A Lighter Scott Now Carries More Weight

After dropping about 30 pounds from his 6-foot-7 frame this summer and raising his scoring average to 27.7 points per game -- ninth best in the nation -- this winter, Georgia Tech swingman Dennis Scott thought he was through with questions.

Questions about his girth and whether he is a one-note player -- even if the solitary tone was the sweet sound of ball swishing through net after a jump shot. Those with doubts were supposed to be appeased at the sight of the Reston, Va., native driving to the basket or grabbing rebounds or playing down low at power forward.

Besides lifting his scoring average 10 points from his first two seasons with the Yellow Jackets, Scott has scored 30 or more in a school-record 13 games this season, setting the mark with a 33-point effort in an 81-79 loss to North Carolina Wednesday.

The weight questions aside, Scott’s all-round excellence this season has raised another question: Should he leave Georgia Tech for the NBA? According to John Gabriel, an assistant coach with the Orlando Magic, there’s no doubt where Scott belongs.

“He’s a special player with NBA written all over him right now,” Gabriel said. “Some guys are good and others are good enough to understand the game and take their skills to the next level. He’s one of those guys.”

Others aren’t so sure. Georgia Tech Coach Bobby Cremins, undoubtedly biased by the Final Four-caliber squad he’d have should Scott return, says the junior should play his final season. Scott’s mother, Elizabeth, adds she’d like her son to get his college degree in four years.

Then there’s the matter of the smile that always seems to be playing on Scott’s lips during a game, no matter how tense the situation. Some NBA coaches have looked at that and his former heft and wonder if Scott is what is known in the league as a “con man,” one who knows what to say to coaches and executives but isn’t willing to sacrifice for success.

“If Dennis Scott was conning anybody before this year, the person he was conning the most was himself,” Cremins said. “He thought he was a great player and he wasn’t. He’s realized that and worked hard and now, yeah, I think he is a great player.”

Perceptions die hard, however, a reality that’s particularly true when a player has a skill like Scott’s shooting. He has averaged 6.7 rebounds (an improvement of two rebounds per game over his freshman and sophomore years) and 2.4 assists this season.

In his first two years, he had a total of 18 blocked shots and 88 steals. This season he already has 29 blocks and 51 thefts. All that pales, however, to how many shots he makes and misses.

“People don’t criticize my game if I shoot well,” Scott said. “Against Duke I made 15 of 21 shots. I hit everything, but even though I didn’t rebound as well as I thought I should have and got beat on defense a couple of times, I still played a great game.

“I can see being labeled (as a shooter) but a lot of times people don’t see the game. They look at the stats and if I’m eight for 21 it’s, ‘Dennis had a terrible game,’ just because I shot badly. But I might have had 10 rebounds and three blocked shots. I might have shot well in the clutch, but people don’t see that.”

The NBA scouts see that, although Scott’s shooting weighs heavy in their minds too. And, Scott admits, his shooting over the remainder of the season probably will be the deciding factor in his future.

“That’s the one thing I’ve learned these past two years: watching the NBA and how the draft goes,” he said. “Okay, I’m having a pretty good year, averaging 28, 29 points a game, leading the Atlantic Coast Conference in scoring, (ninth) in the country, and people are noticing me a lot.

“We get into the ACC tournament, I play well and we win the championship but then we go into the NCAA tournament and we lose in the first round and I only score 11 points and play bad. Now, is my stock up here or is it down here? From watching the way things happen, my stock will probably drop all the way to the bottom, so then is it wise for me to go?

“Look at last year. Going into the tournament, (then-Michigan star) Glen Rice was a late first-round, maybe mid-first-round pick. He was a great player, 6-8, could shoot the ball. But then he averages 30 points in the tournament and was the fourth player picked.

“That’s what people don’t realize. They say, ‘How come you don’t know if you’re going pro or not?’ I don’t know how I’m going to perform in the tournament. With those NBA scouts and coaches, you’re only as good as your last game. ... They’re not going to remember when I hit all those buzzer beaters when I was a freshman, sophomore and junior.”

