How Warriors energizer Charles ‘Basketball' Bassey is trying to seize center opportunity
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The exercise bike spun, aimlessly, for an entire fourth quarter in Phoenix. Charles Bassey hardly hopped off, a young man who'd spent much of the previous few days with ice packs wrapped around his knees. He certainly didn't hop off to hop back on the court, and his season debut was hard-capped at a mild 13 minutes in an Oct. 24 loss to the Suns.
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Bassey understood. He had knee tendinitis. He was also frustrated. He spent most of his five previous NBA seasons watching from the sidelines, ailments wracking an otherwise-twitchy 6-foot-10 frame. He is tired of watching. So that night, he went to Drew Yoder, Golden State's director of medical services, and questioned why he didn't play the fourth quarter of an all-hands-on-deck game.
Two days later, he lounged with ice packs on knees at a Warriors shootaround. A horse, raring.
"I think I'm an asset to the team," Bassey told the Chronicle. "And they know that, too. I just gotta keep bringing that every game. And understand, every time, that every game is going to be a ramp-up.
"And when I'm there," he continued, "you guys are gonna know. You guys are gonna know, bro."
There was Monday night, when the Warriors needed him most. After a spot-start Sunday night against the Clippers, Bassey was, again, watching from the bench when Draymond Green tossed Suns big Khaman Maluach to the hardwood and then went face-to-face with Dillon Brooks. Green exited, ejected. Bassey entered, energized.
Options were few. The only other available center was two-way rookie Graham Ike. Al Horford was resting, which will be a common occurrence for the 40-year-old this year. Kristaps Porzingis is, well, somewhere; in the latest chapter of an utterly bizarre saga, head coach Steve Kerr said pregame he has not communicated with Porzingis and does not know where he is.
The tenor of Monday's 116-113 win, though - five straight - shifted with Bassey, the man who's been waiting for this.
"Those are the patterns of what a good team does, when, night after night, you're finding combinations - you're finding production up and down the bench, and you love it," Stephen Curry said postgame. "Like, everybody feeds off that energy, when a guy comes in like that, like Bass did tonight, changes the game. Everybody notices. Lifts everybody's spirits."
Exactly 19 seconds of clock into arriving on the floor, Bassey finished a tip-plus-foul off a missed Yaxel Lendeborg three. He swarmed the glass. He maintained paint presence against a Suns team that went small. He established a burgeoning connection with 24-year-old rookie Lendeborg, who found him for a third-quarter lob. And he got into a skirmish of his own, sneering at Suns forward Miles Bridges after Bridges shoved him following a jump-ball tie-up with Phoenix guard Jalen Green.
"What they're doing is, it's so fake," Bassey said at a postgame news conference. "That's fake toughness, man. Like I said, me and (Jalen) Green, we were going for the ball. Jump-ball. And then, I think Miles just came and just pushed me. I mean, you don't have to do that."
He both juiced and stabilized Golden State, with 19 points and eight rebounds in 22 minutes - a few days after resting out of the rotation entirely.
"I have to force them to play me," Bassey said postgame. "Like I said, just going out there doing my job, and what I did tonight - if I'm doing that every game, it's going to be tough for a coach to not put you in the lineup. So, I just let my game just speak for itself, and force them to do your job, which is, put me out there."
His locker, in Golden State, is next to Lendeborg's, one of the most verbally confident young players to grace the NBA in some time. Quietly, too, Bassey is as self-assured as they come, a 25-year-old have-hops-will-travel center who earned a one-year extension in Golden State this past offseason off just 126 games of total NBA tape.
Bassey was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and was first told to play basketball at 12 years old by a man who he was trying to sell chicken to on the side of the road. He became a five-star prospect in the United States, and later an NBA journeyman who appeared in games for not one or two or three but four separate franchises last season, Memphis to Philadelphia to Boston to the Bay. He has stuck around, despite rampant injuries, for his motor and defensive presence; a second-quarter block of Walker Kessler last Friday against the Lakers single-handedly shifted momentum in an eventual Warriors win.
"I was - been in a place where, waking up as a kid, I wake up to my dad not being home," Bassey told the Chronicle, earlier in October. "And he's gone every day, trying to put food on the table.
"So, who am I to give up?"
For the first time in his NBA career, Bassey is now in a situation where he's needed. Before Mike Dunleavy announced Porzingis's indefinite absence at Golden State's media day in late September, Bassey would've likely been a back-of-the-roster stash dusted off for rest-day fill-ins. Suddenly, he's vital. And his placement in Golden State's locker room has proved a fortuitous stroke of either foresight or coincidence, as Bassey and Lendeborg have built a particular symbiosis behind closed doors. Pregame, they talk strategy. If Bassey flashes open but doesn't get the ball, Lendeborg - even if he wasn't on the floor - notices, and talks to Bassey about it postgame.
"That's my boy, man," Bassey said with a grin, in early October. "That's my boy! That's my boy, man. Yaxel. Right there. Yeah, that's my boy, that's my boy.
"I think we've just built this connection, even on the court, man," he continued. "Like, I was talking with him, he was talking to me the other day - like, ‘Bro, I don't think nobody can stop our pick-and-roll.'"
This is not a fad. Lendeborg learned how to distribute with vertical-threat big men Aday Mara and Morez Johnson last season at Michigan, and has found a new dance partner in Bassey.
Kerr, on Monday night, specifically noted the pick-and-roll chemistry the two have built. Such is an intriguing proposition for Bassey's importance, as Golden State continues to hand Lendeborg the keys in late-game situations with or without Curry on the floor.
"I was a big, and I know what it's like when you don't get the ball," Lendeborg told the Chronicle, in the locker room Monday night. "So it kinda gives me an extra, I guess, an extra soft spot for them. Like, man, I'm gonna look for him, I'm gonna actually try to give him the ball. Because I know how long you go in a game without touching it.
"And for him, he's such a good jumper," he gushed about Bassey. "He has good touch around the rim. His floater's elite. So, it's like, it makes it easier for me. Because once his stuff is going on, the next thing you know, they're gonna worry about the lob more than my layup. So now I have a layup, or a shot. Him screening so well, it gives me, like, another, ‘Man, you really deserve this ball.'"
Bassey, too, has brought a cultish online following to Warriors Twitter, thanks to an account named "BasseyMuse" that has dubbed the 25-year-old as "Charles ‘Basketball' Bassey." Bassey laughed, when asked about this. His friends from back home in Nigeria occasionally send him such posts.
Basketball Bassey, now, may be introducing himself to a wider audience.
"Still trying to make it, bro," Bassey told the Chronicle, in mid-October. "Just, still trying to put my foot down … which, I have the confidence in myself."
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