TORONTO – As he appeared on the biggest stage of his young basketball career, Alfonzo McKinnie’s mind wandered.
He had the unenviable task of guarding Toronto forward Kawhi Leonard, a far cry from when he played in Luxembourg, Mexico and in the G-League. So after closing out on Leonard in a recent NBA Finals game, McKinnie kept repeating a phrase to himself internally.
“Stick hands!!” McKinnie said to himself. “Stick hands!!”
What does ‘stick hands’ mean? McKinnie learned the term from Jerry Stackhouse, a former NBA pro and coach with Toronto’s G-League team that told his players never to let their hands down during a closeout.