Kenneth Faried, Good Shmoney

After building up his name with one hustle play after another, Kenneth Faried, the breakout star of last summer’s Tem USA squad, has big-time NBA success in his sights, too. 

by Peter Walsh, Slam magazine #186, April 2015

It’s days before the Denver Nuggets open the 2014-15 NBA season, and Kenneth Faried is fnally taking a minute to reminisce on the summer of a lifetime.

“My career-defning moment thus far is winning Gold with Team USA,” says Faried, who did more than any other player to improve their personal stock at the FIBA World Cup, averaging 12.4 points and a team-leading 7.8 rebounds per game in the US’ nine-game march to the Gold in Spain. “That really just showed everybody who said, ‘Hey, why is Kenneth at the camp?’ Or, ‘Why is Kenneth playing for Team USA?’ Or, ‘He’s not going to make it past the camp.’ Or, ‘He’s not going to make the team.’ Or, ‘He’s not going to get any minutes or even start.’ What I did and what we did over there really helped show people that I was for real. I’m not a one-trick pony, I’m not a fuke, I’m not a guy who luckily made the team. I deserved the right to make it on that team and I showed why.”

The Gold-medal performance was just the beginning of the “Manimal’s” good fortunes. After being surrounded by constant trade rumors during the frst half of the 2013-14 season, Faried’s mind was put to ease almost as soon as he landed back home from Spain. The Nuggets, eager to lock their newfound national hero into a lengthy deal, rewarded Faried with a four-year, $50 million-plus deal that makes the 4-man a centerpiece of Denver’s plan moving forward. In short, the ear-to-ear grin Faried fashed while doing the Shmoney Dance following Team USA’s 129-92 win over Serbia isn’t going away anytime soon.

Faried’s rise from longshot mid-major prospect to the darling of the 2014 NBA offseason is one of those feelgood stories that make sports, and basketball in particular, so compelling. Now surrounded by the gorgeous Rocky Mountains and picturesque landscape of Denver, Faried escaped a life and city that have snatched up far too many young men his age. “I grew up in Newark,” says the 25-year old. “It’s not called ‘Brick City’ for nothin’. It really is just a whole bunch of buildings that you grow up around with no open felds. It was tough, but it made me who I am today.”

The years Faried spent at Technology High in northern Newark were anything but easy. When he wasn’t on the basketball court, Faried was fending off bullies and getting into schoolyard fghts. “I was picked on as a kid,” he says. “I was tall and skinny and people were like, ‘Let’s just pick on him, he’s tall and awkward.’ I got in a lot of fights.”

Along with being bullied for normal pubescent awkwardness, agitators would also harass Faried about his home life. Raised by his lesbian mother, Waudda Faried, and later on her partner, Sister Manasin Faried, Kenneth was constantly defending his family. “I would stand up for my mom and say, Don’t talk about my mother like that,” says Faried. “People would say, ‘Well, what you wanna do about it?’ You get in fghts like that when you’re younger. It was foolish, but it made me tough.”

As if that wasn’t enough for him to deal with, Faried lost his grandmother to lupus, a chronic and often painful autoimmune disease, and then saw his mother get diagnosed with the same thing. As a teen, Faried took on the responsibility of helping to provide care for his mother.

With all that going on, it would have made sense for basketball to take a backseat. It didn’t, though, because both of Faried’s parents pushed him to play hoops from a young age. By the time he was deep into high school, Faried had blossomed into a rebounding machine. Nervous to leave his ailing mother but encouraged by her to get out of Newark, Faried ventured a galaxy away from Newark’s Zion Towers to the rolling hills of Kentucky to play college ball at Morehead State University.

By the end of his four years at Morehead, Faried had smashed the modern DI record for rebounds and worked his way into the consciousness of NBA GMs, who viewed him as a Dennis Rodman-type (in terms of the hustle, not the antics). With the 22nd pick in the 2011 Draft, the Nuggets snatched him up.

Generously listed at 6-8, 228 pounds, Faried faced an uphill battle as an undersized 4-man working in the paint with a still developing right-hand-dominant post game. While most undersized players at Faried’s position have a jumper that extends to at least 15-feet out, Faried entered the League with no discernable offensive game outside of fastbreak dunks and put backs. Still, Faried’s hustle and rebounding prowess earned him minutes and a spot in the rotation. With his signature dreadlocks failing with every dunk, block and rebound, The Manimal quickly became a fan favorite in Denver. During the lockout-shortened ’11-12 season, Faried averaged 10.2 points and 7.7 rebounds over 22.5 minutes per game and landed on the All-Rookie Team.

