How Corey Kispert built himself into an unlikely NBA success story

Corey Kispert never dreamed of playing in the NBA. Growing up in Edmonds, Washington, a city of 42,758 nestled among the grand firs north of Seattle, he did what most athletic kids do and played whatever was in season. Football, baseball, basketball, golf and track practice occupied his after-school hours, not trips to far-flung AAU tournaments. His favorite sport changed like the wind. Usually, it was whatever he was best at that month.

Kispert, a third-year forward for the Washington Wizards, had an undeniable natural ability that eventually nudged him to focus on basketball in high school. But even then, he wasn’t obsessed with the game. He loved his teammates, he loved competing and he luxuriated in the hours he would spend in the gym outside of practice, honing his shot.

Basketball was mostly the conduit for all that and besides, it made him a winner. King’s High hadn’t hung a Class 1A boys’ state championship banner since 2002, but Kispert led the Knights to back-to-back titles in 2015 and 2016, took them to the championship game again in 2017 and then found more success. The hometown hot shot went to Gonzaga, just a few hours east in Spokane, where he started the first five games of his college career.

“Gonzaga had recruited a bunch of people from Seattle, the west side of the mountains, before me,” Kispert said, downplaying the fact that he was a four-star recruit. “So being a good player in that area was kind of a no-brainer for them to at least take a look.”

Life came at him fast in Spokane. Kispert injured his ankle, lost his starting spot, tried to rush back from injury and struggled while trying to please his demanding coach, Mark Few.

It was as if his picture-perfect, young sporting career was starting to sallow around the edges. A strapping 6-foot-7 with flowing bronze locks and a knack for public speaking, Kispert outfits himself in stylishly preppy clothes and has always kind of looked like a letterman out of a 1950s Norman Rockwell painting. But golden boys aren’t supposed to have crises of confidence that last for years.

Kispert remembers sitting after practice with his now-wife, Jenn Wirth, who played on Gonzaga’s women’s team.

“We’d look at each other like: ‘This. Sucks. What are we doing? Why are we doing this?’ ” Kispert said. “I would tell her what my coach said to me at my practice, and she would be like, ‘Oh, my God, you think that’s bad? Listen to this.’ ”

Kispert saw good minutes but he averaged just 6.7 points his freshman season and 8.0 points his sophomore season. He sought refuge from the daily scrutiny he felt at practice and in the weight room by retreating to the gym at night, where he’d work out with his roommate.

Pressure seemed to leach from his mind in those late-night sessions as he drained shot after shot. Eventually, it was there, in the quiet center of a tornado of self-criticism, insecurity and doubt, that Kispert realized he was finally, truly falling in love with basketball.

“I really started to love it when things didn’t come easy anymore,” Kispert said. “I had to really try hard and learn how to dissociate success and results with how I feel playing the game. Trying to pursue perfection even though I know I’m not going to get there. That side of it, the process, those are the things that you have to really absorb yourself with when the results and success aren’t coming. That’s how you end up truly loving the game of basketball versus, like, I’m just good at it, and a lot of good things go my way.”

Seeing the big picture

The adoption of that mindset has paid dividends in ways Kispert never thought possible when the Wizards selected him with the 15th pick in the 2021 draft. The 25-year-old’s individual growth was one of the few success stories in an otherwise depressing season for the Wizards, who finished 15-67 in the first year under a new front office, far worse than expected – even for the first season of a rebuild.

Kispert can at least take solace in the fact that he significantly expanded his game this season.

A shooter at his core and an advanced off-ball mover, he has figured out how to become a driving threat with the ball in his hands without neglecting his signature skills. In fact, he has worked on hunting more 3-pointers and is shooting sooner after catching the ball.

“He doesn’t do anything at a slow speed,” said Wizards assistant coach Mike Miller, who has overseen Kispert’s development this season. “They talk about guys in the league that are constantly in motion, the Steph Currys and Klay Thompsons – there’s a handful of guys. He’s in that category because he’s moving all the time.”

His 3-point shooting finished at 38.3%, slightly off his career 38.8 mark. Most importantly, his pick-and-roll use was up, his field -goal attempts were up and he was far more active in the paint, with and without the ball in his hand.

Kispert’s high ceiling, work ethic, smarts, attitude and talent make him an ideal player for the Wizards as they move forward in their rebuild. His 13.4 points, 2.8 rebounds and two assists per game don’t illustrate how much offense he creates with his movement, nor do they reflect his positive impact on the locker room because of his ability to invest in the work, not the results.

“Everyone should look at him as the prototype of how to handle yourself during this situation,” Wizards forward Anthony Gill said. “Corey’s down moments last, like, five seconds.”

Said Miller: “What he’s doing today started months, years ago. … There’s always another layer. And he works with that. At the end of the day, he’s really focused on playing the right way and being the best player and bringing the most value to the team that he can. He does that. His movement, his paint touches not only with the ball but with his cutting, is at a really high level. He’s been able to step in when we’ve been down some of our players. … I think he really sees the big picture stuff.”

