CLICK HERE if you are having a problem viewing the photos on a mobile device
SAN FRANCISCO — Before he was drawing a foul on James Harden and calling him “food,” Eric Paschall was a quiet, skinny kid from Westchester who couldn’t get into church-league games because the black tops of Harlem got too hot in the summertime.
“He was used to playing in air-conditioned gyms up in Westchester county and I remember the coach telling me ‘Juan, I’d like to put him in the game, but he’s crying because he said it’s too hot,'” Paschall’s father Juan Paschall said. “He wasn’t always very aggressive. It’s from going to the city, from Westchester County, and playing with kids who were better than him, who were tougher than him, that brought out the toughness.”
Paschall developed a thicker skin in the AAU circuit. With his best friend Donovan Mitchell at his side, he developed into a mean isolation scorer who was dunking at age 12.
He lifted weights to fill out his frame and build confidence. He won a pair of national championships in AAU, was named Atlantic 10 rookie of the year at Fordham and transferred to Villanova, where he won another pair of national titles. After half a decade in college, Paschall watched with his family in his hometown of Dobbs Ferry when he slid to the second round of the NBA Draft and was scooped up by the Warriors.
Even Warriors coach Steve Kerr, who was on Team USA’s staff with Paschall’s college coach Jay Wright during this year’s FIBA World Cup games in China, has been surprised by Paschall’s immediate impact. The 23-year-old forward has stepped in as a key rotation player for a team decimated by injuries, averaging 15.5 points, 4.3 rebounds and 1.3 assists.
His 34-point explosion against the Portland Trail Blazers on his 23rd birthday lifted the Warriors to their most recent win. Among rookies, Paschall is third in both points scored and minutes played. All of this production from the 41st pick in June’s draft.
So how does a second-round pick make such an immediate impact and establish himself as a building block for a championship organization?
New York roots
Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., is a small town of about 10,000 people 20 miles north of Manhattan. Juan Paschall and his wife Cecelia moved from Yonkers in the 1990s to raise a family in Dobbs Ferry.
Paschall and Mitchell were neighbors who first met in church when they were 6 years old. A few years later, when Paschall showed up for AAU at Riverside Church near Harlem, there was Mitchell getting up shots. The two became best friends, challenging each other to games of NBA 2K and playing basketball whenever they could. However, to the other AAU kids, Paschall and Mitchell were just the kids from Westchester. In other words: they were soft.
“They were talented, they weren’t tough,” Juan Paschall said. “But things, experiences in their life molded them into something in that they became very confident in who they were as people. But neither one of them were tough. They were far from tough. Not when they were young.”
[From Dobbs Ferry to the NBA: Eric Paschall and Donovan Mitchell are ready for this]
The Westchester kids battled with the Harlem kids. Paschall won national titles with Riverside and The City AAU teams. In prep school, he was named Class B player of the year. The skinny kid who once longed for air-conditioned gyms started playing street ball in Harlem.
“They would embarrass you if you were not tough, OK,” Juan Paschall said. “That really brought something else out of his game. It brought some toughness and some cockiness.”
Then came time to make his college decision. While Mitchell went out of state to Louisville, Paschall ended up attending Fordham, a small school in the Atlantic 10 conference 15 minutes from Dobbs Ferry. Paschall was a three-star recruit with offers from Big East schools, but his dad urged him to stay close to home.
With an isolation game honed in Harlem, Paschall averaged 15.9 points as a freshman and was named Atlantic 10 rookie of the year. However, his tenure was short-lived. After his head coach was fired, it was clear to Paschall it was time to look elsewhere — and impressive suitors awaited.
It came down to Florida and Villanova. Though the Paschalls were impressed with Florida’s facilities and coach Billy Donovan, Villanova was a basketball-forward program much closer to home than Gainesville.
“He came to Villanova as a scorer, just an iso scorer,” Villanova assistant coach Kyle Neptune said. “And while at Villanova, he had to play literally every role.”
“You got to uphold that, being from New York,” Paschall said. “You’ve got to have that grittiness and that toughness about you.”
An opportunity
After sustaining a leg injury at Fordham, Paschall showed up for his first year at Villanova out of shape. He was nearly 40 pounds overweight. By adjusting his diet and amping up his workout routine, Paschall dropped his body fat from 16% to 5% while sitting out a year under NCAA transfer rules.
