IndyStar Sports | Indianapolis Star
Jarace Walker speaks to the media at his inaugural press conference
Pacers draftee Jarace Walker speaks to the media.
Indianapolis Star
INDIANAPOLIS — Horace Walker remembers the day he knew all his lessons had lasted and his son Jarace had matured beyond his years, just as Horace had hoped.
One could argue that that day was life changing for Jarace, the event that set him on the path to Thursday shaking hands with Adam Silver onstage as the No. 8 pick in the NBA draft and Friday when he arrived Indianapolis and was allowed to wear a Pacers jersey with his name on it. This tag has a lot to do with why Walker is so versatile on both offense and defense, why he can easily fit into just about any team dynamic and provide what’s needed. Why he’s coming to the NBA, even as a top 10 pick, with the humility of a player who spent much of his teenage years in the company of other players his equals or superiors.
It was the day he told his parents, before his freshman year of high school, that he was leaving their home in New Freedom, Pennsylvania, in York County near the Maryland border, for four years at IMG Academy in Bradenton , Florida, and that she should let him do it.
“I knew he was only 14 at the time,” Horace said, “but he was older than 14 because of the way he thought.”
NBA draft: The Pacers didn’t get the limelight they expected, but they got better
Pacers tried to take steps: Here’s why it didn’t work.
Jarace Walker’s maturity on and off the field was a big part of what drew the Pacers to him. They were amazed at how easily he seemed to slip into any role he was given, from the season he was a sophomore at IMG point guard to his only season in Houston when he willingly joined the all- American guard Marcus Sasser and others left Houston is aging but has carved a vital role at both ends of the parquet for a Cougars team that won a conference title, secured a No. 1 spot and made the Sweet 16. They see in him a player who can fit seamlessly into a tight-knit locker room culture with established leaders like Tyrese Haliburton and Myles Turner, but also bring talent into the mix that the Pacers didn’t have last year.
“Getting to know him through the drafting process and interviewing him, how he looks and how he plays and his personality — it doesn’t always add up,” said Chad Buchanan, Pacers general manager. “Because he looks like this big sturdy guy on the pitch, which is what we want, but he’s an outstanding young man, very personable, fun to be around and I know he’d fit well into our team becomes.”
Pacers Insider with Dustin Dopirak after the Pacers drafted Jarace Walker and Ben Sheppard
Pacers Insider with Dustin Dopirak after the Pacers drafted Jarace Walker and Ben Sheppard.
Grace Hollars, Indianapolis Star
‘This is my goal.’ This is my dream’
That was Horace and Marcia Walker’s goal with all of their children: to be disciplined and excel.
Raised in a strict household, Horace was one of eight children born in the Caribbean island nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. He was a volleyball and cricket player there, and then a swimmer, when his family immigrated to the United States. When he met Marcia and they had children, he wanted to follow his father’s example.
“My father was a very strict man,” Horace said. “When you’re around him, growing up around him, you have to do the right thing. Anything outside of that norm is punished for it, and he punished us. I applied the same to Jarace. If you do that.” When something is wrong, there is discipline. After a while you keep doing it and do it again and you realize there’s no point in doing it outside the box, so he stayed in the box, and you keep forcing it as time goes by. It sort of grew on him and it became a normal part of his life.”
The commands were easy. The Walker children were expected to respect their elders and address them as sir and ma’am. They were required to stay out of trouble, and when they committed themselves to something, they were expected to commit to it.
“I always told them, if you don’t do something right, there’s no point in doing it,” Horace said. “So he picked that up. That was part of basketball. If you want to do it then do it, if not then just don’t. He said he wanted to make it, so I gave him all the tools he needed to do it.
Jarace’s three older sisters, who were all present at Friday’s inaugural press conference, are all athletes. Sherelle Walker played volleyball at UMBC from 2012 to 2015. Jaden has just completed her fourth season as a basketball player at St. Joseph’s after being named an all-state player three times at Susquehannock High School, where Jarace would have gone.
So the standards were always high, and the pressure to meet them was always high, but Jarace got used to it and learned that ultimately it made him better.
“It was all about parenting for me, about teaching myself early manners, about being polite, about being respectful, about never stepping out of line and out of line,” Walker said, “just being strict when you have to be.” had to. They were the perfect parents.” It’s just knowing when to love, when to teach, when to be hard on me, just guiding me through the whole process and making me a good young man .”
But after eighth grade, an opportunity presented itself that forced Jarace to leave home, and he felt he had to take advantage of it. He was one of the top-rated players in his class in the country and had played on the Susquehannock freshman team as an eighth-grader. So the IMG Academy, a school built with the aim of attracting and developing athletes, made him a target.
