How the NBA Global Academy helped Florida basketball freshman forward Alex Condon

Florida basketball freshman forward Alex Condon has made a quick adjustment to the college game with his athleticism and physicality, grabbing 16 rebounds in a recent game against Merrimack.

Condon is still growing as a player, but the 6-foot-11 forward from Perth, Australia received a strong introduction to the game from an NBA initiative designed to grow the game globally.

As an enrollee at Australia’s Basketball Centre for Excellence, Condon learned the skills needed to transition into a Division I basketball player for the Florida Gators.

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“I was pretty raw,” said Condon, who came from an Australian Rules Football Background. “I didn’t have much basketball exposure getting there, and just the amount of development that I’ve had over the past year is just pretty crazy.”

The NBA Academy program includes four academies across Australia (NBA Global Academy), Mexico (NBA Academy Latin America), Senegal (NBA Academy Africa) and India (NBA Academy India) for top athletes from their respective countries and continents. It’s a year-round program that provides a holistic approach to player development on and off the court.

To date, 114 NBA Academy participants (71 men; 43 women) have committed to or gone on to attend NCAA Division I schools. Another 22 NBA Academy participants (19 men; three women) played, are playing or have signed to play professionally, including Australia Basketball Centre for Excellence graduates Josh Giddey (Oklahoma City Thunder) and Dyson Daniels (New Orleans Pelicans).

How did UF basketball forward Alex Condon get involved in the NBA Academy

Condon was recruited to the NBA Academy by Gregory Collucci, a West Palm Beach native and former George Washington University guard who now serves as the NBA Elite Basketball Collegiate Recruiting and Alumni Relations Lead.

“His natural ability to run, catch, you know he does so many things like a person out of a smaller body,” Collucci said. “He grew so rapidly between his 16, 17-year-old year he grew about 5 or 6 inches, so he was kind of functioning as a 6-5 player but his running skills, the catching skills, the athleticism, came with him so really for him, it was just a rapid introduction into a lot of the concepts of basketball.”

Collucci said Condon’s Australian Rules Football background served him well while competing against other players at the academy.

“The good thing for him was he had this great physicality and he was able to play through contact,” Collucci said. “He likes contact, he’s tough so a lot of the things that usually we had to kind of instill he already came with, it was more teaching him kind of some nuances, concepts to play out of pick and roll.”

How UF basketball forward Alex Condon developed at the NBA Academy

At the NBA Academy, located on the east coast of Australia in Canberra, Condon worked on the court with head coach Robbie McKinlay and his staff.

The academy serves as a college-like atmosphere in which players go to classes during the day and work with support staff on strength and nutritional training.

“There’s individual breakdowns of your game, skills that need to be worked on individually with coaches and then those are translated into team practices,” Collucci said. “You know we try to take all of those skills and make sure these guys are equipped to have their games ready to be able to compete at the highest level.”

At the academy, Condon competed against future Division I players, including Duke guard Tyrese Proctor and BYU forward Aly Khalifa.

“Day in, day out he was playing with good guards, he was playing against really good forwards, guys who were making him compete at the rim,” Collucci said. “So every day was kind of a cauldron of competition, which, you know, he rises to that, and we found that the more the level rose the better he kind of performed.”

A main focus for Condon at the academy was footwork on defense and picking up concepts defending out of pick and rolls, areas where he is looking to continue to grow. But by a year and a half in the academy, Collucci said it was apparent that Condon was ready for Division I college basketball.

“It was really, such a rapid ascension to be honest to you,” Collucci said. “We were thinking maybe he might need another year, but he grew so quickly, and he played so well, it was like, he was ready, he was ready to move on, now that we can all see.”