When it comes to NBA players from South Korea, I believe that many fans will play as a center-forward inside player, nicknamed "Hippo", Ha Seung-jin, who was active in the NBA league as a player sixteen years ago.
In the history of Asian basketball, South Korea has always been a first-class team, which has created some threats to the Chinese men's basketball team at its peak and has also reached the top of the Asian stage. It can be said that there was a time in the history of Asian basketball that the first look at China and the second look at South Korea.
However, the basketball strength of countries including Iran, Japan, the Philippines and other countries has increased significantly in the past long cycle, especially with South Korea close to Japan, and the Korean basketball environment has actually been relatively closed, between this and the other, the momentum of Korean basketball in Asia has declined more obviously in recent years.
However, with the rise of South Korea's new golden generation, including Lee Hyun-jeong, who is playing a sharp shot in the NCAA, Lu Junxi, a world youth game scorer, and jae-lyn Stevenson, the day of a strong rebound in Korean basketball may be just around the corner.
Among the current outstanding young South Korean players, Lee Hyun-jeong, 21 years old, 201cm tall and plays as a small forward, is widely regarded as the next Asian yellow-skinned face to become an NBA player. In this article, I will give a brief introduction to this Korean super newcomer. If there is no accident, he will also be the leader of the Korean men's basketball team in the future and a potential strong opponent of the Chinese men's basketball team.
As the second generation of the ball, Lee Hyun Jeong was born in a sports family with the top basketball resources in South Korea, his mother was a former Korean women's basketball player who played in the 1984 Olympic Games, and his father was a famous Basketball Youth Coach in South Korea and brought out NBA player Ha Seung-jin. Born in such a family, becoming a professional basketball player and even an NBA player can be said to be Lee Hyun-jeong's long-term goal since he was a child.
After a long period of practice, Lee Hyun Jeong first began to be noticed by fans at the 2018 Asian Youth Championship. At that time, as the core of the South Korean national youth team, he averaged 26.0 points, 10.3 rebounds, 6.0 assists, 3.3 steals and 1.2 blocks per game, and won the scoring, assists and steals of the game.
With the full firepower and offensive and defensive performance of the Asian Youth Championship, When Lee Hyun-jeong went to the United States to study at a university in 2019, he received a total of eight NCAA League one-league universities, including Klay Thompson's alma mater, Washington State University & Steven Curry's alma mater Davidson College.
In the end, Lee Hyun-jeong chose to join the Davidson College that trained Curry.
In his freshman season, as an Asian, he entered the rotation lineup with his strength, averaging 8.5 points and 3.5 rebounds per game, shooting 46.7% from the field, 37.7% from three-point range and 85.7% from the free throw line.
In his sophomore year, Lee Hyun Jeong continued to improve, averaging 13.5 points, 4.0 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game, shooting 50.8 percent from the field, 44.2 percent from three-point range, and 90.0 percent from the free throw line. On the stage of the NCAA First Division, only ten college students have been shortlisted for this club in history, and Senior Curry did not do it that year, and a young player on the Asian flank can play a [180 club] performance, which was completely unimaginable before.
By the third year of this year's season, Lee Hyun-jeong was a step further, averaging 16.4 points, 5.9 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game, shooting 47.7% from the field, 38.1% from three-point range, and 80.2% from the free throw line, making him one of the most trusted players at Davidson College.
In terms of player positioning, Lee Hyun Jeong is a shooter-type small forward, good at walking through the back door and cutting inside and catching the ball around the cover to shoot, the three-point start is super fast, there is a small space to pull out to complete the shot consistently and quickly, the average three-point shooting rate in the NCAA career is over 40%, and the development template is Joe Harris.
His dynamic and static talent is really not prominent in the demon-like North American basketball world, the NCAA's single defense ability is weak, most of the opponents on the weak side, but through hard work, it is actually to the NCAA D1 standard upper wing of the degree of movement, plus solid basic skills, skillful and fast shooting skills, challenging the NBA is definitely not an unattainable dream.
Judging from the current situation, Lee Hyun Jeong is likely to sign up for the 2022 draft. In recent simulations of draft forecasts by major North American sports media, Lee Hyun-jeong is mostly on the list, and the order hovers from the end of the first round to the middle of the second round. It is worth mentioning that the highest ranking for Lee Hyun-jeong's prediction is the more authoritative The Athleticmei media, which predicts that Lee Hyun-jeong will be taken by the Grizzlies in the position of Show 29.