The mindset behind WSU guard Myles Rice's sizzling start to the season
Dec. 1—PULLMAN — Not long after Myles Rice polished off his latest strong game, a 28-point outing in his Washington State team's win over Eastern Washington earlier in the week, he looked at his phone and saw a text from his dad.
"I saw you took a couple heat checks," Joel Rice had written.
"I thought I had really, like, one," Rice said a few days later. "I thought the other two were kind of my shot but ... that's my dad. He's gonna always keep it real with me, if I have a good game, bad game."
Whatever Rice was taking, it was going in. He made each of his first six tries from beyond the arc. He made them on the move, off the catch, pulling up. On Monday night, it didn't matter where Rice was shooting from.
"Every one was going in," he said after the game.
Joel may be Myles' biggest critic, but through the Cougars' six games this season, even he hasn't found much fault in his son's game. Rice is averaging 17.2 points on 54% shooting, including 46% on 3-pointers, turning in efficient game after efficient game, propelling WSU to a promising 5-1 start to the year.
The best part for Rice is that he's having fun. He's coined his own celebrations when he sinks 3-pointers. He makes opponents rip up their scouting reports. He smiles as big when he scores as he does when he's joking with teammates. He plays the game with joy, with boundlessness, with energy so infectious it might have its own magnetic pull.
"Anytime you go in the gym before practice, and let's say there's 15 minutes before practice begins," said Jon-Michael Nickerson, Rice's high school coach at Sandy Creek outside of Atlanta. "You just find yourself, as a coach, gravitate to where he's shooting at just because you wanna be around him. He's got great energy. Always really funny."
There's nothing forced about Rice, on the court or off. Catch him after practice and he's happy to shoot the breeze with a smile on his face. Watch him during a game and he's gliding to the rim for an easy two. What makes Rice easy to chat with is also what makes him perhaps WSU's best player: His default state is joyful.
He's had a lot to be joyful about during this young season. He's finished with point totals of 28, 18, eight (in an injury-abbreviated outing against Rhode Island), 21, 15 and 13. He's been efficient, too, shooting 50% or better on all but two occasions. He's a natural two-guard, but thanks to the construction of this Washington State team, he's been handling some point guard duties too.
He's also one of the Cougars' best defenders. He's had a steal in all but one of his six games . Nickerson called him the best on-ball defender he's coached. So did Pat Hunter, Rice's AAU coach for two years in high school.
"I've coached probably seven or eight NBA players and over 100 Division I players," Hunter said, "and he is up there with one of my favorite point guards that I've coached. He's definitely one of those guys that's a breath of fresh air to coach."
Did we mention Rice also beat cancer?
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It can feel tempting to think about Myles Rice, the cancer survivor. He sat out last season receiving chemotherapy treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He was officially diagnosed last September, went into remission on June 1 and practiced at full strength throughout the summer. He will never erase that part of his life — and he doesn't want to.
He can feel the ways he's changed because he beat cancer. He feels more appreciative of basketball, of the opportunity he has at Washington State. "He's not wasting any time out there on the court," WSU coach Kyle Smith said.
But now it may be time to talk about Myles Rice, one of the best players in the Pac-12, cancer survivor or not.
"It's like a chapter in a book," Rice said. "You read Chapter 1, you go into Chapter 2, and you still remember Chapter 1, but you don't go back and read it. You keep reading forward in the book."
Besides, Rice beat cancer by being himself, not by adapting to it. Throughout the treatment process, Rice was who he is now: positive and upbeat, smiling and laughing, putting on a brave face for his parents, Joel and Tamara.
"It was good to see that even during his treatments, he still smiled," Tamara said. "I saw (him) afterward and everything. And I told him, I said, 'You're making it easy for me,' and he said, 'No mom, you being here is making it easy for me too.' So he's always just been that positive person."
There's so much more to Rice and his story. Home, he says, is Columbia, South Carolina, even though he and his family moved to the Atlanta area when he was a toddler. There, he spent ninth grade at Newton High, 10th and 11th grades at Eastside High, then his senior year at Sandy Creek, where he played alongside current Houston Rockets forward Jabari Smith and against current Portland Trail Blazers guard Scoot Henderson, the No. 2 pick in this summer's NBA draft.
Rice has been around basketball greatness most of his life, which partially explains why, as a redshirt freshman, he's already become the Cougars' best scorer. Joel played college ball at Erskine College, a private Christian college in Due West, South Carolina, where he was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 2003.
That also helps explain why he went so vastly underrecruited out of high school. He was often overshadowed by the headliners on his teams, names like Smith and Matthew Cleveland, who now plays for the Miami Hurricanes. Rice always had the shot, the handle, the defensive ability — but playing in a star-studded area, he didn't have the size, which has a tendency to sink recruitment.
Rice fielded offers from Bucknell, Pacific, Belmont, Georgia State, Iona, East Carolina and James Madison — all midmajors that had an easier time becoming aware of Rice because of their geographical proximity. Washington State was Rice's only Power Five offer.
"Power Five schools, they love to hold it against kids when they're not the elite vertical athletes," Nickerson said, "and I think that's the dumbest thing to do. I think jumping is the most overrated skill in basketball. If you know how to play, you know how to play, and that was Myles."
Nickerson always believed in his guy, so he went to delivering emails. During Rice's senior year, 2020-21, Nickerson sent out feelers to tons of Power Five schools, all saying about the same thing: This guy is way underrecruited. Here's some film on him.
One of the only coaches to respond was John Andrzejek, a WSU assistant coach who departed the program in August. He told Nickerson he really liked Rice's tape. He followed Rice on Twitter. Rice did not follow back.
"I texted Myles," Nickerson said. "I was like, follow that dude."
Today, Rice does not follow Andrzejek.
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At Sandy Creek practices, when Rice wasn't bringing it on defense, Nickerson would make sure he heard about it. One of the team's reserves would score on Rice. That's when Nickerson would pipe up.
Everyone's scoring on Myles today!
"And he would just flash a smile at me, like, 'I got you,' " Nickerson said. ... "I'm trying to poke them every now and then and keep them on their toes. He always just had a good humility to him, in my opinion."
Rice may play the game with a smile on his face, so much so that Smith likes to call him a "peacock." Nickerson thinks that description needs an addendum: "A peacock with a honey badger attitude."
What he means by that: For as joyful as Rice plays, he's also tough as nails. In WSU's win over Rhode Island earlier this month, Rice drove to the basket, muscled through contact, scored, then landed awkwardly on his ankle. He limped off the court, keeping his injured ankle in the air.
Moments later, he reentered the game, coming back in with 45 seconds to play in a 21-point victory.
Rice is both things at once: Happy and tough, joyful and ragged, just as ready to hit a side-step 3-pointer as he is to step in the lane and take a charge. He just does it all while smiling. He wouldn't be Myles Rice if he didn't.
"I just like to have fun when I'm out there playing," Rice said. "Having that love for the game, enjoying the game while I'm playing. Not everybody gets an opportunity to play in front of these fans, with these coaches, with these teammates. I'm blessed to be here in this present moment, to be able to do what I do each day. I'm truly blessed."