Horace said he was OK with the idea of Jarace walking away, but even talking about it now it still sounds like he’s at least a little suspicious of the idea. Marcia was definitely against it.
But Jarace has made his point. He called a meeting with his parents and explained why he thought they should let him go.
“He said he didn’t think it was fair if you just didn’t send me to school out of fear,” Horace said. “,It is not fair. That’s my goal, that’s my dream. That’s what I want to do. And I feel like you should give me the opportunity.’”
Horace and Marcia left the room to discuss his case and decided to let him go.
“If he hadn’t said that, I don’t think he would have made it to IMG,” Horace said. “That was the strength.”
But Horace made sure Jarace realized early on in the process that he and his mother would still be watching him closely from afar and that they hadn’t lowered their standards. In the first month, Jarace got into trouble for a minor infraction. Jarace thinks it was something as small as falling asleep in class.
Horace came to Florida and threatened to pull Jarace out of school and take him back to Pennsylvania. He had no intention of doing it that day, but he wanted Jarace to know it was possible.
“We sort of staged the whole thing,” Horace said. “(Coach Sean McAloon) was there. Everyone was there. The fear we put in his heart that day somehow told him that I don’t want to come back here for a trip like this. Then.” After that, he just got into it. That was his dream, going there and getting better.”
Jarace said: “Just knowing he pays attention to the little things means the world. I feel like overall he’s helped me make the right decisions and stick with them no matter what I’m doing.”
“The child”
IMG’s basketball program has only been around since 2000, but over the past decade it has become a national superpower as a program with the resources to recruit the entire nation.
But before Walker, there was never a player who stayed and played in the national team all four years. Many players are not ready to leave home early enough to go to prep school, and many of the players who do go through several stages of their high school careers.
“In today’s world, it’s difficult to get these kids to stay in one place for four years,” said Brian Nash, director of basketball at IMG. “Usually they hang out in the schools. But he was our first four-year-old. Just a great boy.”
When he arrived he was already physically big enough to take on even the toughest competition in the country and that’s exactly what IMG had in their roster and played against him. Walker was one of only two newcomers to the IMG National Team roster this season in a group that also included North Carolina big man Armando Bacot, former Arizona guard and 2020 Mavericks first-round pick Josh Green, who Oklahoma City Thunder forward Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and the 76ers included wing Jaden Springer. But Walker held his ground and was a key substitute on the team that won the 2019 GEICO High School National Championship.
“He had a nickname,” Nash said. “In ninth grade, his name was ‘The Manchild.’ He looked like Larry Johnson. He came as a freshman on a team with some very good players, NBA players. We knew it was him.” That’s going to be special. He was able to prevail against anyone at this point. We knew he was a power player.”
But he also didn’t act like he was a big deal, and that made it easy for him to land a role. He knew he was good, but he also knew his teammates were.
“For a kid who was eighth grader #1, whatever that means, he came across as very humble,” Nash said. “When he was young he had a great work ethic. He came into an environment where they won a national championship and that season he played a big part in good work ethic. He respected the high schoolers. He knew he had to invest his time.
He also knew he needed to expand his game and adapt to all of the other Superstars who were joining the program, so he did. As a sophomore, he played point guard because IMG brought in several blue-chip forwards and big men, including Jalen Johnson, Mark Williams and Moussa Diabate, who all ended up being draft picks.
This experience still helps him.
“I feel like my demise is largely natural simply because I’ve been in that position this year,” Walker said. “It feels like I’m able to just see the defence, know what plays to call for whom, where my guys like the ball. I definitely learned a lot this year just by playing in this position.”
Walker missed most of his junior year, but as a senior he showed the full breadth of his talent, averaging 16.7 points, 8.2 rebounds and 4.0 assists, earning McDonald’s All America honors and helping IMG reach the semifinals of the GEICO Nationals before eventually losing to them champions of the Montverde Academy. He grew more confident but didn’t try to outshine his team’s other big talents, including Keyonte George and Jett Howard, both of whom also made the top 20 of Thursday’s draft.
“As his time progressed, we definitely wanted him to become more selfish,” Nash said. “I think a lot of it depends on who he is as a person, how his parents raised him. He’s just a super humble boy and a great teammate. I think it means a lot to him to be a good teammate. He takes whatever role he has to play to help the team.”
And now that he’s embarking on an NBA career, Walker can see just how much it will mean to him as a pro.
“Just being able to understand different players,” Walker said, “learning from them. Just being able to play with high level players. I think that’s a skill. I have a feeling not everyone can do that. Just being able.” Jell and connecting with top-tier talent. I think that will help me early on.”
