32 // VARSITY April 3, 2014
E
verybody from Charles Barkley to Dick Vi-
tale has been talking about him. Everybody
from the Los Angeles Times to the New York
Daily News has been writing about him. Every-
body with a college basketball blog has been blog-
ging about him.
Never has the spotlight shone so brightly on
Frank Kaminsky. So how is the 7-foot Wisconsin
center handling all of the accolades, national at-
tention, and newfound celebrity, especially when
Kaminsky can't watch an ESPN SportsCenter with-
out seeing a heavy dose of Kaminsky highlights?
"It's weird," he admitted. "I'm the kid who grew
up idolizing people like J.J. Redick at Duke and I
got to see how much he was on TV. He was always
my idol. Now to be a person who's kind of getting
the coverage like he was is unbelievable and it's
surreal.
"At the same time, it's still basketball," said Ka-
minsky, who was raised about 20 miles outside of
Chicago in the small community of Lisle, Ill. "It's
still the game that I played when I was in the fifth
grade ― and nobody came to the games ― and I
still want to win like always."
Kaminsky can read your mind. J.J. Redick? You
idolized a 6-4 Duke guard? True. It's also true that
Redick was a very special college player, a prolific
3-pointer shooter and the school's all-time leader
scorer. In 2007, Duke retired Redick's No. 4 jersey;
one of 13 players so honored by the Blue Devils.
"I kind of keep the 4 for J.J.," said Kaminsky, who
wears a double-4 on his UW jersey. "I always talk-
ed about how cool he was. I think people would
think that it's kind of funny that I idolized a guard.
But the people who know me ― and knew me be-
fore I was tall ― they wouldn't be surprised at all."
Before he was tall, really tall, he was a 6-2 guard
who grew to 6-10 in two years. He sprouted at
Benet Academy, a Benedictine prep school, whose
alumni include a Grammy award winner (Dave
Bickler, the former lead singer of Survivor) and an
Oscar award winner (Diablo Cody, a screenwrit-
er).
Kaminsky won the award for growing pains.
"I wouldn't change the way it happened," he
said. "I'm glad that I had those guard skills before
growing because if I was just taller than every-
one else my whole life I wouldn't have had that
(skill set). I'm kind of thankful that I had the late
