Just because you make a run in the NCAA Tournament doesn’t mean your team is chalk-full of NBA talent. The Oregon Ducks basketball squad was an illustration of this, as UO was a team, in the fullest sense of the word, which relied on the sum of its parts, as each Duck hoopster filled a niche and shared opportunities to spur Oregon to the Sweet 16. The only downside to this mode of play is the lack of cultivating a star, whose NBA Draft stock climbs with every basket scored. Of the four Ducks leaving school this year; E.J. Singler, Carlos Emory, Tony Woods and Arsalan Kazemi, none of them are locks to be drafted in June.
While Singler, Emory and Woods all are working to earn a look from an NBA team, and may find their way to a tryout or trial period-contract, Kazemi has the best shot to play at the highest level, and after sitting down for a one-on-one interview with him, I am convinced he would be a great selection for any NBA franchise.
Let’s start with the basics. He is a good basketball player. While he is not much a point-scorer, shying away from almost any jump-shot attempts, his defensive prowess, insane gift for rebounding and athleticism deem him worthy of NBA play. In his final three collegiate games (the Ducks’ three March Madness tilts) he averaged a shocking 15 rebounds per game, accompanied by 10 points and nearly two steals per game.
If he were to play in the NBA, he would likely be a bench player, bringing his coiled-spring legs and hustle-filled energy into the game to provide his team with a boost. His on-court talent isn’t very comparable to many others (which is a boon in itself) but his 6-foot-7, 226-pound frame and rebounding prowess is similar to that of Denver Nuggets’ forward Kenneth Faried, a versatile athlete who is a premier rebounder in the NBA.
What is quite possibly Kazemi’s most important trait that makes him a fit in an NBA locker room is his character. He is a nice, humble guy, which is a minority classification in the NBA. He puts everything before himself and does his best not to draw attention.
This is a young man who came from Iran at age 17 to play basketball and faced racism the second his plane landed.
“I landed in Houston and I’m ready to go out and there are a 1,000 people in line, and it takes me forever to get to the officer who does an interview with you,” Kazemi said. “They send me to another office and a different office and it took me about six to seven hours for me to get out of the airport and yeah, they ask me a bunch of questions, if I was a terrorist, what I was doing here and if I was here to harm the country and I said look, ‘I am 17 years old and I’m here to play basketball. Isn’t that obvious from my background and what I have?’”
Kazemi would continue to face discrimination, eventually transferring after three years at Rice, during which he was berated with indignant remarks from the school’s athletic director. All during this year with Oregon, Kazemi declined to speak about the reasons he left Rice and even when the details of the horrible ordeals came out during the postseason, Kazemi kept mum. This last week, he finally ceded a comment on it for the first time, during my interview with him.
“The stuff that happened there, it didn’t have anything to do with Rice University, it was a person or people over there and I didn’t have a problem with them, I guess they had a problem with me,” Kazemi said. “I left all that behind and then after seven months, right when I had my biggest game, against Louisville, and it just hit the news and I was going crazy in my mind, like why? Why they do this stuff and anyway I left Rice and I came to Oregon.”
Despite the unwarranted personal attacks, Kazemi has remained undeterred and positive. He harbors no ill will, and he does all he can to keep the waters calm. That kind of attitude would be a welcomed by any NBA coach.
The final reason Kazemi deserves to be drafted is his loyalty. In just half a year, he made a community here in Oregon – which knew nothing about him – fall in love with his game and his persona.
“Well it’s really funny, when I came to Oregon, I’m guessing no one knew me,” he said. “I came here and I guess they just looked up my stat, ‘Oh, he can play a little bit,’ but then I still remember my first game against Vanderbilt I came and there was a big sign that said, ‘Free Arsalan’ and that was really cool. They didn’t even know me and they brought me a sign, so that really motivated me.”
Because Kazemi was in Eugene for such a short amount of time, he will be transferring his credits back to Rice to earn his degree from that university. But Kazemi has embraced Eugene as his collegiate home and will return for the graduation ceremony on June 17, just 10 days before the NBA draft.
“I talked to the people in charge and I think I’m going to come back for commencement at the University of Oregon and come here and walk and be here for graduation,” he said. “I’ll train and then after that it’ll be a lot of workouts for NBA teams and hopefully I get to be one of those 60 picks in June.”
I couldn’t agree more.