Tom Keegan: Ellis still has shot at long career

Perry Ellis, from Kansas, participates in the NBA Draft basketball combine Friday, May 13, 2016, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Quiet body language can lead to misconceptions that cause talent evaluators to miss badly. Wesley Matthews had quiet body language during his career as a four-year starter at Marquette.

Muscle-bound point guard Dominic James had remarkable leaping ability, a super-quick first step and was a tireless in-your-face defender. He was the first one who popped off the TV screen. Then came Jerel McNeil, the school’s all-time leading scorer.

Gliding so efficiently without calling attention to himself, Matthews didn’t emerge as the best of the Three Amigos until his senior season, when he averaged 18.3 points a game.

After that breakout year, scouts still were lulled into underrating Matthews, and words such as “average at best athleticism” for a shooting guard were next to his name on various draft websites, some of them very thorough, knowledgeable ones.

Never mind that Matthews’ father played in the NBA and his mother was a 10-time Big Ten and one-time national champion in the 400 meters. The son didn’t look athletic until you blinked and saw him hanging from the rim or until he slipped past his defender on the baseline. Quiet body language clouded the judges’ viewpoints.

Matthews went undrafted. By the end of the 2019 season, he will have earned $102,984,188 in NBA salary.

Sometimes the decision-makers miss, so Perry Ellis not getting drafted Thursday night, although a bummer for him, doesn’t mean he won’t have a long NBA career. As is the case with Matthews, Ellis has quiet body language that leads to many underrating his athleticism. That’s not to say he’ll crack the $100 million mark, a la Matthews. They play different positions, but have one other thing in common in that they have unconventional three-point shots, Matthews shooting almost a set-shot, Ellis launching with a low release point. Matthews made the three a bigger part of his arsenal in the NBA, and so can Ellis.

If Ellis doesn’t catch on in the NBA, he’ll make a bundle playing in Europe, and thanks to staying four years at Kansas, he has a degree.