Guerschon Yabusele is not what he appears to be


The Celtics start their Summer League tonight against the Philadelphia 76'ers, and Guerschon Yabusele will be back in action.

This is one young guy most of us are truly wishing becomes a solid part of the Celtics rotation. That has not happened yet, but we all knew it would take some time.

My life experience has taught me that "nothing is ever what it appears to be", and that is the case with Yabu. I will start with his physique. How can such a bulky player move so well? Low body fat is the answer. He apparently got down to roughly six percent body fat prior to coming to Boston.


Guersch is all muscle. A recent photo of Yabu circulated via Twitter focuses on his glutes (butt), with a lot of humor surrounding it. As a long-time Personal Trainer, one of the most-asked questions to me, by both men and women, was how to develop the glutes. Guersch has done that, and there was a solid reason behind (intended pun) it.




Yabu worked with a Trainer in 2016, and it was determined that he was overworking his quads (front thigh) and underworking his hamstrings (rear thigh) and glutes. The following is via MassLive's Jay King:

...Yabusele tends to play on his toes, which forces his quadriceps muscles to do too much work. So they want to even his weight distribution and make him use his gluteal muscles and hamstrings more, increasing his explosiveness. According to (Adam) Himmelsbach, Yabusele has cut 10 pounds since joining the Sharks and trimmed his body fat from 9 percent to 6 percent. That's the same body fat percentage noted skinny dude R.J. Hunter registered during last year's NBA combine, according to DraftExpress. Yabusele may look like a "Dancing Bear" and have shoulders the size of boulders, but he's cut up too -- which is good because 6-foot-7 power forwards better be able to slide their feet.

Enough on the glutes. I don't want to start another Tommy Heinsohn-bigger-than-all-of-Australia type of thing. His production in his 33 games with the Celtics this past season may also present the wrong picture. He averaged 7.1 MPG, 2.4 PPG, 1.6 RPG and 0.5 APG. The key number there is 7.1 minutes per game.

Here are the same stats projected to 36 minutes per game. We see 12.1 PPG, 8.0 RPG, 2.5 APG and only 1.8 turnovers/game. Shooting accuracy shows 42.6% from the field and 32.4% from beyond the arc. Fairly substantial numbers for a rookie coming over from Europe.

Summer League starts tonight for the Celtics against the 76'ers. These games will be important for him and the team. Guersch is on a team-friendly contract, making 2.7 million this season, while being signed for the following two seasons, both being team options. Most of us are pushing for the lean, muscular, low-center-of-gravity Dancing Bear to thrive in Summer League and become a solid rotation player in the regular season. We don't want him dancing for another team.

Follow Tom at @TomLaneHC

Photo via Steve Flynn/USA TODAY Sports
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