Midnight Practice Prepares a Player for Prime Time
Coming out of high school in suburban Maryland, Joe Alexander could not entice a Division II program to offer him a scholarship.
The details of Alexander’s path from recruiting afterthought to breakout star are unique. He spent six years of his childhood in China and barely played on his prep school team. But the recipe he has used to rise to stardom is familiar — he has a work ethic so maniacal that one of his brothers refers to it as “unhealthy.”
That is what spurred Alexander to shoot at midnight in parks in Beijing, sleep in West Virginia’s basketball arena, and have his cellphone voicemail message say that he will not call back until the Mountaineers’ season ends.
“It needs to be understood that he’s been obsessed with practicing,” said Jeremy Alexander, one of Joe’s older brothers. “At times growing up, he’d leave for 10 hours, go to the YMCA and pack a lunch. He has worked his butt off.”
Alexander’s father worked overseas, so Joe and his family lived in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong for eight years. While in high school in Beijing, Jeremy Alexander remembers being out in a park with his friends at midnight hanging out. All of a sudden, his friends heard a noise in the distance and wondered what it was.
“Don’t worry,” he told them. “That’s just Joe playing basketball.” With a laugh, he added, “By himself, of course.”
Be it in China or playing high school ball in the United States, Joe Alexander always had a ball in his hands. He would dribble in the school locker room for nearly four hours until volleyball practice ended and he could use the gym.
Arnie McGaha, who coached him at Linganore High in suburban Maryland, remembered Alexander trying to persuade the school’s athletic director to give him a key so he could use the gymnasium.
Joe’s two older brothers Jeremy (24) and John (26) said that growing up, they would physically dominate Joe, 21, forcing him to learn how to shoot over them and how to outsmart them.
“He’s very much a cerebral personality,” Jeremy Alexander said.
Joe Alexander’s problem had been that he was a late bloomer.
He had a solid high school senior season, and his desire to play Division I basketball drove him to Hargrave Military Academy, a school in Chatham, Va., usually reserved for top-flight prospects who need to improve their grades. Alexander’s academics were fine, but he needed better competition.
At Hargrave, Alexander said he averaged about 1 point a game but benefited from playing against future Division I players like Pittsburgh’s Sam Young every day. He admitted that he was too skinny to earn significant minutes, but he caught the eye of the West Virginia assistant Jeff Neubauer, now the coach at Eastern Kentucky, in a workout.
Most recruiting visits involve coaches trying to persuade players to go to their college. Alexander’s case was the opposite. Alexander, who ended up picking West Virginia over Tulane, told Neubauer that he was ready for the Big East.
“He was the most convincing kid that I ever recruited,” Neubauer said. “He said, ‘I want to play in the N.B.A.’ And he was staring right through me when he said it.”
Once Alexander got to West Virginia, things did not go smoothly. He barely played his freshman year, but impressed teammates by running up and down hotel steps during road trips to stay in shape. His sophmore season he averaged 10.3 points but faded down the stretch, scoring in single digits the last nine games.
Last season, he started sleeping three nights a week on a blue leather couch in the Mountaineers’ locker room. No sheets or blankets, just team-issued sweats.
Although he lives only a few minutes away in an off-campus apartment, Alexander likes to shoot by himself late at night. When asked why he sleeps in the locker room he responded, “It’s close to the court.”
Alexander lacked the high school credentials. He was never ranked nationally, wasn’t nominated to the McDonalds All-American, and never got invited to the Lebron James Skill Academy but he never stopped working.
From the Beijing park shootarounds to sleeping on the locker-room leather couch, Joe Alexander outworked everybody to become the 8th pick of this years NBA draft.
