No Ceilings · No Ceilings NBA Draft

Cedric Coward joins the show to talk his NBA Journey & Rookie Season with the Memphis Grizzlies

April 7, 2026·22 min·2 clips

Cedric Coward reveals the 'craziness' required to make it from D3 basketball to the NBA.

Cedric Coward opens the highlighted stretch on defense. The host asks how much comes from coaches, film rooms, and tendency work, and Coward keeps pulling the answer back onto the floor. He trusts his basketball brain. Film matters because elite scorers still have preferred hands, favorite moves, and patterns you can try to take away. But knowing the report does not guard anybody by itself. Coward says the action of defense has to get better, which is a very player answer to a classroom question. The coaches get real credit here. He points to Eric Schmidt for putting him in one-on-one spots where the help is limited or barely there. Uncomfortable, on purpose. The drill makes him stay inside the possession, without an easy escape hatch or automatic teammate rescue. Then the host asks for proof. Was there someone early who got him, sent him back to the lab, and felt different the next time? Shea is the name Coward gives. He remembers the first Thunder game clearly, with Shea scoring on him probably four times in a row and making the gap obvious. That is where the clip works best. It is not polished player-speak. It is a player explaining how defense teaches you while the game is still happening. The tone stays loose but specific. Film-room vocabulary sits in the background, but the real subject is possession-by-possession survival. The close comes back to work. Coward wants people around him to say he was the hardest worker they saw, not only someone who improved year to year. Daily improvement is the bar. For a player trying to earn trust, the assignment is pretty clear.

As heard by us

A rookie-season conversation that treats defense like a daily test, not a highlight reel.

Cedric Coward's stop on No Ceilings reads as a rookie-season check-in built around defense, film study, and the fast adjustment required against NBA scorers.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a rookie read from Cedric Coward of the Memphis Grizzlies, centered on learning defense on the fly.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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