Dillingham and Overtime Elite needed each other. Both benefited from his time in Atlanta.
Robert Dillingham’s final prep basketball stop has taken him back to the start.
A winding road from Hickory, North Carolina, took Dillingham first to Combine Academy in North Carolina, then to Donda Academy in California and lastly to Atlanta, where he has become one of the most famous and talented players associated with Overtime Elite (OTE).
The professional basketball league brought Dillingham in at the 11th hour last fall, after the situation at Donda Academy (the California private school opened by Ye, formerly known as Kanye West) became untenable.
Dillingham’s basic need was met at OTE: He had a high-level place to play basketball for a few months ahead of his arrival at Kentucky as one of the centerpieces of John Calipari’s top-ranked 2023 recruiting class.
But Dillingham eventually found comfort in his surroundings at Overtime Elite, located in Atlanta’s upscale Atlantic Station neighborhood.
Overtime Elite’s 2022-23 roster featured a fellow North Carolina native in Trey Parker, as well as a wide swath of southeastern basketball talent that’s well acquainted with Dillingham as a person and player.
“I’ve seen Rob grow, from little Rob with a big afro to now he’s getting ready to go to Kentucky,” said Overtime Elite’s Kanaan Carlyle, a four-star Stanford signee from the Atlanta suburbs who’s known Dillingham since the fifth grade.
“It’s been amazing to see him grow over time.”
Only weeks remain until Dillingham (a Kentucky signee who was previously committed to North Carolina State) leaves the OTE setup for Lexington, and the outsized-expectations set to greet his Kentucky recruiting class.
Dillingham has mostly opted out of doing on-record media interviews since joining Overtime Elite in November, so plenty of mystery with him still remains.
A player with supreme speed and ball-handling ability, Dillingham currently comes with concerns about an inconsistent scoring ability, as well as defensive lapses that won’t fly at the college level.
But in speaking to players and coaches at OTE, a picture is painted of a player with the tools for success and the traits typical of guards that have flourished under Calipari at Kentucky.
“A lot of Rob’s situation is that he’s so highly touted around the world. The guys, when they see his name, they’re just so amped up and ready to go ahead and play with him,” Ryan Gomes, Dillingham’s head coach with the Cold Hearts team at OTE, told the Herald-Leader in February.
“Now, we go to the next level. ... It’s not once every three nights, it’s like, every night, in college.”
Dillingham learns, teaches during lone Overtime Elite season
Dillingham’s arrival at Overtime Elite proved to be a symbiotic relationship.
Dillingham — all 6-foot-1, 158 pounds of him — needed a place to play basketball as a high school senior. OTE, a still-new enterprise that has quickly gained credibility and will have two lottery picks in the 2023 NBA Draft with Amen and Ausar Thompson, was always an ideal venue for a highlight-reel machine like Dillingham to showcase his skill.
But beyond the bright lights of the 1,200-person capacity OTE Arena and the viral videos created on its playing surface, was the structure and rigor of a 24-7 basketball operation.
Three-a-day practices keep OTE players on a schedule that features direct competition against other elite competitors.
Access to OTE’s impressive, layered facility — which features the OTE Arena showcourt in addition to practice courts, a weight room, training room and space for classes — means improvement is largely in the hands of the players themselves.
That’s without mentioning the experience provided by coaches like Gomes, who remains the all-time leading scorer at Providence and spent a decade playing in the NBA.
Fellow teammates can also impart wisdom onto one another.
“I learned a lot from (Dillingham). He’s a crafty point guard. So I was learning a lot, like some moves, (to) get quick shots, I think it was good to play with him in the backcourt this season,” said Johned Walker, a teammate of Dillingham with OTE’s Cold Hearts who also plays professionally in Puerto Rico. “That was the best part of OTE. ... The (practices) were more physical and better than some of the games. Because everybody was competing and making the others look better.”
Dillingham serves as an example of this.
His arrival at OTE didn’t come with instant success: He shot worse than 40% from the field in six of his first 10 games, and his assist-to-turnover ratio through his first eight games was 1.06 (38 assists against 36 turnovers).
After taking a few months to settle in, Dillingham’s production significantly improved as the calendar turned to February and the games grew in importance.
Dillignham closed the season with a 2.94 assist-to-turnover ratio (47 assists to just 16 turnovers) in his final eight games. He shot 40% or better from the field in four of his final six games. In four playoff games, Dillingham averaged 18 points and 6.5 assists.
Simply put, Dillingham improved as the Overtime Elite season progressed, and his last moments as a prep player came while playing some of the best basketball of his life.
“He has a good pace about him. I think when he’s a little bit more off the ball is where he really thrives at,” Gomes said. “When defenses have to shift and go ahead and close out to him is where he has a really good advantage. He’s a great standstill shooter. ... I think his speed and his quickness to come over and then be waiting for (the ball) to come back, he’s a great catch-and-shoot shooter.”
Dillingham has the speed and skill for UK. What about consistency?
Gomes communicated his analysis within the context of the situation Dillingham will be walking into at Kentucky.
DJ Wagner’s arrival means UK has another ball-handling and scoring option in the backcourt. Justin Edwards is a smooth player who figures to bring consistency to Kentucky at both ends. It remains to be seen what kind of frontcourt Calipari will deploy around incoming center Aaron Bradshaw.
Plenty of Wildcats are yet to finalize their stay-or-go decisions.
So Dillingham will have to adapt again in Lexington, and Gomes has faith that he can do so.
“I talked to Rob about this: You’re going to be playing with a mix-and-match guy (Wagner). Sometimes you’re going to be handling it, sometimes he’s probably going to be handling it,” Gomes said. “It’s working together and working on ball because you’re such a dynamic shooter that it doesn’t always have to be in your hands to be effective in a game.”
It’s that final piece that holds the key for college success for Dillingham, who was recently projected as a late-first round pick in next year’s NBA Draft.
During Monday’s final day of Overtime Elite’s Pro Week (held in front of dozens of NBA scouts), the Herald-Leader watched as Dillingham flashed brilliance in fits and spurts during both three-on-three and five-on-five scrimmages, all while wearing a Kentucky shirt beneath his jersey.
There were times when Dillingham could glide around the defensive edge with ease, with several tidy finishes around the rim via a right-handed scoop layup.
Dillingham used his dribble package and speed to apply pressure at the rim, and possesses a solid repertoire of passes to take advantage of those moments.
Defenses figure to struggle to contain him at the point of attack because of his handle and quickness.
But there were also moments when Dillingham faded into the background without the ball in his hands, as well as defensive lapses when it came to boxing out and following the ball.
These moments confirmed what was already known about Dillingham given some of his OTE stats: 30.1% on three-point shots and a 47.6% true shooting percentage, along with a 17.8% turnover percentage in 12 regular season games.
This must also be balanced against Dillingham’s impressive showing in combine drills during OTE Pro Week: Dillingham ranked in the top three in pull-up jumpers made, catch-and-shoot threes made and total shots made.
Kentucky had a front-row seat to some of Dillingham’s Pro Week activities as well: Several UK coaches, including associate coach Orlando Antigua, watched Dillingham last week.
For Dillingham’s time at Kentucky to be a success, it must be a collaborative effort: Dillingham has to learn to flow in an offense that won’t always be dictated by his decisions, and individual consistency must improve in everything from his three-point shot to his every-play motor.
“He’s going to have (the) ultimate weapons,” Gomes said of Dillingham’s future as a Kentucky Wildcat. “It won’t feel so much like, ‘We’re going to go only as far as I take us.’”
