BY THE AGE of 15, there were few places in the basketball world Jalen Green could go and retain some level of anonymity.
Green's highlight tapes had become the stuff of internet legend. He'd been ranked the No. 1 player in the high school Class of 2020 before he ever played in a high school game. Documentary filmmakers had been following him and his family for years.
But when Green walked into the UCLA men's gym in the summer of 2017, trying to earn his way onto the main court for the legendary summer hoops run, only a few people knew who he was.
"I didn't know him from a can of paint," said former UCLA star Rico Hines, who helps organize the games each summer. "Everyone and their momma always texts me about different cats, telling me to bring them out."
Hines had invited Green to drive down from his hometown in California's Central Valley on the recommendation of a mutual friend, but made no promises about how much run he'd get with the NBA players, including Kevin Durant, who were scheduled that day.
"I remember Brandon Jennings was there that day. He knew who [Green] was," Hines said. "But Brandon was like, 'You might be the No. 1 player in the country but you gotta prove it in here.' It wasn't like trash talk. It was like, 'Let's see it.'"
Green waited and waited on the sidelines as the pros played on what Hines called "the winners court." Sometimes he'd jump into games on the two other courts, known as the "losers court" and the "losers' losers court."
It took hours for him to get a chance to play in the featured game. Finally, when one of the pros was done for the day and ready to tap out, Hines looked over at Green and pointed for him to go in the game and guard Durant.
"I mean, at first you could tell he was kind of, 'Damn, I'm on the court with KD,'" said former Houston Rocket Bobby Brown, who is a regular at the UCLA game. "I'm pretty sure KD scored on him a few times at first. But then he got out on a fast break ..."
The dunk that Green unleashed is on tape somewhere, but Brown will never forget it.
"I'm sure it was a regular dunk for him," Brown said. "But everybody in the gym just looked at each other like, 'Ooooooh, s---!'"
Brown was one of the only people in the gym that day who knew of Green and his reputation for highlight-reel dunks from social media. But after that day, there were a lot more believers. "A lot of guys have had their coming-out parties in that gym," Hines said of the famous summertime hoops haven, which has been a favorite of L.A.-based stars like Marquess Johnson, Baron Davis, Kobe Bryant, Russell Westbrook and Magic Johnson.
"It's where reputations are made. But you have to earn your spot. And Jalen definitely did that day."
Jalen Green grew up on a farm outside of Merced, in the heart of California's agriculturally rich Central Valley. Photo by Juan Ocampo/NBAE via Getty Images
MOST FUTURE SUPERSTARS have origin stories like this in their past. A few key moments where their enormous potential is revealed to themselves or the rest of the world, and everything that comes afterward is about living up to it.
Green, who turned 19 on Feb. 9, has continued to build off that star turn in the UCLA gym three summers ago. But it'll take a decade or so to know if he lives up to the promise of his talent. He has been compared to younger versions of Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady, called a cross between Zach LaVine (athleticism) and Bradley Beal (shooting), and been featured in several documentaries, including one called "Prodigy" on Quibi.
A former coach nicknamed him the Unicorn, because of his unique talents. (He has since backed away from that nickname a bit because Dallas Mavericks stars Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis were also given that nickname -- a unicorn isn't as special if there are three of them.)
Most NBA scouts expect him to contend for the No. 1 pick in this summer's draft.
Last summer, when he trained with NBA players like LA Clippers swingman Paul George, Green held his own and then some.
"I love him. I love his game. I think he's got a mix and a combo of almost every elite guard in the league. ... He just explodes off the floor. It's legit like a trampoline."——Paul George on Jalen Green
"I love him. I love his game," George said. "I think he's got a mix and a combo of almost every elite guard in the league. He can shoot the ball, he's explosive, he can handle it. At his size, he can play both guard positions. I think his athleticism is really what stands out so much about his game.
"He just explodes off the floor. It's legit like a trampoline."
So why isn't Green a household name or making the SportsCenter Top 10 like other Class of 2020 stars like Cade Cunningham (Oklahoma State), Evan Mobley (USC) or Jalen Suggs (Gonzaga)?
Because he's still waiting to play his first official game in nearly a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last spring Green decided to forgo college and become the first elite prospect to join the G League as part of a new initiative to create an alternative to both college and international leagues, where prospects can earn a six-figure salary, sign endorsement deals and receive NBA-level coaching and experience right out of high school.
"When you think about some of the larger conversations of what's happening in the high school space and the college space, I think we all understood this is something we needed to do," said G League commissioner Shareef Abdur-Rahim.
"And if there's one guy you'd want to start something like this with, it'd be a guy like Jalen. His skill level, his athleticism, his maturity ... He has that thing, however you define it, but you know it when you see it."
The only problem is no one has been able to see much of Green since last spring, when the remainder of his high school season was canceled -- along with the rest of the sports calendar -- due to the global pandemic.
