Luca Evans (OC Register)  —  LOS ANGELES — The festivities slowly cleared Thursday morning on the track at Hollywood High, and JuJu Watkins had begun to walk off from one Los Angeles engagement in the direction of another, pausing and turning as somebody cried her name.

The signal came from a gaggle of tweenage boys, peering through the other side of a fence back by the field. Watkins was just a few steps from the exit, a morning complete after making an appearance at a youth skills clinic and announcing a Gatorade-sponsored donation to the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. But they caught her attention – “JuJu, can we get a picture?” – and the 18-year-old USC sophomore broke into a wide smile, waving the group over for a selfie.

She left a minute later, and the boys fell on one another in glee, clutching the lucky phone as if it was the Golden Idol.

That night, she’d head to the Dolby Theatre for an appearance at the ESPYS, nominated for “Best Breakthrough Athlete” off a year that captivated her hometown and tuned the world into a rising face of women’s basketball. She gifted Travis Scott a USC jersey in April, threw out the first pitch at Dodger Stadium in June, and sat courtside at a Sparks game on Tuesday. The local appearances have been a whirlwind, her brand expanding even as her center of gravity rests squarely in Los Angeles.

All well and good. She has smiled. She’s waved. She’s enjoyed the ability to “diversify herself,” as she told the Southern California News Group on Thursday. It just isn’t Watkins, head coach Lindsay Gottlieb emphasized, at her core.

“She’s always trying to get better,” Gottlieb said, “and she’s doing that even in the midst of the summer of L.A. stardom.”

Watkins broke into tears after USC’s season-ending loss to Connecticut in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament last spring, an opportunity she felt “slipped through her fingers,” as longtime trainer Phil Handy described. She picked up working with the former Lakers assistant coach as soon as the Lakers’ season ended in late April, trying to continue developing her handle and ability to read the floor.

Shortly into the offseason, though, plans were altered. Watkins underwent surgery on her right hand, Handy told the Southern California News Group. It was a minor procedure, simply to clean up a lingering issue that dated to her high school days. But the rising sophomore, for more a month, has been unable to use her right hand.

It wasn’t going to keep her out of the gym, as Gottlieb said. And ever since, she and Watkins have joked the surgery was – in a sense – a blessing.

“I was really eager to just work on my left (hand),” Watkins told the Southern California News Group on Thursday, sitting on a bench on Hollywood High’s field. “So throughout the whole process, I was just telling myself, like, ‘You need to work on your left anyways. So might as well take advantage of the situation.’”

For more than a month of individual workouts, yes, Watkins and Handy have exclusively worked on developing her left hand. Handy didn’t disclose details of the focus, or specific drills. But Watkins was well aware, after a freshman season putting up 27.1 points per game and seeing most every defense a college basketball team could throw at her, that teams would gear up to force her left. Her go-to-move in transition, a left-to-right crossover into a right-handed attack, didn’t quite shake as many defenders down the stretch; she shot 37% from the floor after the start of Pac-12 play on Dec. 30.

And she “opened up her palette” in the offseason, as Handy put it, to be elite with both hands. Part of the necessary development, Gottlieb said, was building confidence in her left hand – finishing, getting to a pull-up jumper, passing with her off-hand.

“The biggest thing is, it won’t matter where the defense tries to send her … ‘You try to send me left, send me right, doesn’t matter,’” Handy said. “‘I’ll be able to execute and dominate with both hands.’”

Watkins still hasn’t been fully cleared to use her right hand. She’s starting to get annoyed, she smiled Thursday, limited at the moment to standing with Gottlieb and watching team three-on-three workouts. But the procedure, Watkins, acknowledged, was a sign of sorts.

“We’ve joked, like, ‘Now when you have two hands again,’” Gottlieb said, “‘watch out.’”

ocregister.com

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