After yesterday's amazing response to the email about Cartier Martin, wouldn't you know, there is some press about him today. This is interesting because I did this interview at least a month ago and it comes out today! Enjoy!
BY AUSTIN MEEK April 23, 2009 - 11:00pm
In all, Cartier Martin cashed more than $50,000 in paychecks from the Charlotte Bobcats this season.
Not bad for a guy who wasn't supposed to earn a dime playing professional basketball.
It was former Kansas State coach Bob Huggins who said the next basketball experience for Martin and the rest of his seniors would come at a rec center or a YMCA. Huggins later softened that comment - sort of - by saying Martin might have a chance to play in Europe once he graduated from K-State.
In Huggins' defense, being drafted by the Kansas Cagerz does not typically foreshadow a long and profitable NBA career.
Even Nick Nurse, who coached Martin with the Iowa Energy of the NBA's developmental league, didn't necessarily expect to see the 6-foot-7 swingman starting for an NBA team this season.
"To be honest with you, when we did our research to draft him, we probably did not see that, that he'd make that kind of quick elevation," Nurse said. "We really liked him. He's got a multi-faceted game. We thought he'd really be a good player in our league with an outside chance of moving up."
For anyone who watched Martin at K-State, "multi-faceted" probably isn't the first adjective that comes to mind. Martin finished his career as one of the top outside shooters in K-State history - his 178 3-pointers rank third on the school's all-time list - but his contributions in other areas were limited.
"Cartier's biggest drawback is he's not a great athlete," Huggins said before the 2007 NBA draft, which passed without any mention of Martin's name.
Martin still won't be confused with LeBron James, but his game clearly has evolved. When Nurse scouted Martin before the D-league draft, he saw a versatile player capable of contributing in a variety of areas.
"I always tell the scouts, he does every single facet of the game above average," Nurse said. "Other than his shooting, I wouldn't say he's excellent at anything, but he's not poor at anything, either. He's got every facet.
"He's a great help defender who can get over and take charges. He doesn't get a high volume of rebounds, but he blocks out really well. He makes the extra pass, understands spacing on offense, all those little things. He was a great teammate and a great leader for us."
Before signing with the Energy, Martin played professionally in Turkey, where his numbers were relatively pedestrian. But with input from various friends in the Big 12 coaching ranks, Nurse opted to gamble on Martin early in the D-league draft.
"We used our first-round pick on him, which I think surprised people, but we were really confident we found a good player," Nurse said. "That's why we drafted him so high."
The gamble paid off, as Martin averaged close to 21 points in the 21 games with the Energy and was selected to the D-league all-star game. That was enough to earn Martin a pair of 10-day contracts with the Bobcats when swingman Gerald Wallace suffered a collapsed lung in January.
Most observers expected Martin's NBA career to expire along with those contracts, but the Bobcats instead signed him for the remainder of the season.
"He's a classic example," Nurse said. "He just flat-out works. He works harder than anybody I've ever coached to improve himself. I'm not talking about showing up for practice 30 minutes or 45 minutes ahead of time. He was showing up three hours ahead of time, and he was staying afterwards."
Martin maintained that habit with the Bobcats, reportedly showing up to his first practice hours early and finding the gym locked. That work ethic seemed to catch the attention of coach Larry Brown, who inserted Martin into the starting lineup for a game when Raja Bell went down with a calf injury.
Charlotte finished 35-47, four games out of the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, meaning Martin's NBA future is once again uncertain. He went 0-for-5 from the floor over the final five games of the season and averaged 2.6 points in his 33 games with the Bobcats.
But even if Martin doesn't win a roster spot next season, he's already playing with house money.
"If they don't keep him and he comes back to the D-league next year, I'm sure he'll get another chance," Nurse said.
Austin Meek can be reached at austin.meek@cjonline.com.
Have a Supergood day!
Nick Nurse
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