Bill Self’s Boot Camp evokes memories: ‘We can laugh now. We weren’t laughing then.’
Michael Lee, who starred in both football and basketball at Portland’s Jefferson High, put on his running shoes and stood nervously on the track at Kansas Memorial Stadium with his best friend, Aaron Miles, and 12 other members of the 2001-02 Jayhawk basketball team.
It was late August 2001 — the first day of the school year in fact — when then-KU freshman Lee and his new college hoops teammates were told to answer the starter’s gun by completing as many laps as they could in 12 minutes.
Six-and-a-half laps stood as the minimum standard for a Kansas player to be allowed to officially start practicing with coach Roy Williams’ Jayhawk squad.
“That was my introduction into big-time college basketball,” 2005 KU graduate Lee, now a 35-year-old assistant coach of the NBA G-League’s Santa Cruz Warriors, said of Williams’ 12-minute run — held on Day One of the academic calendar each of his 15 years in Lawrence.
Williams has continued the 12-minute run as head coach the past 16 years at North Carolina.
“If you don’t make it, you don’t get anything. Do it over every day until you make it. It was tough,” Lee recalled in a phone conversation with The Star.
Shooting guard Lee — he was able to conquer the 6 1/2-lap requirement as both a KU freshman and sophomore — was pleased to learn he wouldn’t have to participate in any 12-minute run as a junior during the 2003-04 school year.
That was former Illinois coach Bill Self’s first year at KU.
Little did he know Self — who took over when Williams left KU for North Carolina — had a grueling conditioning regimen of his own to unleash on the players — “Boot Camp.”
For two weeks starting in mid-September, Lee and his teammates were ordered to congregate at Allen Fieldhouse at 6 a.m. for an hour’s worth of non-stop sprints, backboard touches and defensive slides.
Times for various conditioning drills had to be met or penalties were implemented.
Yes, this Self-run Boot Camp proved even tougher than the previously dreaded 12-minute run.
“By the time coach Self got there, we were programmed, for lack of a better word,” Lee said of Boot Camp, which he helped run as a KU staff member in the preseason of 2007-08 — the year he worked as student manager for KU’s national-title team.
“He comes in and does something different. It was intense, but good for us, too,” Lee added.
Lee was happy to re-visit that first KU Boot Camp a few days in advance of Boot Camp 2018, which, for the current Jayhawk players, will begin at 6 a.m., Monday in KU’s practice gym adjacent to the fieldhouse, and continue five days a week for two weeks.
“I don’t know if anybody liked it,” Lee said of Boot Camp his junior and senior years. “For us it was, ‘All right fellas, we’ve got to get through this, do whatever we’ve got to do to survive.’
“One day coach Self told us to get on the court at 5:15 in the morning. You are not even awake yet. I remember guys running out there pulling up their shorts with one shoe on. We can laugh now. We weren’t laughing then,” Lee added.
Self’s first KU team was led by an accomplished junior class of Lee, Miles, Wayne Simien and Keith Langford. The only scholarship seniors on the squad were Jeff Graves and Bryant Nash, the subject of some now-funny moments from Self’s inaugural Boot Camp.
“Coach waits until the last day, the end of Boot Camp to say, ‘Jeff Graves didn’t go to class,’’’’ Lee said of the senior power forward. “Coach said (as a penalty) we all had to do five 17s (run sideline to sideline 17 times in just over a minute). We were already dead.
“Coach was saying stuff like, ‘Everything is mind over matter.’ We knock out the 17s, who doesn’t make it? Jeff Graves. We had to run again,” Lee added. “Jeff didn’t make it again. I lost it. I said, ‘Jeff you are the reason we’re out here. Make it!’
“Bryant Nash walked out of the fieldhouse,” Lee added with a laugh. “We’re still on the court. It’s 7:15 now. We’re running with no finish line in sight. I’m just waiting for coach Self to take us out of our misery. Finally he said, ‘You guys go (to locker room).’ I said, ‘I’m definitely not going to class after this.’’’
Lee’s best buddy, Miles — head coach of the G-League Santa Cruz Warriors and Lee’s current boss — tried to make sure no players were late during that first Boot Camp.
Tardiness for Boot Camp — just like missing class — meant punishment for the entire squad.
“Aaron would get practice gear, give it to the guys the night before and say, ‘Sleep in it. It’ll give you an extra 15 minutes sleep in the morning,’’’ Lee said. “Aaron and a couple guys slept in the players lounge. I said, ‘I’m gonna sleep at the (Jayhawker) Towers. I’ll see you all in the morning.’ That was Aaron’s way. He said, ‘If we’ve got to be on the court at 5:15, I’ll sleep ’til 5:10.’
“Wayne knocked it out of the park per usual. He put on his hard hat and knocked it out. Keith was probably a little bit more like me. I always had a gripe about something. Keith might wake up a little grumpy, but once you get into Boot Camp you are too tired to talk. He was charismatic, funny, too,” Lee added of Langford.
Lee admits Boot Camp was a lot more fun in September of 2007 when he could simply watch the proceedings as a staff member.
