This group of freshmen seem to have a terrific bond, but you and R.J. seem especially tight.

Oh, yeah.

It’s not phony, right? It’s not just for the cameras?

No, not at all. I don’t know how to describe it. Everybody on the team—even though I’m closest with R.J., I can go hang out with Justin Robinson, Brennan Besser, Mike Buckmire… We all hang out with each other. There is no odd man out.

I’m sure you’ve had teams where that’s not the case.

Oh, yeah—being real, every team’s not like that. But this team, we instantly all had the connection.

Why do you think that happened?

Coming in, we understood that yeah, we’re good, but freshmen don’t really win the national championship. You always need veteran support. We just learn from them. We take in everything we can.

The friendship you have with R.J.—it’s unusual under the circumstances, don’t you think? It could’ve easily not gone that way.

I know. I know.

Is the draft a subject you guys discuss, or is it one of those things that’s just always there in the background?

I mean, we both understand the situation, but the only thing we can do is go out, play our best, try to win as a team, because at the end of the day, an NBA team is gonna pick who they want. You see some of these guys who’ll go for 40 points and stuff—but that doesn’t really affect your draft pick. The NBA teams know what they want. So me and R.J. don’t focus on that. We just focus on trying to win a conference championship and hopefully go for a national championship.

It’s funny you bring that up—I don’t know that there’s any real correlation between playing time in college and NBA draft position. There are plenty of lottery picks who were the sixth man on their teams in college. It happens all the time. Jaren Jackson Jr. only played 20 minutes a game last year at Michigan State, and he went fourth.

Yeah, nobody’s insecure about playing time. We’re all secure. We all have the same thing in mind. Coach K—he told us how it’d be when we come. If I’m playing with four other five-star recruits, with great players coming off the bench, I’m not always gonna play 30-plus minutes, and that’s something I knew before I came here. So if I play 20 minutes, I’m not fazed by it at all, because that just comes along with being on a great team.

“People always say you have to grow into your body, but for me, it wasn’t even growing into my body—the more weight came, it didn’t faze me. It made me faster, stronger. It helped me become a more versatile player.”

So far this season there have been moments, especially against Texas Tech, when it seemed as if the officials were just flummoxed by you—like they’d just never seen a college player your size who moves as fast as you.

Yeah, I think so. I think some officials just haven’t reffed somebody like me, because I’m not just big, I’m very mobile, and I think I’m nimble. I can get from spot to spot real quick. But, you know, the fact that I’m so much stronger, when I attack the basket, when I get fouled, a regular foul would not faze me much because I would just power through it. But some referees don’t see it like that—they just see it as I tried to force my way in there, and I get the charge call. At first it would kinda bother me, like, “Come on, this is basketball!” But then I’m looking at it from their perspective, and so sometimes it does look like I am forcing my way. In reality, I’m not—it’s just I’m able to get through the contact. But I’m at the point now where the calls just roll off me. It’s just, “All right, on to the next play.”

When did you realize you were unusually big?

I’m gonna say…my…my junior year.

Really? That late?

I didn’t pick up all this weight until junior year. Freshman year, I was small. I was 6-3, 175—like, I was small. And over the course of about two years, I picked up a hundred pounds. I mean, I wouldn’t look at myself and go, Wow, I’m 250! I wouldn’t know I was 250 until I stepped on the scale, and then I’m like, Oh. I’m 250? I don’t feel 250. I don’t feel slow. Like, with all that weight just came more athleticism and finding myself able to do new things. People always say you have to grow into your body, but for me, it wasn’t even growing into my body—the more weight came, it didn’t faze me. It made me faster, stronger. It helped me become a more versatile player.