Where did you go for Take Your Child to Work Day when you were young? Did you get to sit in a third-floor cubicle or watch a conveyor belt turn out goodies and trinkets?
Northwestern freshman Kristin Cartwright got to watch Dennis Rodman and Michael Jordan practice with the Chicago Bulls.
“All of the kids were fortunate because they were able to come on the floor, be ball kids before the game, that kind of stuff,” said Cartwright’s father, Bill. You might know him as the third overall pick in the 1979 NBA Draft. Or the starting center during the Bulls’ first three-peat. Or the Bulls’ head coach from 2002-04.
“They’d come over to the practice facilities and while I was working out,” Cartwright added. “They’d be shooting, having fun.”
Kristin Cartwright said she learned how much work it takes to succeed in the game from her time at her father’s practices.
“The most important thing I picked up was their work ethic,” she said. “You’d see how much they actually shot. They wouldn’t shoot like 100 shots a day and leave; they’d take 1,000 shots and then make like 200 to 300 3s. If you wonder why they’re so good, it’s because their life really is basketball.”
Bill Cartwright’s NBA career spanned 15 years and included stints with the New York Knicks, Seattle SuperSonics and the Bulls, with whom he won three championships. Now he is an assistant coach for the New Jersey Nets.
He said his daughter has shown an interest in basketball since “when she was old enough to dribble,” and developed this love of the game independent of his influence.
“It’s all her. There’s never been any pressure,” he said. “She likes to play. She likes to compete.”
Aside from getting immersed in basketball at an early age, Kristin’s father’s line of work allows her certain privileges not granted to her teammates.
“Earlier this season, I wasn’t shooting a lot,” she said. “I was shooting the amount I like to shoot, but my dad was like, ‘You’re not getting enough shots up. You should try to take it to the basket and score more.'”
Cartwright said she didn’t take much stock in this – that is, until Nets star Vince Carter left a message on her cell phone.
“I still have it on my phone. I’m keeping it forever,” she said. “He was just telling me that I need to be scoring no matter how old I am and just giving me all of this information. So that was kind of cool.”
Between working out with Jordan and getting phone calls from Carter, it’d be understandable if Cartwright thought a lot of herself on the court. But this is far from being the case.
According to many, the main knock on the freshman is her unselfishness.
“She’s probably the only kid you have to get mad at because she’s not shooting the ball,” NU coach Beth Combs said. “That’s the hardest thing that we’ve had to work with her. I told her, ‘I’m going to take you out if you stop shooting.’ We don’t have that problem with too many kids.”
Cartwright is fourth on the team in points per game but only ninth in shots per minute. The Cats are 2-3 in games that Cartwright scores in double figures and 4-16 in games when she doesn’t.
Bill Johnson, her coach at Lake Forest High School, said her tentativeness is the only thing keeping her from putting up gaudier numbers.
“There are times when you’ll see her really become aggressive offensively, and if she will do that consistently, I see her as being a bigger scorer on the team than she has been,” he said. “Even though people in the Big Ten are bigger than what she experienced in high school, she’s got the strength to get the ball to the basket.”
Even with this drawback, Cartwright is the only freshman on a young team who has worked her way into the starting lineup.
Fellow freshman Lauren Roberts said this fact makes Cartwright a sort of role model for the rest of the freshmen.
“She’s been able to do something that the rest of us haven’t,” Roberts said. “While the rest of us have had our ups and downs and have been inconsistent, she’s been able to stay consistent. She would be a leader that I would look to just as someone who works hard at practice and in games.”
Cartwright said she puts a premium on this determination because her genes will only take her so far.
“It gets to the point where it’s not just your natural talent,” she said. “It really pays off just to have that work ethic. And it doesn’t come easy.”
Her dad would have to agree.
“She’s worked really hard. She’s done the right things,” he said. “To me, basketball is simple, and she does it well. She plays as hard as she can play. And that’s all there is.”
Reach David Morrison at [email protected].