“You’ve got Mario (Chalmers), Brandon (Rush), Sherron (Collins), Sasha (Kaun), Darnell (Jackson), Russ (Robinson), those guys,” Lee said. “Being on the other side, I still didn’t want to get up at 5 in the morning, but I didn’t have to do anything. The funniest part is the coaches were able to keep the mood light. Stand between coach ‘T’ (Kurtis Townsend) and Danny (Manning), they are some of the funniest people alive. It worked clearly.”
Lee said Boot Camp ultimately set the tone of hard work for the 2008 squad, which won it all.
Assistant coach Norm Roberts — he worked Self’s first KU Boot Camp then served as head coach at St. John’s for six seasons before returning to KU in 2012-13 — is such an advocate of Boot Camp conditioning he instituted it as a head coach at the New York school.
“I believe in it … wholeheartedly,” Roberts said. “Coach (Self) started doing it for the mental aspect, but also he started doing it because he wondered why guys would say to you as players, ‘My legs are killing me,’ once they start practice.
“You’d run guys to get them in shape but when you started getting to the basketball stuff, their legs were totally worn out. You’d go, ‘What the heck,’ and now you started to wonder why guys get injured,” Roberts added. “I think Boot Camp is good. I think it gets the guys in pretty good shape because no matter what, the only thing that really is going to get them into shape for basketball is basketball (starting on Sept. 28 with the start of the official season).”
Roberts said Boot Camp was just as effective a conditioning tool at St. John’s as it was at Kansas.
“We prepared them for it, told them it was coming. We told them that for two weeks, ‘Anything goes now — a lot of sliding, defensive stuff, a lot of movement drills,’’’ Roberts said.
He deemed the “best” part of Boot Camp the early-morning start.
“Make it something that’s not easy. Everybody’s got to get up and be in the gym by 6 and everybody has to make their times,” Roberts said. “It’s not just about you, but the team. Don’t let your teammates down. It’s more a mental and bonding deal. It also gets you into shape but it’s probably more mental and mental toughness than it is physical toughness.”
KU coach Self likes Boot Camp so much that he holds it during recruiting season, a very busy time for the coaches. If time permits, he and his assistants catch a nap right after Boot Camp sessions, then hit the road for in-home recruiting visits with high school prospects.
“It’s probably more than most (players) have gone through, of course it’s not anything they can’t get through,” said Self, who has held Boot Camp at KU, Illinois, Tulsa and Oral Roberts. “Through all the drill work, they get their bodies in shape, also their feet in shape.
“It’s kind of a mental thing we put our guys through,” Self added.
Boot Camp does not end once the players leave the gym shortly after 7 a.m.
The players must attend classes on campus, lift weights, participate in individual drills and play in unsupervised pick-up games.
“For two weeks anything goes basically. Whether it’s a 5 a.m. wakeup call for workouts to afternoon-type things, to if you are a minute late to tutoring or if you are a minute late for class .... Anything goes. Whatever we say. That two weeks they can’t argue with us,” Self said.
“What it does is create an element of more than team toughness. They are pulling together. You get to the point (during the season) they say, ‘Guys we didn’t do this for nothing.’ Even though other teams may do it, it gives us a source of pride,” Self added.
Self in the past has cited players such as Tyrel Reed, Conner Teahan, Devonté Graham, Stephen Vinson and Frank Mason as contenders for a KU Boot Camp all-star team.
“You just have to get in your mind, ‘Work hard, grind hard and just be ready to get through the day,’” Mason, now a second-year member of the Sacramento Kings, said. “You know it’s going to be tough, but you just have to think positive and you get through it.”
Mason advises the KU newcomers to be as ready as they can be for morning workouts.
“I think to eat a light breakfast would be better than running on an empty stomach. That can cause dizziness and a light head,” Mason said. “You should try to eat something before you come in and run so many minutes. I did a lot of recovery with Hudy (Andrea, strength coach). I still got in the gym, got up shots, ballhandling, a little conditioning (after Boot Camp sessions). I just tried to stay fit, do what I usually do. That’s what I did,” Mason added.
This year’s Boot Camp will run Monday through Friday, then after the weekend off, the players return to the gym early Monday the 24th. This year, for the first time since September of 2014, a group of Marines will bring “The Program” to KU’s campus to conclude Boot Camp a week from Wednesday and Thursday.
Late Night in the Phog is the official start of the season, on Friday the 28th.
Former KU guard Graham, now a rookie with the Charlotte Hornets, was team MVP of the last “Program,” which consists of conditioning and leadership drills both on land and in the swimming pool.
“Just going hard,” Graham said of his advice to players about to embark on Boot Camp. “That’s all the coaches look for is you to go hard. If they see you are going hard and bringing a lot of energy, talking, it makes it better for you.”
Former KU guard Reed, now a doctor of physical therapy, said players should not fear Boot Camp, but embrace the opportunity.
“I wouldn’t say it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done but it definitely tested you mentally and physically,” Reed said. “As a player I understood the concept of Boot Camp and getting through tough things as a team to bring us closer as a group. However, I don’t think I really appreciated all it did for us as a team when I was there. Looking back on it now I think it is an awesome thing coach Self does and it really gets us ready to go to battle during the season. I know that I would go to battle with any one of the guys I played with at KU and love em to death.”
Gary Bedore
Gary Bedore covers University of Kansas athletics for The Star.
