Donte DiVincenzo’s journey from Villanova scout team decoy to one of the NBA’s most wanted players

As a freshman for one of the best teams in college basketball, Donte DiVincenzo was the best player his own team faced all season.

Fresh off a fractured foot that caused him to redshirt after just nine games, the Scarlet-headed youngster was cleared to practice as Villanova geared up for its 2016 NCAA Tournament run. In the days leading up to a Final Four matchup against Oklahoma and the soon-to-be-named player of the year, Buddy Hield, DiVincenzo was on the Wildcats’ scout team. For that week, it was DiVincenzo’s responsibility to mimic Hield  — his style, his movements. The plays in which the Sooners ran for Hield, Villanova coaches were running for their freshman against their starters.

For that week, DiVincenzo was Buddy. But he was anything but friendly.

“He was impersonating Buddy so well that we couldn’t guard this dude,” Villanova assistant coach Ashley Howard said on the phone last month.

Bucket after bucket rained down on the heads of DiVincenzo’s teammates, a handful of who would go on to play in the NBA, including Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart. Describing DiVincenzo as unguardable would be disrespectful to what he was actually doing. DiVincenzo deflated his own team’s confidence.

“If we can’t guard Donte, we’re not going to be able to guard Buddy Hield,” Howard recalls saying to other coaches. “I know Donte is really good, but he just destroyed us in practice. I didn’t know if we were ready for Oklahoma.”

Villanova, en route to a national championship, popped the Sooners by 44. Hield, who would be named the nation’s top college player a day later, scored nine points.

“Everyone was praising Donte in the locker room after the game because he got us ready for that game,” Howard said. “Donte could have just went through the motions, but he went at the first team.”

This is who DiVincenzo is. A gamer and preparer behind the scenes. A winner. He is a two-time high school champion in Delaware, a two-time national champion in college and, at 27, already an NBA champion.

DiVincenzo has spent a good portion of his NBA career coming off the bench only to show he’s worthy of being a starter. Last month, he was part of the biggest trade of the offseason, going from the New York Knicks to the Minnesota Timberwolves. In New York, he set the franchise record for most made 3s in a game and helped set up the most anticipated season in 20-plus years. In Minnesota, he’ll be asked to raise the bar higher than last year’s Western Conference finals trip.

“To get a player of (Karl-Anthony Towns’) stature is huge, but you don’t get a good player like that without giving good players up, so that’s what we had to do,” Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau said.

Teams that DiVincenzo leaves usually regret losing him, and teams that get him are ecstatic. He impacts winning. That’s always been the case.

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Much like many Villanova recruits before him, DiVincenzo wasn’t a big-time high school prospect. According to 247Sports, he was a four-star guard and ranked just outside of the top-100 nationally. The summer before DiVincenzo arrived to the Wildcats’ program, there was the thought by some that he would take a little time to develop into a real contributor.

“The stories everyone talked about was that the summer before he got to Villanova, he didn’t play well in the circuit,” Villanova assistant coach Mike Nardi said. “And not that anyone was down on him, but everyone appeared to recognize that he had a lot of work to do. We all thought he had a lot of talent. I don’t think we thought it would happen so quickly.”

Prior to his foot injury freshman year, DiVincenzo appeared in every game he was available to play. There were no memorable performances. He wouldn’t even crack double-digit minutes on most nights. For the most part, he looked like your run-of-the-mill freshman in college basketball.

Like Brunson, DiVincenzo wasn’t guaranteed that he’d come onto campus and contribute in a meaningful way right away. It was actually the work the two young guards put in together in the offseason and behind the scenes that helped each earn the trust of their head coach. After practices, if you wondered where DiVincenzo was, just look for Brunson. If you wondered where Brunson was, look for DiVincenzo.

Together, they would get in extra reps following practice along with Brunson’s father, Rick. Brunson came into the Villanova program as one of its most heralded recruits in quite some time. He was destined to go to the NBA. He prepared at Villanova with one eye on getting to the sport’s pinnacle. That relationship impacted DiVincenzo greatly.

Then, there was DiVincenzo’s foot injury, which many around the program saw as a blessing in disguise for the young guard. He was forced to observe. He was forced to work on his body. And when he was able to practice again, DiVincenzo returned with the freedom to figure out who he was as a player. The pressure of a freshman contributing to winning and losing wasn’t there.

