HARTFORD — It starts at the right ear, then the hands and the ball thrust quickly, a blur. The ball takes off, rising high to its apex and descending, onlookers expect, through the basket.
The results for Braylon Mullins are well above average. It was that way when he was 9, that way in high school in Indiana, it’s that way at UConn and by all accounts will soon be that way in the NBA. But the way he gets those results have moved grown, grizzled men who have seen it all to marvel as if they have just seen The Big Dipper on the clearest of nights or the The Aurora Borealis from an Alaskan peak.
“The release is not a super high release,” Dan Hurley was saying Saturday, after UConn’s 72-60 win over DePaul at PeoplesBank Arena, “and I know people are going to crush me, crush me, but it’s like, you know how Steph Curry, I’m going to get crushed because I just said Braylon and Steph Curry, but I’m talking about mechanics. He has a lower release, but it (goes) high, and he gets it off so quick, he’s able to get his footwork and his body turned and when the ball touches his hand, he gets the release off so quick that he’s able to make up for not having as high a release point. It’s a unique release point, every time he shoots it, though, you think it’s going in.”
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If Hurley is to get crushed for the comparison, it won’t come from here. This is a convo about elite, legendary shooters. Jim Calhoun called this week to rave, too, about Mullins, and one of the “prettiest” shots he’s ever seen. Reminded that he coached fellow Hall-of-Famer Ray Allen, whose 3-point jump shot was perfect from his toes to his finger tips and won NBA crowns, Calhoun did not walk it back, at least not as a freshman-to-freshman comparison.
Mullins, who has recovered from his early season injuries and is beginning to grasp the plays UConn is running for him, is hitting his five-star stride, with 24 points in the big come-back win at Providence on Wednesday and 16 more against DePaul. A Big East honors kind of week. He was 13 for 24 from the field in the two games, and 8 for 15 on 3-point shots. Hurley has been calling him “Bringer of Rain,” and the name is catching on. It could even become ironic as well as iconic if the Gampel Pavilion roof springs another leak.
“I do it a lot differently, it’s not as pretty as Braylon’s,” said Alex Karaban, who’s effective shooting form might remind an old-timer of “Dollar Bill” Bradley. “He’s got a great arc, one of the quickest releases I’ve ever been around. You can see he can get it off at any ankle, with his speed, gets his feet set right away. He’s an elite shooter, he’s like a Hawk (Jordan Hawkins) or a Cam (Spencer), just how elite a shooter he is. The arc, it looks like its going in every single time.”
Just how did Braylon Mullins learn his quick release and artistic arc? The short answer is, he didn’t.
“I didn’t have to mess with his form, he just had, you know, a God’s gift there when he was little,” said Josh Mullins, Braylon’s father and the family’s shooting guru. “It was more about the reps. I played at a mid-major, IUPUI. I shot higher, my release was like Larry Bird’s. I just shot it higher because I’m 6-4, 6-5 and they had 6-8 guys on me. I was never able to fix (Braylon’s) release point and didn’t want to mess with it because people were like, ‘it’s too low.’ I said, ‘but it’s fast and it’s consistent.’”
Braylon, his twin brothers and his father, who was an assistant coach with keys to the Greenfield High gym, would gather several times a week and, in Josh’s estimation, take 5,000 shots as a foursome, using the shot timing-machine until the Braylon’s bringer of rain became muscle memory.
“Me and my dad in the high school gym in Indiana,” Braylon Mullins said. “I wasn’t looking for comparisons to anybody. He kind of taught me how to shoot growing up, the reps, the shoot-away gun every morning, every night. He was teaching me, and it was kind of just progressive. It used to look much different my freshman and sophomore year of high school, just getting stronger.”
Josh Mullins stressed that Braylon, 6-6, would have to get the shot off quickly, if he was going to shoot it from down low.
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“That’s when I was like, ‘I don’t know if I should mess with it because he got it down so fast,’” Josh said. “Now, sometimes, he doesn’t hold his follow through, and that can be an issue. Because I tell him, ‘when you stay in your shot, it does in.’ I wouldn’t say he’s perfected it, but it’s pretty damn good.”
Some of Braylon’s college adjustments earlier in the season came because he was rushing it, but, Josh says, “it’s really slowing down for him now.”
The consensus of opinion out there is that we won’t have this meteor over Connecticut’s skies very long. The mock NBA drafts have him going in the first round as a one-and-done, many have him in the lottery portion. Sample from The NBA Draft Room: “An elite 3-point shooter with a lightning-quick release and deadly accuracy from downtown. His jumper is a thing of beauty and he clearly looks like a high level NBA two-guard.”
Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Wasserman: “(He) has all the shooting micro-skills and is so decisive stepping into it.”
As he has become a fixture in the starting lineup for the fourth-ranked Huskies (16-1), Mullins’ all-around game is showing, too. His quickness on defense, his rebounding — he led UConn with seven on Saturday — and his IQ. Those things will be valuable as March Madness approaches, but in the years to come, it’s that shot we’re going to remember, and Braylon Mullins could be the name to which reluctant, reverent comparisons are made.
“We didn’t really take anybody and say, ‘let’s shoot like so-and-so.’” Josh Mullins said. “He just went in, we started and his form was just … I don’t know, I can’t explain it. I didn’t do anything special, he didn’t do anything special, he just has that God-gift ability, it just looks great when it comes off his hands.”
