To improve after rookie year, Stauskas returns to Ann Arbor

Not much about his rookie NBA season played out the way Nik Stauskas anticipated.

Struggling on the court for the Sacramento Kings, Stauskas averaged only 4.4 points a game, hardly numbers expected of the eighth pick in the 2014 draft.

In his postseason meeting with team officials, none of the requests surprised him: get stronger and faster.

So Stauskas, the former Michigan star, knew where he needed to spend his off-season — with the person who made him into the 2014 Big Ten player of the year: U-M strength coach Jon Sanderson.

"There's no NBA facility that's better than Michigan's facility," Stauskas said recently of Michigan's Davidson Player Development Center. "I've worked with Sanderson before, and I know what happens when you commit to working with him.

"At times, it sucks because your body hurts when you're working with him, and it's not fun, but the results never lie. It showed with me and Caris (LeVert) the other year, and hopefully I can have those same results if I really commit myself."

Working with other former Wolverines this summer, including Jordan Morgan, Stauskas will break to join the Kings' summer league team but will spend most of his time in Ann Arbor.

But it will be a different experience than when he left a year ago to train for the draft.

He comes back to a city where he used to walk into the M Den and see his jersey being sold without any personal benefit, due to NCAA rules. Now he will walk into the same store and see a bottle of his own condiment, Musashi Foods' "Sauce Castillo" hot sauce, on the shelves after his first widespread endorsement.

In classic fashion for the easygoing Stauskas, the good fortune arrived by accident.

The Kings were playing the equally troubled 76ers in a meaningless March game, and the closed captioning somehow changed "Stauskas" to "Sauce Castillo."

Being Nik, he loved it.

"I feel like I always end up making the news for non-basketball related reasons, and I find it very funny," he said, also referring to the season-ending prank in which teammates filled his apartment with popcorn. "That's just the person I am. ... Everyone embraced it, everyone started calling me that, and then the floodgates opened up and it blew up a little bit."

It was just a laugher until his agency, Priority Sports, called and said he could capitalize on it.

"I was like, 'Hey, I'm not going to say no to money,' " he said. "So I just kind of rolled with it after that."

With a marketing tagline — "Sweet, smoky, and spicy, Sauce Castillo is highly versatile and is the perfect complement to any meal that needs a little kick. Much like its namesake, this sauce is on fire!" — Stauskas has embraced it and will appear at the M Den on June 5 to promote it.

As much as he has enjoyed the NBA life — including the first-class travel and ending the season finally learning how to drive and buying a Porsche — the on-court struggles severely bothered him.

He endured three coaches. Mike Malone was fired in December, Tyrone Corbin replaced him until February, and then George Karl took over at the All-Star break.

Under Karl, Stauskas found a comfort zone in the up-tempo style, and he was rewarded with more minutes. After averaging no more than 14 minutes in the first four months, he was at nearly 20 in the final two under Karl, showing bursts of the player the Kings expected.

"I'm motivated because of the way this year went," Stauskas said. "I didn't show that with the way I played, and I'm always motivated by the little things. I'm working extremely hard this summer to make sure that never happens again."

Stauskas didn't shoot over 33% from three-point range in a month until March, when he hit 47% from long range.

It revived his hope.

"I played my best under (Karl). I like his style. He likes to get up and down, and he loves the three ball, which obviously works in my favor," Stauskas said. "I just need to be able to knock it down consistently. I'm looking forward to coming into next season."

When he's hoping to be known as much for his game as his butchered name.

Contact Mark Snyder: msnyder@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mark__snyder.

Upward trend

Nik Staukas struggled in his rookie year in Sacramento, but he seemed to improve after George Karl took over the team in mid-February. His averages before and after the coaching change:

G MIN FG% 3PT% REB AST STL TO PTS Oct. 29-Feb. 11 50 13.6 32.8% 26.1% 1.0 0.7 0.2 0.4 3.4 Feb. 12-April 15 23 19.4 41.8% 42.1% 1.6 1.3 0.3 0.9 6.6 Totals 73 15.4 36.5% 32.2% 1.2 0.9 0.3 0.5 4.4

Source: basketball-reference.com