Memory has played a big role in Scott’s career, which is why he can recite verbatim his statistical line from Georgia Tech’s 93-92 victory over Pittsburgh (on Dec. 4) in the ACC-Big East Challenge -- 40 minutes, 42 points, 8 rebounds, 2 blocks and an assist -- or the scenarios that led to his four-career buzzer beaters -- winning shots against De Paul, the Yugoslavian national team, North Carolina and Pitt.

For Scott, memory simply is concentration. Concentrate and the game opens up and it’s easy to know where the other nine players on the floor are or to focus on the basket as defenders rush toward you.

Not everyone shares that gift, and at times Scott seems vexed that others aren’t on the same wavelength. In a 74-72 loss to Virginia last week, he grimaced, then exchanged words with teammate Malcolm Mackey when the center was out of position during a series of possessions.

It is those times when Scott is most susceptible to charges of arrogance. If that’s the case, it is the same arrogance inherent in the games of players named Johnson and Bird.

Growing up in Reston, Scott said he was just like every other little boy in America who dreamed about holding the ball in his hands with his collegiate team down by two points with three seconds to play. Unlike most, he adds, “the dream is now reality for me because I think in every close game we’ve had, I’ve had the ball in my hands at the end.

“It doesn’t matter to me because of the confidence level I play at. Some of the shots I’ve made, people ask how could I make them with two people in my face. A lot of times I don’t even see those guys. ... There’s no one there. Well, of course they’re there, but you’re just thinking about going over them and making the shot, or at least getting a shot off that you think is going to go in.

“When we played Maryland up there, I hit a three-point shot with (Jerrod) Mustaf, (Tony) Massenburg and (Vince) Broadnax coming at me. During the game I didn’t know it though; when I took the shot I was focusing on the target. I see the basket and I picture the ball going through it as I’m shooting. All net. I even say it when I’m shooting.”

Scott is willing to accept responsibility for the occasional clunker. The loss to Virginia came in part because of Scott’s three-for-16 shooting performance. Afterward, some expected him to duck out but Scott answered question after question.

While that’s a characteristic Scott shares with a Johnson or Bird, before this season no one ever linked him with the others in terms of all-round ability or fierce competitiveness. When he left high school, Scott was considered (along with Illinois forward Marcus Liberty) one of the two best high-school players in the nation. Even though he averaged 15.5 points a game as a college freshman, something seemed missing from his game.

That nagging sensation continued throughout last season. Although Scott raised his scoring average to 20.3, most of the points came on three-point shots, and he appeared loath to do much else.

The problem wasn’t so much what was missing, but rather the extra weight he carried. At his zenith, Scott weighed about 260 pounds, which he said left him no alternative but to look for shortcuts out on the floor.

“I could really see myself playing hard for 10 minutes and then for the next 10 I’d sort of go through the motions,” he said. “I was just trying to get by. I might have been tired but you don’t want to come out of the game, so you try to figure out some way to hide it until you could get that second wind.”

Throughout the season, a choir of voices -- his mother’s, brother’s, Cremins’s and those of virtually every television analyst who covered a Georgia Tech game -- said what a shame it was that Scott was too heavy to blossom as an all-round performer.

“I could have a great game shooting, rebounding, passing and it was never enough,” he said. “No matter how well I played, no matter what I did, there was something wrong and it was because of my weight. If I missed a shot, it was my weight; if I got beat on defense, it was because of my weight. No matter what I did, it was always my weight and I got tired of that.”

Scott also looked aghast at a future of chasing NBA stars like Michael Jordan and Joe Dumars around the court at off guard, his probable position in the pros. So off came the weight, which was a matter of monitoring his eating patterns and altering his habit of eating late at night. According to Elizabeth Scott, that was difficult because “Dennis just loves to eat -- just like his mother.”

Although the pounds have dropped and Scott is averaging almost 39 minutes a game, the weight still is proving to be a problem.

“Now I hit a shot and people go, ‘You couldn’t have done that last year because of the weight.’ I guess 10 years from now people will be coming up to me after games and going: ‘Remember that move you made today? You couldn’t have done that 10 years ago because you weighed too much.’ ”