Before he was signed by the Boston Celtics, Tacko Fall’s defense was seen as a problem, but he just won an award for it with the Red Claws.
Boston Celtics two way center Tacko Fall may be physically gifted with extraordinary height, but that’s never stopped him from working incredibly hard to make up for the fact that he picked up the sport relatively late in life.
Basic fundamentals drilled into his peers who spent time in AAU circuits years before he even picked up a basketball were an issue to his ceiling as a professional player.
There were questions about his ability to defend in space that ultimately led to him going undrafted.
Instead, the Senegalese center soon showed doubters why his legendary work ethic would help him conquer yet another of many obstacles thrown in his path as an unlikely professional prospect over his career arc to date.
And at the end of his first season in the NBA as a two way player, he did exactly that — Fall would be awarded a place on the G-League’s All-Defensive team.
“Defense is two things: effort or want, and understanding,” offered Fall via The Athletic’s Jared Weiss. “On the pick-and-roll, I worked to position myself to be in the best place to play two people at the same time.”
“I’m utilizing my length and things like that, so it just came naturally. So when I’m in the game, I don’t have to think about it. All of that comes with reps and luckily, coach [Darren Erman of the Maine Red Claws] is a really good defensive coach, so he’s been able to help with that.”
The 7-foot-5 big man has always believed in himself, but as he got close to becoming a pro, some of the criticisms began to get under his skin, Fall even started believing some of them.
“I think I let other people’s perception of how bigs should be affect me,” he explained.
“I knew that I could do it, but you always hear that guys as big as me can’t move on the perimeter. And I feel like I let those things, before, affect how I was looking at myself. The moment that I started believing that I could do it, then things just changed.”
One of the most basic interventions the UCF product made was simply getting better at running the floor, given the speed of the game at the NBA level is considerably faster.
“The more games I played, the better shape I was in,” Fall offered. “When I was coming back to Boston, especially in like the second half of the season, [the Celtics coaching staff] came up with a plan for me to stay in shape … When I first started, I could [play] for maybe three minutes. Now I can do it for seven, eight minutes.”
“If I can be sure that Coach Brad [Stevens] can put me out there for 10 minutes straight, I think that’s the next step for me,” he added.
Fall also began working on strengthening his game and making his style of play more efficient, and as the Red Claws season progressed, it became more and more clear the former Knight was building towards something sustainable in terms of an NBA career.
He still has quite a way to go before he’ll be able to become a regular part of a good NBA rotation, but the undrafted center who barely managed to stay in the U.S. at one point in his basketball journey looks like he’s on his way.
And with an unusually high motor driving the extraordinarily tall big man to continue learning and working as much as he has, it’ll be a bigger surprise than not if he falls short of his NBA dreams.
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