Downtime for NBA players is a study in relaxation techniques. After a practice or before a game, many indulge in video games, a movie, a book or the ever-popular nap. A day off might include all of the above.
But Pat Connaughton, a rookie with the Portland Trail Blazers, has a method all his own. On a nice day, he slips on a baseball glove, goes outdoors and plays catch with his father.
It is no ordinary catch, though, and it is not solely for relaxation or familial bonding. Connaughton, a lithe 6-foot-6 shooting guard with a smooth jump shot and a rocket arm, throws with a purpose.
He might go to a remote park around Portland with his father, Len Connaughton, a real estate manager. Pat Connaughton loosens up from a close distance for a while, then throws 120 feet on a line and then moves in to 60 feet, firing 90-mph lasers that slice through the air.
“Some guys take naps,” Connaughton said last week before a game against the New York Knicks. “As busy as we are and as focused as we are at our sport, there are times the coaches want you to get away from basketball. If my dad’s not around, then I’ll go out and throw against a fence.”
Connaughton, a gregarious 23-year-old with high aspirations, is not throwing only for recreation, though. He is like any pitcher readying himself to enter a game — the only difference is that the game is two, three, maybe 10 years away.
“Even if I have a successful and plentiful NBA career,” he said, “someday I am going to go back and try to be a big league pitcher.”
Later Tuesday night against the Knicks, Connaughton briefly played for the first time in six games. The next night, in a game in his hometown, Boston, he had 7 points while playing 7 minutes, 45 seconds, each figure a career high.
Connaughton does not play much. Few second-round draft picks do. For many observers, including the hopeful Baltimore Orioles, baseball is Connaughton’s better sport.
“He has the talent to be a top-of-the-rotation guy,” Rick Peterson, the Orioles’ pitching coordinator, said in Sarasota, Florida, on Friday. “He has a major league arm, but just as important, he is a major league person, and that is a prerequisite. He has everything it takes.”
Peterson helped usher in a golden pitching era in Oakland with Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito. He also worked closely with Pedro Martinez and Tom Glavine with the Mets. But when he watched Connaughton throw a bullpen session in Sarasota in summer 2014, he witnessed something he had never quite seen before.
“His fastball looked like no other fastball,” Peterson said. “It has the most unique late movement I’ve ever seen.”
That bullpen session was shortly after the Orioles had drafted Connaughton in the fourth round of the Major League Baseball amateur draft. That summer, in six games during a brief turn with the Class A Aberdeen IronBirds, Connaughton had an eye-opening 2.45 ERA over 14 2/3 innings. Then he was off to Italy on a trip with the Notre Dame basketball team, followed by his senior year with the Fighting Irish.
Connaughton played both baseball and basketball at Notre Dame, but after graduation, he told the Orioles that basketball was his preference. He adores the sport, and he had to see if he could make it.
Contrary to many predictions, he was drafted — 41st overall by the Brooklyn Nets. He was immediately traded to the Trail Blazers, whose general manager, Neil Olshey, is considered a top talent evaluator.
In order to sign his rookie contract, Connaughton had to give up professional baseball for at least two years, although he said Portland was fine with his light throwing program. After two years, the Blazers say, Connaughton can petition to have that condition reconsidered.
That is why he continues to play catch. Peterson and Chris Correnti, an Orioles trainer who has worked closely with Martinez and Johan Santana, gave Connaughton the Orioles’ standard offseason throwing program to follow in his free time. Connaughton also stretches out his arm every night to help keep it in shape. “I understand assets,” he said. “My arm is an asset, and I need to take care of it.”
Connaughton relishes a challenge, especially overcoming doubters who said he would never be drafted in the NBA, that Notre Dame’s 2-point loss to Kentucky in the Midwest Regional final of last year’s NCAA tournament was his basketball peak.
It very well may not be. But to date, Connaughton’s NBA journey has been unsurprising for a second-round pick. He gets most of his playing time in practice as a member of the scout team.
In real games, he was averaging 3.0 minutes and 0.8 points entering Sunday’s game at Detroit. He had played in only 24 of the Blazers’ 63 games. Yet even that is more than most expected.
“No one thought I would be here,” he said. “You see people say: ‘He should go back to baseball. He should do this; he should do that.’ Those are people who said I would never even make it here. There’s always another hurdle to go over, and it’s fun to use that as motivation.”
If he develops into a solid NBA player, Connaughton could gain the leverage needed to play both sports professionally, the way Chuck Connors, Dave DeBusschere and Danny Ainge once did.
Connaughton is no longer an Orioles employee, but the team retains his rights in case he returns to baseball. So when Connaughton heard that a reporter was soon headed to Orioles camp in Florida, he smiled.
“Tell them I said hello,” he said with a playful wink, “and I’ll see them shortly.”
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