It was at Villanova that Paschall learned to defer, something he didn’t have to do in Harlem or at Fordham. “He played with a lot of really good players who had established themselves at Villanova,” Neptune said.
Playing alongside future NBA players Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges and Jalen Brunson, Paschall focused on defending and rebounding. He was happy to do it, to sacrifice numbers for the sake of winning.
Still, Paschall’s performance in practices made it clear he could do more. He sought out one-on-one challenges and dunked on teammates in scrimmages. His size, athleticism and motor stood out. He emerged as a leader for a national championship team his junior year and then, as a senior, averaged 16.5 points, 6.1 rebounds and 2.1 assists.
“I think his game is actually better suited for the NBA just because he can guard every position and there’s way more space on the floor for him to operate,” Neptune said.
Paschall was projected to be selected in the middle of the draft’s first round. Partly due to his age and questions about his upside, Paschall slid to the second round. The Warriors had two chances to take him, but first selected guard Jordan Poole at no. 28 and center Alen Smailagic at no. 39. With the 41st pick, the Warriors took Paschall.
“We were kind of holding our breath hoping for him to fall,” Kerr said. “Luckily, it happened.”
After losing Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston and Kevin Durant in the offseason, the Warriors believed Paschall could contribute right away as a versatile defender off the bench.
“We really liked Eric because of his strength and his power,” Kerr said. “He was undersized, but these days undersized guys at that four position, as long as you are really strong with that wingspan, we’ve seen it the last few years with Draymond (Green). We felt like Eric had a chance to have a smilier impact as a second-round pick. Somebody you could plug in and play particularly because he played four years in college, in a great program that won a national championship.
“He came in and didn’t look like a rookie at all from the first day of practice. He looked like somebody who’s been really well prepared for this.”
Then early injuries depleted the roster even more. In addition to Klay Thompson, lost in the NBA Finals to an ACL tear, the Warriors have dealt with injuries to Stephen Curry, Green, Jacob Evans, Kevon Looney and Willie Cauley-Stein, among others.
All of that has thrust Paschall into major rotation minutes, and provided the runway for him to show off a muscular scoring game.
“In terms of his composure and presence on the floor, obviously when he gets it going he’s demonstrative and he knows he belongs and knows what he has to offer,” Curry said. “It’s an energy that is contagious.”
Part of the future
To satisfy his general education credits, Paschall took a public speaking course during his freshman year at Fordham. He didn’t know then how much that course would pay off a few years later.
With two of Golden State’s three foundational players sidelined for most of the season, Paschall has temporarily become the face of the franchise. He talks to media after almost every game and every practice. The once-shy kid at Villanova is a media pro, deftly answering questions to provide a quote good enough to print without giving up any company secrets. He handles a media scrum like a player with 10 years experience.
“I feel like those four years helped me be ready for this moment, this opportunity I have now,” Paschall said. “Just being mature, just being able to handle it, being able to play the way I play. I feel like it helped me out a lot.”
Paschall is a rare rookie who thrives with more responsibility. Often, more minutes lead to more exposure of a rookie’s weaknesses. Paschall shows more of his strengths, from the isolation scoring he developed in New York to the versatile defense he came to lean on at Villanova.
Beat up and hung over from five-straight NBA Finals run, the Warriors are in the midst of a rebuilding season. Ten of the team’s 14 players are newcomers, and nine are age 23 or younger. Facing an uphill battle from a 2-10 record, Golden State is poised for its first appearance in the lottery since 2012.
This season, then, is about figuring out who will be part of the next championship run. Paschall has earned his place, and is prepared to adjust his game when the Warriors look like the Warriors again.
“It’s going to help a lot, them knowing they have another option on the floor,” he said. “I definitely feel like I’m going to have confidence knowing I belong. I know the guys are going to believe in me and tell me to go make plays now just because they’ve seen it.”
There are several reasons to be confident in Paschall’s future: his scoring ability, his defensive versatility, his physique and athleticism, and his willingness to put winning above all else. His father always told him to stay “hungry and humble.” A second-round pick earnestly proving himself, Paschall is ready to eat.
“Over time, he’s only going to get better and better,” Neptune said. “He has no limitations to his game. The sky’s the limit for him, just because there’s nothing on the floor that he can’t do.”
