MarJon Beauchamp (Nathan Hale/RB/Garfield) Tearing Up G League Looking Like 2022 NBA Lottery Pick

Washington Post (click for full article) https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/11/16/chameleon-bx-nba-draft-masked-trainer/

MarJon Beauchamp had raced up and down the stairs at the beach so many times that he had lost count. His sneakers were stuffed with sand, his muscles were screaming, and his mind was racing. When he finally finished, he collapsed onto the beach, looked up at Frank Matrisciano and wondered: Could Hell’s Trainer take him to the promised land?

It was the summer of 2019. Matrisciano had flown Beauchamp, a five-star basketball recruit from Seattle, to San Francisco for the weekend, to convince him to become the first client of a new program he had designed to prepare prospects for the NBA. He called it Chameleon BX.

Matrisciano, a trainer to professional athletes for more than two decades, is best known by his two nicknames. One is “The Masked Trainer,” which he earned by refusing to show his face in pictures or videos. (He says it’s to protect his privacy, though the mysteriousness doubles as a decent marketing tool.) The other is “Hell’s Trainer.”

His training regimen, which he calls “chameleon,” eschews weightlifting for intense core strength and cardio exercises in public parks and playgrounds. It got famous after he helped Blake Griffin become the No. 1 pick in the 2009 NBA draft.

Matrisciano created Chameleon BX last year, to offer top prospects such as Beauchamp something they increasingly yearn for: an alternative to college basketball. He promised to get them in the best shape of their lives, provide basketball development from NBA coaches and cover all costs, from housing to food. He would do it all for free, too, only cashing in once players went pro and continued to work with him.

Beauchamp was a top prospect with scholarship offers from UCLA, Arizona and other blue-chip programs. But the NBA had always been his priority, which is why he had left his hometown of Yakima, Wash., for Seattle and why he had switched high schools three times, eventually winding up in Arizona. After hearing Matrisciano’s pitch, he decided to decamp to San Francisco, choosing Chameleon BX over a year of college.

Three other players — four-star senior forwards Kyree Walker and Maxwell Lewis, and 16-year-old phenom JD Tsasa — signed up too. Tsasa was too young to be eligible, but the other three believed they would leave the program as NBA draft picks.

A year later, though, none has made it to the NBA. And as skepticism about the NCAA and amateurism mounts, fueling the creation of alternative paths to the pros for the best high school basketball prospects, Chameleon BX serves as a cautionary tale for what can go wrong.

“I thought this would get me ready for the draft,” Beauchamp said. “I thought I’d get NBA coaching and get my body right and get my mentality right. I was betting on myself to be different, but it was a bad year for that.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-Wbc8TKVCo

Next Ones: NBA G League Ignite (November 2021 Highlights). Marjon Beauchamp is the first player to go from junior college to the G League's Ignite program. He is also the first person to join the team despite being more than one year out of high school.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-cxRYVPYdI
MarJon Beauchamp vs SLC Stars 12/15/21: 25 pts (12-16 FG, 0-1 3pt, 1-2 FT), 7 Reb, 3Ast, 3Stl, 1Blk