In a championship and high-stakes environment, he was able to absorb it all while preparing against the best, without any consequences.

“I think the Jalen effect really helped him, as well as sitting out,” Nardi said. “(Jalen’s) work ethic was off the charts. Those guys created a really tight bond from Jalen taking Donte under his wing and getting him in the gym at night. I really think that brought out Donte’s competitiveness. It’s not that he wasn’t competitive, but it brought out another edge, another level.

“He got a lot of confidence being on the scout team. You could let guys like that go and figure it out, because you weren’t counting on them in games.”

The week that DiVincenzo did Buddy Hield better than Buddy Hield brought great excitement about what the freshman could be in his second season. Villanova players tend to improve year over year. The program in place, whatever is in the water, tends to breed players who are never satisfied, players who always appear prepared when the path decongests and allows them to walk to the front freely.

“Donte came in and had something to prove, was coachable and had to learn to become more tough and gritty, and our practices helped with that,” Nardi continued. “But he came in with the talent, athleticism and confidence through putting in the work. When he had to be Buddy Hield, we were like ‘Holy s—!’ That next year, we expect you to come back and be a stud. He did that and played a major role on the top team in the country.”

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With a stacked backcourt, DiVincenzo, who left Villanova after his junior season to go pro, spent the majority of his collegiate career coming off the bench, but was still one of the better college guards in the country as a redshirt sophomore for the top-ranked program. His best performance of that season came in the NCAA Tournament, when he scored 21 points and grabbed 13 rebounds against Mount St. Mary’s. The Wildcats’ season, though, ended the next game. A three-point loss to Wisconsin halted the program’s run to back-to-back national titles.

The next year, though, Villanova was as dominant a college basketball team as any in recent memory. It lost just three games during the regular season. On their way to a national championship, the Wildcats’ average margin of victory in the NCAA Tournament was 14.3 points. For DiVincenzo, a college career of ups-and-downs culminated in the championship game, a 79-62 win over Michigan. He scored a game-high 31 points while hitting 10 of his 15 shots from the field. DiVincenzo accounted for 37 percent of the Wildcats’ made baskets in the contest. He did this while playing 37 minutes after starting the game on the bench.

“I was saying to Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman, ‘Guard the guy! You gotta guard the guy!’” former Michigan head coach John Beilein said via phone last month. “He was like, ‘Coach, I’m right in his grill. Watch it. I’m there!” Donte got in a zone. If you watch those shots, no one could guard those shots unless you were, like, a 6-9 wing.”

Going into the game, Beilein thought the Wolverines might be able to exploit DiVincenzo defensively. Beilein believed his team could get DiVincenzo lost through ball screens. That was not the case. DiVincenzo was in the shirt of every player in front of him. That Villanova team was constructed with some of the most gifted and disciplined defenders in the country. The Wolverines had little wiggle room.

“It makes me feel better now because I see Donte and Bridges be elite defenders in the NBA,” Beilein said while laughing.

DiVincenzo’s college career wasn’t always rewarding from an individual perspective. He was often in the shadows, playing behind some of the best guards the program has ever bred. It’s been the same at the pro level, too. He got hurt in the playoffs the year his Milwaukee Bucks team won the championship. He played behind Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson with the Golden State Warriors. Last season in New York was the first time it felt like DiVincenzo received his flowers on a national level.

From all accounts, that isn’t what motivates him, though. It’s winning. He has always found a way to impact the game — whether by preparing the starters for a national title run while cosplaying as Hield, ending Michigan’s championship hopes with a Curry-esque shooting performance, defending at the same quality of Hart and Bridges or going from NBA Sixth Man of the Year favorite to a legitimate starter in a pinch.

DiVincenzo is the player every team wants. They don’t just want one, though. They want multiple. There is just something about those Villanova guys.

“These guys have all gone through being underdogs and doubted,” Nardi said. “But they’ve proven that they belong. They’re going to do whatever it takes to win. Everyone individually has goals, but if your team wins and you do things together, it’s going to give you the best chance at getting your individual awards. That is what is ingrained in them.”

(Photo of DiVincenzo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)