The reason Kispert is so adept at cutting is the same reason he didn’t think the NBA was a reality until deep into his college career. He went to a small high school and played for an AAU team that didn’t compete on one of the major national circuits.

“I was never considered a generational talent, an all-American-type player (in high school),” said Kispert, who was named an Associated Press all-American his senior year at Gonzaga. “…We had to play differently to beat the teams with the best athletes and the best recruits and stars. That shaped my understanding of my role on a team. It was more about playing together, execution, spacing, cutting. Those kind of things had a really high value for me really early on.”

Kispert’s basketball upbringing didn’t just shape his game, it shaped his self-perception as a player. He may have been Captain America at his high school, but nationally? He was sometimes treated more like Ant Man. Kispert remembers Virginia coach Tony Bennett telling him he’d be a great fit for the Cavaliers, but he hadn’t seen Kispert play against enough high-level talent to fully commit to him.

“He was very much covering his bases and not trying to commit to too much with me or make it seem too rosy, which I really appreciated,” Kispert said.

But it was a version of the same thing he’d heard since he started taking basketball seriously.

Coaches and pundits, even once he was at Gonzaga, had made up their minds: Kispert was going to have a really good career overseas one day, they’d say.

For two seasons, Kispert agreed. He hadn’t shown that he belonged in the NBA.

A breakthrough his junior year at Gonzaga changed that. The Bulldogs’ strength and conditioning coach, Travis Knight, remembers his turning point at a Thanksgiving tournament in the Bahamas. Kispert was in a gnarly shooting slump and stuck in a vicious cycle of self-criticism.

“When he first came in, he was mostly just a shooter with a good, physical body,” Knight said. “When he would try new things, whether they were ballhandling-oriented like trying to drive a little more or things on defense that he was trying to get better at, there was a period where it didn’t look right. It looked like it was forced. It didn’t look natural.”

Knight took Kispert aside before a game against Southern Mississippi, led him through some breath work and told the kid to be present. To stop trying to be something he wasn’t. To understand that it was perfectly OK to be imperfect.

It worked.

Kispert loosened up and let fly. He poured in 28 points that game and hit seven 3-pointers. He jumped to averaging 13.9 points his junior season and 18.6 points as a senior, when his coaches convinced him to go against his nature and be a bit more selfish on the court.

“When Corey came in the program … I don’t think any of us would have predicted that it would go as well as it’s gone for him,” Knight said. “His humility stood out. His discipline stood out. But as advanced as he seemed coming in, ahead of most freshmen, his growth was probably on par with as much as I’ve ever seen in our program.”

The flip of a switch

After Kispert’s breakthrough junior season, the NBA was suddenly in reach. He had already remade himself mentally. Now he had to go about evolving his game.

“I wanted to be a basketball player, and I loved playing, and I idolized people in the NBA. But sit me down in a room and ask me point blank, ‘Do you have a realistic shot of doing this?’ The answer was no for a lot of my life,” Kispert said. “That switch had to flip really fast. That meant taking shots that I didn’t take before and being more selfish for the good of the team, leading better, being more vocal, taking care of my body – those things all had to be done in order to make that transition into pro life smoother, even though it wasn’t smooth at all.”

Kispert’s athleticism didn’t match his 6-foot-7, 220-pound frame, so he and Knight worked on the health of his joints and tendons and increased his balance so Kispert could sprint faster without losing his equilibrium. He ramped up his conditioning and lifted for durability. Mentally, Knight stoked Kispert’s self-belief.

Kispert learned that big leaps come from detail work – that’s part of why golf is his favorite pastime. (He’s “a little worse” than a scratch golfer.) When he works out in Arizona during the offseason, he focuses on things such as hip mobility to allow him to better defend smaller, faster players. He worked to extend his 3-point range with Miller step-by-step. He and fellow Wizard Landry Shamet have had long, winding conversations about the art of coming off screens.

“The first most important thing for growth is being willing to hear, to receive information,” Shamet said. “He’s the poster child for that.”

Although his growth has followed a steady, upward trajectory, adjusting to NBA life hasn’t been easy. Kispert is deeply family-oriented and aside from his older brother, who lives in New York, his family resides out West – his wife moved from Arizona to be in D.C. full time this season. The community in which he grew up is so tightknit that when Kispert went back to Edmonds to have his King’s High jersey retired in December, he knocked out two birds with one stone and saw his high school buddies during the ceremony, because three of his former teammates now coach at their alma mater.

“The high school in the town that I went to has a way of keeping people there. It’s like a magnet,” Kispert said. “… People tend to stay. It’s your whole life. People meet their girlfriends, their wives, whatever. You stick around.”

Unless you’re Kispert, who struck out across the country to chase a dream – a love – that feels that much more pure because he had to work for it.