorities said three carloads of suspected gang members crashed a party and waved or pointed guns at the guests, including James Tyler Jr., who pleaded guilty to assault earlier this year and was placed on probation. The convicted killer, Frederick Garcia Cruz, was sentenced in March to 50 years to life in prison.
--Jeremy Tyler's first year overseas ended up being fraught with perceived attitude problems after his family didn't move with him as planned. He signed a $140,000 contract with Maccabi Haifa in Israel but quit the team in March 2010 after struggling to relate to the team and the culture. He played just 7.6 minutes per game in 10 games.
"I think he is misunderstood because of his youth and many of the experiences he has had so far in his young life," Hill said.
--Tyler then went to Tokyo, where Apache coach Hill helped him with his trust issues and his game. "By the time he left Tokyo, I do feel he matured greatly from where he was when he started with us," the team's general manager, Conor Neu, said by e-mail Monday.
It was still hard to judge for NBA scouts because he played in a second-tier league. He averaged 15.4 minutes, 9.9 points and 6.4 rebounds per game before the season was suspended in March because of the disasters spawned by the earthquake there. In his last game, he had 24 points and 11 rebounds in 23 minutes.
In recent weeks, he interviewed "extremely well" with NBA teams "and got a lot of individual workouts because of it," Blake said.
Tyler referred questions from the Union-Tribune to his agent, who didn't return calls.
"We still don't know a lot about him," Blake said.
Follow sports writer Brent Schrotenboer on Twitter @Schrotenboer
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