After his time at IMG, however, Walker didn’t follow any of these high-level players into the NBA factories they typically attend. He chose a program based on discipline, which is exactly where his father wanted him to play.
“Thank you for coaching my son”
Walker could have gone to school almost anywhere he wanted. He was the No. 12 player in the 2022 class and the No. 2 power forward. Kentucky, Villanova and North Carolina expressed interest but did not offer an offer, according to 247Sports.com, instead accepting offers from every Power Five conference in the country except the Pac-12 one. His other finalists included Alabama, Auburn, LSU, and Ohio State.
But Horace especially liked the idea of Jarace playing for Kelvin Sampson.
In Indiana, of course, Sampson is still considered a villain, having committed violations while head coaching the Hoosiers in 2008 on NCAA recruiting that ultimately led to his resignation and the implosion of the program. The roster was decimated after his departure, and IU went 28-66 in his successor Tom Crean’s first three seasons before eventually returning to the NCAA tournament.
But after serving a five-year show-cause sentence, Sampson has made Houston the standout program in the American Athletic Conference with a dogged, defense-focused style of play that matches what Horace wanted Jarace to do. Sampson has a 232-74 record in nine seasons with Houston and has led the Cougars to a Final Four and four Sweet 16s.
“Most of the coaches who coached Jarace were more or less happy to have him on the team,” Horace said. “So they never really pushed him about his abilities. As a parent, I knew he had much more to give. I knew if I took him as Sampson’s coach it would be a different story. He’s not kidding. He teaches well.” Defense. You have to bounce. You have to hurry. You have to work.”
And Sampson wanted Walker to be more confident than he was.
“I felt like we could help him with the things that he needed to get better at,” Sampson said. “We were brutally honest with his parents. Jarace had to learn to use his gifts. He’s 6’1″, weighs 240 pounds and is very talented, but there hasn’t always been a correlation between his talent and performance. In an AAU game (we He was always behind the 3-point line, the ball was kicked and he’s the first to come back. I said, ‘Jarace, every shot is a pass to you. You have to go to the gang .”
And Walker pulled it off by catching 6.8 rebounds per game and averaging 11.2 points, 1.8 assists, 1.3 blocks and 1.0 steals per game in his only collegiate season. His defensive versatility helped Houston rank second nationally in goal defense, fifth in adjusted defensive efficiency, and second in effective field goal percentage defense, according to KenPom.com. They also finished fourth nationally in offensive rebound ratio, and Walker was a major reason for that.
Sampson didn’t make it easy for Walker, pushing him with Horace’s direct approval. Walker struggled in a New Year’s Eve game against Central Florida and Taylor Hendricks, who would eventually get two picks behind Walker in the draft. Walker scored just two points on 0-of-5 shots in that game and caught just three rebounds. Sampson knocked him out and didn’t reinsert him with 11:42 left, and Houston won the game.
“Jarace just wasn’t very good at that game,” Sampson said. “The next morning my phone rings and I get a text from his father. I’m like, ‘Uh-oh’.” But here was the line, “Coach Sampson, thank you for coaching my son.” How about that? That says a lot about how this boy was raised and why he came to Houston.”
He learned his lessons and grew stronger and tougher. Sampson still felt he could be too selfless and needed to be more assertive, but Walker took the steps he needed to take to win the lottery.
“I think he’s just scratching the surface of how good he can be,” Sampson said. “I will miss him as a player but more than that I will miss him as a person simply because he was a good teammate.”
“That’s just how he is”
The Pacers have already identified areas where Walker would like to take next steps. They want his 3-point shot to be a bit more consistent, and they too want him to be more assertive with his powerful physique – he weighed 6-6 1/4, 248.5 pounds with a 7-2 1/2 inch wingspan at the NBA Draft Combine. They feel he could be more dominant at the glass and the rim and there are shots he doesn’t take that they think he should.
“If anything, Jarace might feel a little guilty of being overly selfless at times,” said Pacers coach Rick Carlisle. “He’s going to learn very quickly in the NBA what the game is about. You always have to be a threat to score a goal.
But they love how easily and quickly he connects with people and teammates and sees opportunities, which his multifaceted game can contribute to a team that is at its best when the ball is in motion.
“We think Walker is a really unique candidate because of his ability to handle the ball, see the field, pass and make plays,” Carlisle said. “He’s one of those guys, one of those rare young big guys that has a really great feel for the game.”
Part of that feeling is natural, part springs from a simple desire to help others.
“That’s just who he is,” Horace said. “He is a caring, loving, generous person and loves to share.”
However, his ability to communicate effectively on the basketball court came from having time to hone that skill at IMG because his parents taught him discipline and trusted him to apply it when he left home.