The practice gym at the Austin Comets’ training center goes quiet around 7:30 p.m., after the coaches leave and the cleaning crew starts on the far baseline. For most of the summer, that was when Jalen Price showed up for his second workout of the day. The 21-year-old point guard would shoot 400 jumpers, run a ball-handling circuit in the corner and then walk next door to the weight room, where a strength coach was usually waiting with a clipboard and a slightly tired expression.
Price arrived at training camp last week 14 pounds heavier than he finished his rookie season, at a listed 196, and with a jump shot that coaches describe as “rebuilt from the floor up.” He will need both. After the Comets traded for four-time All-Star Darius Webb, the most important question in Austin is no longer whether the team has enough talent. It is whether its second-year point guard can organize all of it.
A rookie year that taught hard lessons
Price was the 14th pick in last year’s draft, a quick, wiry guard out of a mid-major program in Ohio who led his conference in assists twice. His rookie season had flashes, including a 24-point, 11-assist game against Sacramento in February, and long stretches where he simply looked overmatched. He averaged 9.8 points and 5.1 assists, shot 31 percent from three-point range and turned the ball over 3.2 times per game, among the highest rates in the league for guards who played at least 20 minutes a night.
The turnovers bothered him most. Price kept a notebook last season, a habit from college, and wrote down every giveaway along with what the defense had shown him. By April it had more than 200 entries. “A lot of them were the same mistake,” he said after practice on Thursday. “Bigger guys putting a body on me at the top of the floor, and me trying to split two defenders because I didn’t have the strength to just go through one.”
Fourteen pounds, on purpose
The Comets’ performance staff built Price’s summer around one goal: keep his speed while making him harder to knock off his line. That meant five lifting sessions a week focused on the lower body and core, a nutrition plan with a team dietitian and weekly testing of his first-step quickness on a pressure plate.
Head strength coach Andre Kowalski said the team was careful not to chase a number on the scale. “Fourteen pounds is a lot for a guard, so we tracked his sprint and lateral times every week,” Kowalski said. “If he had gotten slower, we would have backed off. He actually got a little faster over 10 feet.”
Teammates noticed in the first week of camp. Veteran forward Corey Lanham, who guarded Price in several scrimmages, said the difference was obvious on drives. “Last year you could bump him and he would bounce off,” Lanham said. “Now he bumps you.”
The new jumper
The shooting work started with something smaller than most fans would expect: Price’s feet. Assistant coach Lisa Moreno, who runs the team’s shooting program, noticed on film that he landed several inches forward of where he took off on most jumpers, a sign that his shot drifted. They narrowed his stance, moved his release slightly higher and rebuilt his form close to the basket before stepping back.
The process was not pretty at first. For the first three weeks of summer, Moreno would not let Price shoot beyond 15 feet. By August he was making about 41 percent of his three-pointers in tracked workouts, up from the low 30s, though everyone involved is quick to note that empty-gym percentages rarely survive contact with a real defense. In four preseason scrimmages, he has gone 9 of 21 from deep.
He doesn’t need to become a 40 percent shooter. He needs defenses to respect him enough to step out. That opens up everything else he does well.
Lisa Moreno, Comets assistant coach
Running the offense next to an All-Star
The Webb trade changed Price’s job before he played a minute of his second season. Webb is a ball-dominant scorer who has averaged more than 25 points a game in four of the last five seasons. Austin also has one of the league’s best young centers in the middle. Price is now the youngest starter on a team expected to compete for a title, and the one most responsible for making sure everyone else gets their touches.
Head coach Ray Hollins said the plan is not for Price to defer. “Darius is going to have the ball in big moments, and he has earned that,” Hollins said. “But we are not a better team if Jalen stands in the corner. He sets the tempo. He gets us into actions early. He is the one who makes the other four guys comfortable.”
In practice, that means a few specific responsibilities that coaches have laid out for him:
- Push the pace after defensive rebounds, when Webb tends to trail the play.
- Run the second-unit offense for stretches when Webb sits, usually the start of the second and fourth quarters.
- Guard the opponent’s best perimeter ball handler, so Webb can save energy on defense.
- Keep turnovers under two and a half per game, a target he set himself.
Webb, for his part, has been publicly supportive. He spent part of the first week of camp working with Price on reading pick-and-roll coverages, and the two have been seen staying late together after practice. “He asks good questions,” Webb said. “Young guys either want to learn or they want to be told they’re good. He wants to learn.”
The defensive assignment nobody talks about
The less glamorous half of Price’s job may matter just as much. Coaches want him to take the toughest perimeter assignment most nights, which means chasing some of the quickest guards in the league through screens for 30-plus minutes. Last season he was a willing defender but an easy target, often knocked off course by bigger guards who simply leaned into him. The added weight is meant to fix that too.
In the first week of camp, the coaching staff ran a drill in which Price had to stay in front of a ball handler for 24 seconds while two screeners set picks. He did it on 11 of 14 possessions, according to an assistant who tracked the drill, up from roughly half the time during last year’s camp. “Defense is where a young guard earns trust,” Hollins said. “If he guards, the minutes take care of themselves.”
What success looks like
Expectations in Austin are high enough that a strong season from Price might not show up in his own box scores. If the Comets win 55 games and Webb is an All-Star again, Price could average 12 points and seven assists and still be one of the biggest reasons why. The front office seems comfortable with that. General manager Tom Whitaker said the team plans to discuss a rookie-scale extension with Price’s representatives next summer, when he becomes eligible.
Price says he is not thinking that far ahead. His notebook from last season sits on a shelf in his apartment. He started a new one this week. On Thursday night, it had three entries, all from a single scrimmage, all labeled with the same note: “Too early. Wait for the screen.”
The Comets open the regular season at home in two weeks. We will track Price’s turnover rate, three-point percentage and minutes alongside Webb through the first month of the season.
Watched him in summer league and the change in his frame is obvious. Great read.
The detail about him charting his own turnovers in a notebook is why I love this kid.