DELRAY BEACH – Dexter Pittman chose to avoid Las Vegas.
No, really.
For his purposes, the high-spirited 23-year-old preferred something a bit more low-key during the NBA lockout. Somewhere in the woods would have been fine. So was his agent’s suggestion: southern Palm Beach County.
“It’s like a retirement home,” Pittman said, smiling. “Nobody works here.”
Which make it the perfect place for the second-year Miami Heat center to quietly work:
On his body.
On his surprise.
“Whenever the season starts, people would wonder where I was at, and then when I come out like a cat, and they’ll be like, ‘Who worked you out? We didn’t see you all summer,’” Pittman said. “So, like a top-secret mission, basically.”
Well, now the secret’s out.
And, when the season finally starts, the Heat may be in better shape than it expected, because its talented young center is. For teams, a work stoppage can be a crapshoot like what you’d find at Vegas, due to the restriction on contact with players. You have no idea what any of them look like after an extended, unsupervised offseason. Some could look like Shawn Kemp did after the 1998-99 lockout ended, nearly twice the size of his formerly spry self.
This is particularly worrisome when one of your prospects once weighed as much as 405 pounds in high school, before slimming down to become a factor at the University of Texas and eventually a second-round draft pick.
Fortunately for the Heat, Pittman heeded the advice of his teammate LeBron James, who took an interest in the rookie last season, and has checked in by phone since it ended. “He just told me to stay in shape and be ready,” said Pittman, who played in just two games for the Heat but had a promising stint for Sioux Falls in the NBA Developmental League. “He told me I’m going to be a big part of the team next year. Because everybody knows we didn’t really have an offensive threat down low, somebody who can score.”
Pittman is pushing himself to become more than that, working on his 15-17 foot jumper, since “people don’t guard me out there, because they don’t think I can shoot. I just let it go.” And to improve his agility and explosiveness, he and agent Mitch Frankel sought out the supervision of Tony Villani, the founder of XPE Sports who specializes in NFL combine preparation. For six weeks, they have trained twice per day, morning and evening.
“He’s going to play 20 to 30 minutes max,” Villani said. “So we’ve got to get him to go hard for those 20 minutes.”
Monday morning at the Level 5 gym, that meant starting by walking off 32 yards, roughly the length of an NBA court, to simulate the Heat’s conditioning test — something that Pittman passed the previous week.
“I was shocked,” Pittman said. “I told him, it normally takes three weeks to be here, and to do it the first time, that’s kind of scary. I’m more flexible, I’m quicker, and I’m in great shape, surprisingly.”
So good that Vittani doesn’t want to push him too far: “If he can get in camp and do three to five in a row, he’d also be in too good shape. We don’t want him to peak. We want him going in at 7, after camp he’s an 8, and then get to 9 or 10. You can’t get to 10 and maintain it the whole season.”
What about that other number?
“I haven’t checked my weight,” Pittman said. “Tony just told me to keep working. He and my nutritionist, they think I’m doing a good job.”
Any guess?
“Too sexy,” Pittman said.
Two-sixty?
“Nah, too sexy,” he said.
Well, whatever. The Heat certainly won’t think he looks too bad.
Pittman for President.