To bolster his post game in his first offseason, Faried took the NBA big man’s rite of passage journey to Houston and worked with Hakeem Olajuwon to develop his post game. Following a strong rookie year and a seminar with The Dream, Faried was expected to take another step forward in year two.

Things didn’t go exactly as planned. While struggling on the defensive end against more skilled big men, Faried played 28.1 minutes per game and averaged 11.5 points and 9.2 rebounds in year two. Modest numbers, but after a successful rookie campaign, the fans and front offce were expecting more. Despite winning 57 games and leading the Nuggets to the Playoffs, head coach George Karl was fred and Faried’s place on the team was in jeopardy. Now in his third year, Faried was playing for a new coach in a new system and began to doubt the organization’s faith in him due to a heavy dose of trade rumors. The anxiety Faried was feeling off the court began to seep out during games. “Earlier in the year I was nervous and scared,” says Faried. “I didn’t know how to go about things. When you hear your name in trade rumors you’re scared because you don’t know if the team will have faith in you.”

Decimated by injury toward the end of the season, coach Brian Shaw turned to Faried to carry more of the offensive load in the paint. Once the trade deadline passed and the burden of trade talks dissipated, Faried started to gain momentum and went on a roll that hasn’t slowed. “The second half of the season, I came on strong,” says Faried. “I went to the All-Star Game and saw all the guys play and thought to myself, Hey, I’m gonna step up and take the challenge and be better in the second half of the season. The trade deadline was basically over with and it was a relief and it wasn’t on my mind anymore so I was just able to play basketball.”

Over March and April, Faried averaged 20.1 points and 11.4 boards per, doing more and more damage in the post by utilizing his lower-body strength and quickness.

Faried’s strong second half earned him an invite to Team USA’s training camp in Las Vegas to try out for the 2014 FIBA World Cup team. With the amount of talent invited to Vegas, most thought Faried had little to no chance of making the team. But Faried’s brand of basketball was exactly what the brain trust of Team USA head coach Mike Krzyzewski and Managing Director Jerry Colangelo were looking for and Faried earned a spot on the loaded 16-man roster. Once games began in Europe, Faried joined Anthony Davis and Derrick Rose as the talk of the tournament. Since games tipped off during odd hours in the States, most fans only saw the evening highlights of Team USA’s blowout wins, and what they saw was Faried dunking on the head of some anonymous 7-footer from Slovenia or putting back a missed shot with a thunderous slam.

Not only did Faried prove to himself that he could compete and succeed against some of the best competition in the world, he also earned the trust and confdence of one of basketball’s legendary fgures in Krzyzewski. “Me and Coach K did have a great relationship,” says Faried. “I earned his respect and he earned mine... I got to know him as a person and a coach. It helped expand my knowledge of the game. Having conversations with him, him believing in me and basically telling me I’m going to play a big role on this team and that he needs me to come bring my energy and enthusiasm and love for the game each and every night.”

Said Coach K at the end of the tournament: “All the guys improved every game, and we had a different star every time. Kenneth gave us a lot of energy. He had an amazing performance.”

Like Coach K and the rest of the basketball world, Denver’s front offce was impressed enough with Faried’s post All-Star break performance and summer abroad to lock him up for the foreseeable future. “The Nuggets showed their faith and belief in me by giving me this contract,” says Faried. “They basically said, ‘We believe in you, we’re gonna ride with you and you’re one of our key guys. We’re proving this by giving you this much money and we want you to go out there and show the world why we have this much faith in you.’”

Faried wasted no time showing that this summer wasn’t a fuke, dropping an impressive 22 points and 17 rebounds on opening night against the Pistons front line of Andre Drummond and the oddly mouthy Josh Smith, who chose to take shots at Faried after the game.

Through the season’s frst half, Faried has been a little inconsistent and his team has been straight-up bipolar, getting blown out one day by the awful Knicks, then out-working the Cavs for a win the next. When on and healthy, a core of Faried, Wilson Chandler, Danilo Gallinari, Ty Lawson and JaVale McGee looks like one that can compete in the rugged West, but they have to bring it every night.

“I’ve always been a player that’s the underdog or the sleeper,” says Faried, averaging 12 points and 9 rebounds per game as of late-January. “It’s a great opportunity to slide under the radar and next thing you know, I’m an All-Star. Our team can slide under the radar and next thing you know, we’re making noise.”

Regardless of how the season shakes out, Faried will do his thing. While many stars take nights off or lackadaisically play through a mid-February matchup, Faried busts his ass like every game is the last game he may ever play. “I want people to say that that kid played with his heart on his sleeve and played hard each and every night and gave it his all,” says Faried. “That he loved the game and the game loved him back.”