Bryce Hopkins learned quickly that the best way to rebound from the wrath of Rick Pitino was to rebound.
He experienced a momentary lapse in focus once during a St. John’s practice. A failure to box out the nearest body on a missed shot. It was an honest mistake, far from an indictment of Hopkins’ overall mental makeup. But Pitino’s unsparing honesty is the stuff of legend in college basketball. The Hall of Fame coach ripped into his fifth-year senior.
“He told me, ‘You’re not that F-ing good. I’ve coached guys like Donovan Mitchell,'” Hopkins recalled, grinning. “… I loved playing for Coach P.”
Drafted 49th by the Nuggets last month, Hopkins is one of the most important players on Denver’s Summer League team this week in Las Vegas. The 23-year-old wing has always navigated his basketball career with humility and even a willingness to self-deprecate. He’s been coached hard his entire life, first by his father in elementary school, then by no-nonsense juco bench generals in AAU ball, then by John Calipari as a college freshman. But perhaps the most lasting impact was the one Pitino made most recently, sending Hopkins into the pros feeling prepared for anything — from rigorous training regimens to intense coaching styles.
“It’s not a fun environment to be around Coach Pitino when we lose,” Hopkins said. “So there was kind of a fear for us to lose and have to come back into that film session the next day.”
“That was the best decision Bryce ever could have made, man,” his dad, Clyde, said. “Going to play for Pitino definitely changed his mindset.”
Hopkins’ road to Denver was bumpy at times. He played at three different colleges. He tore his left ACL in January 2024, ending his junior year at Providence and sidelining him until halfway through the following season. Three games after he returned, he hyperextended the same knee, resulting in a bone bruise. Providence was off to a disappointing start, and Hopkins’ family was alarmed by the re-injury, so they elected to shut him down for the season and preserve his NCAA eligibility.
It was not a popular decision around Providence. But it led Hopkins back into the transfer portal and to St. John’s, where he could play out a full senior season, improve his chances of making the NCAA Tournament and boost his name, image and likeness profitability.
On his first day on campus, he met with a team doctor and was then instructed to get dressed for a workout. Hopkins hadn’t been expecting to get in the gym that day. Pitino worked him for an hour.
It was the beginning of an intense summer training program. Pitino expects his players to get their body fat below 10%. They weigh in every day. Hopkins was already in good shape. Back in high school, his parents had hired a nutrition specialist for him. He had always taken his conditioning seriously. But this was a step up in intensity, even for an experienced and disciplined college athlete. He was at roughly 13% body fat pre-Pitino, estimated his dad, who was on hand to watch Hopkins get “drenched” at that first workout.
“Just being in that environment every day pushed me to be the best player I could possibly be,” Bryce said.
Clyde was an onlooker at several practices throughout the season. He was struck not only by how demanding Pitino was, but how he communicated his demands — via a microphone attached to his person, projecting the 73-year-old’s voice through speakers.
“You wouldn’t even know where Pitino would be at in the gym, Clyde said. “You would just hear him. It’s like God talking down.”
That was nothing new for Bryce. Once during a second-grade league championship game, his dad benched him for a crucial stretch, making it clear that he needed to play with heightened energy. (The decision seemed so confusing in the moment that Bryce’s mom, Karen, tried calling Clyde’s phone from the bleachers to ask what was going on.) Bryce also grew up taking on one of his two older sisters in “heated” 1-on-1 driveway showdowns, overseen and officiated by their dad.
As a child in Chicago and as a young adult in New York, Hopkins tried to handle those fierce environments with poise and patience. He was the second-leading scorer at St. John’s, averaging 13.6 points and 6.2 rebounds per game. Assistant coach Bob Walsh, who had also overlapped with Hopkins at Providence a few years earlier, observed a player who didn’t care for the spotlight — whose only flaw might’ve been being overly deferential at times.
“If anything, he’s too good a kid,” said Walsh, who noticed early on that Hopkins put in the effort to remember the names of all 15 student managers.
He would stay in the gym with “Hop” after practice to rebound for him. Hopkins needed shooting reps. His inconsistency from 3-point range loomed over his draft stock — “the rep on him was always, man, if he could shoot it, he’d be a pro,” as Walsh put it. They had a running joke about how Hopkins could never seem to make more than one 3-pointer per game. In 13 the last 23 games of the regular season, he made exactly one. In the other 10, he didn’t convert any.
“It’s OK to make two,” Walsh would wisecrack as Hopkins would rain five or six consecutive swishes in an empty gym. “No one’s gonna be mad if you want to make a couple.”
Hopkins laughed along. Then he shot 10-for-14 from deep in the NCAA Tournament, including a 6-for-9 performance that helped St. John’s knock out Kansas and reach the Sweet 16. He also went for 14 points and 13 rebounds to eliminate Providence from the Big East Tournament, adding to his status as public enemy No. 1 at his former school. Walsh and others at St. John’s were impressed by his determination to take the high road whenever the media asked him about Providence.
“His ability to put us on his shoulders a little bit there and carry us through a postseason run is something he fully deserved,” Walsh said, “based on the type of teammate he is, how hard he works.”
The Nuggets have asked Hopkins to prioritize defense since his arrival in Denver. They hope he can make an impact from the end of the bench with his athleticism, switchability and rebounding tenacity. For the next week of Summer League ball in Las Vegas, he and fellow second-round pick Trevon Brazile will be the stars of the show.
Not that Hopkins necessarily wants that. After all, if he can find a way to carve out NBA playing time, he’ll be expected to settle into a smaller role predicated on dirty work and attention to detail. The stuff Pitino drilled into him.
“He plays with zero ego whatsoever,” Walsh said.
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