IU Coach Tom Crean asked Jaedon LeDee what the first thing that comes to his mind is when he thinks about IU basketball.
LeDee’s answer startled Crean.
“Tradition,” he told Crean.
“He was really surprised by that,” LeDee said, “because usually, people don’t say that, but that was the right answer.”
The 6-foot-7 LeDee recently wrapped up his freshman year at The Kinkaid School (Texas), but he already has offers from some of the top college basketball programs in the country.
Kentucky and Kansas have offered him a scholarship, along with Baylor, College of Charleston, Houston, Kansas State, Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Wake Forest.
He doesn’t have any visits planned, but he said he might take some unofficial campus visits after the July viewing period.
“Man, for us, for me, especially as somebody that played, to realize that he’s getting offers this early, it’s pretty awesome,” Ledee’s father Herb said. “It’s something that you don’t expect, especially schools of that size.”
IU is the most recent school to join LeDee’s list of suitors.
A friend of the LeDee family is familiar with IU and connected Jaedon with the Hoosiers’ coaching staff. IU coaches watched him during a recent live recruiting period.
Jaedon and his mother, Sherri, followed up with a call to Crean on Friday morning.
Despite living in Houston, Texas, the rising sophomore said he knows a lot about the Hoosiers.
“Indiana is big anywhere you go so you have no choice but to kind of know about them,” LeDee said.
He learned more about IU and its basketball program in a 20-minute phone conversation with Crean. For example, he didn’t know Crean coached at Marquette University before arriving in Bloomington.
Crean discussed LeDee’s game, praising his dribbling ability, but he also shared some constructive feedback with the class of 2018 recruit.
“He actually gave me some advice on how to make my game better, and that’s what I really like,” LeDee said. “He just told me about my first step. He said I have a good first step, but sometimes it can be wide.”
Google LeDee’s name and scroll through his profile pages on several recruiting websites. There’s not much consistency in terms of what position scouts think he plays.
Some scouting services say LeDee is a point guard, others think he’s a shooting guard and then some list him as a small forward.
So which one is he?
“I’m just very versatile,” he said.
Given his height, scouts try to fit him into the box – or the stereotypical physical frame – of a shooting guard or small forward. Outside of the Golden State Warriors’ Shaun Livingston, 6-foot-7 point guards are hard to come by.
But that’s what LeDee is. Well, sometimes.
“A lot of people like to play him at the two and the three because he scores so well, but he’s a kid that really likes to run the one,” his father said.
“Really I can play one through four,” LeDee said, “but it’s whatever the team needs me to do.”
At 15 years old, he’s not done growing, either. By the time his growth spurts have run their course, he hopes to be 6-foot-10.
His parents think he’ll max out at 6-foot-9, and his doctor said he has a few more inches in him.
“Either way I’m fine,” he said.
“He can legitimately get to 6-9 or better, so being 6-9 and extremely skilled, he’d be able to play one through four at the next level,” Herb LeDee said. “He loves the perimeter so he probably wouldn’t go any farther than the three. That’d be great at 6-9, 6-10, still running the point.”
While recruiting services can’t agree on his position and those close to him can’t agree on how many more inches he’ll grow, it’s unanimous that LeDee is one of the best players in the class of 2018.
ESPN ranks him as a five-star prospect and fifth overall in his class. Future150 also lists him as a five-star player and No. 8 overall.
A national spotlight has been on him since he averaged around 50 points per game in eighth grade, when he played as a point guard at 6-foot-5 even though most kids that were his size at that age played in the post.
“Most of the guards were just physically not able to keep up with him,” Herb LeDee said.
By the time he finished eighth grade, he was playing on a 17 and under team.
But this was not before he had a five-game streak in which he eclipsed the half-century mark in points scored and recorded 72, 68 and 63 points in consecutive games.
“His shot just started flowing, and he just started cashing out buckets all the way through,” his father said.
Not bad for a kid whose basketball career didn’t start until he was nine. Before then, his parents denied him the chance to go to the gym to work on his game. Not until you’re ready, they told him.
It paid off.
When LeDee committed himself to basketball, his father said Jaedon’s work ethic was very strong because he had been deprived of the game he loves.
“He had to build his way up to this point,” Herb LeDee said, “so this is relatively new to him compared to other kids that have been listed No. 1 since they were nine or 10.”
Despite the national attention, with scholarship offers from major Division I programs and accolades from leading recruiting services at such a young age, LeDee isn’t letting the praise go to his head.
His play on the court is that of a five-star prospect, but his mentality is that of an overlooked, under-recruited player. LeDee’s game is good, but not great, he said.
“They came for a reason,” LeDee said of his accolades. “I just look at it as my hard work paying off.”
“(It’s) motivation for me to keep working, work harder in a sense because I know other people see that, and they want to come for my spot, so I have to keep going hard at it every day.”