Instead of playing in the McDonald's All American Game and other showcases, Green went into lockdown. But unlike the rest of his high school class, Green didn't get to pick things up in the fall with the start of the college basketball season. He and the rest of the G League had to wait while the NBA figured out what to do with them and their season.
"Like I tell the guys, 'The pandemic is the boss. It's in charge of the direction that everything goes in,'" said former Denver Nuggets head coach Brian Shaw, who coaches Green on the G League's Ignite team. "So obviously it's not exactly the way we envisioned it being, but you've just got to roll with the punches because everybody in every industry is having to pivot whenever you need to pivot to continue to work and make things work."
Instead of traveling around the country, matching up with other G League teams and playing on national television, Green and the Ignite team have been training in Walnut Creek, California, for the past six months in relative obscurity.
Shaw made a point of closing practices to family, friends and scouts so the players could focus on training without any distractions. The G League's health and safety protocols made things even more isolating.
Then in the fall, when college basketball started, the pangs of the road not taken started kicking in.
"I'm sure there was this feeling of, 'Did I make the right choice? Because nobody's talking about me now because they haven't seen me,'" Shaw said. "But I keep reminding him -- in the meantime, you've been putting in the work every day."
And now, with the G League getting ready to start play this week at the same Walt Disney World campus where the NBA finished its season last fall, Green will finally get a chance to show what he can do.
"I'm ready," Green said. "We haven't played in so long, and I'm just excited to get games going. It's going to be televised -- so I'm just ready to show out."
Back when fans could witness dunks, Jalen Green awed onlookers. Photo by Ernie Sarmiento ESPN5, Philippines
THIS SOUNDS A bit like the wait Green experienced before getting on the winners court at UCLA, before he could prove he belonged. But those hours he stood on the sidelines weren't nearly as productive as these past few months have been.
As comfortable as Green is in the spotlight -- he already has a following of over 1.1 million on Instagram and 80,000 on Twitter -- this time of under-the-radar preparation has done wonders for his game.
"He was pretty quiet at first," Shaw said. "But what I've come to find is that he really wants to watch a lot of film. He wants to watch film of himself, but we haven't had, other than practices, there is no content for him to watch of himself.
"So I've just been showing him different things on different players that I want him to pick up from those players. Like I've sent him video of Penny Hardaway, of Kobe, of PG, of Bradley Beal. And he loves watching film."
Shaw has also made a point of teaching Green and his fellow elite prospects, like swingman Jonathan Kuminga, the nuances and lingo they'll need to understand once they get to the NBA.
"They all know how to play with the ball in their hands in the style that they played in high school or AAU," Shaw said. "But it's a different ballgame when you add some structure, when you're not the best guy anymore and you have to play a different role and learn how to play without the ball in your hands.
"So my goal is to help these guys improve and prepare for what's next and what it takes to be a pro on and off the court, how to develop a routine so that you can sustain and remain consistent. I want whoever coaches them next to be like, 'This guy is a lot more prepared than the last five or six batches of guys that I've had over that period of time that entered the league.'"
That's also the job of Brown and the veterans on Ignite like Jarrett Jack, Amir Johnson and Reggie Hearn.
"What I love about him, is he just wants to play basketball all day, every day," Brown said. "It's not always like that. You see kids like Jalen with all the hype and they get too caught up in it. But he's really all about basketball."
Jalen Green arrives in Orlando for the G League bubble on Jan. 31. Photo by Chris Marion/NBAE via Getty Images
THAT SIMPLICITY OF purpose is how Green's basketball story began, too. He grew up in an agricultural community in Central California, learning to play on the same cracked-pavement court where his mother, Bree Purganan, had learned the game from her father, Jamie.
"It wasn't really a court," Purganan said. " It was just a driveway with cracks in the cement. The ball was always bouncing off the cracks, but we made it work."
Their family had lived on this farm near the almond orchards in Livingston, California, since her grandfather immigrated from the Philippines to the U.S. a generation earlier.
"It's all country out there. So our nearest neighbor was probably like a mile away."——Bree Purganan, Jalen Green's mom
"It's all country out there," she said. "So our nearest neighbor was probably like a mile away. There was not a lot of traffic there, so we were able to just play in the street without a car coming by."
Green learned the game on that ragged court out by the almond orchards. He played around the clock. And by the beginning of eighth grade, he was getting really good.
The famous story -- for those who have watched one of the documentaries on Green or read stories on his rise -- is that he taught himself to dunk that summer before eighth grade because his stepfather, Marcus Greene, had promised to buy him a pair of Jordans once he was able to.
But the story Green likes to tell about that period in his life, when the dream of playing basketball in the NBA one day started to come into focus, is wholly different. He'd been invited to the Pangos Junior All-American Camp in February of 2016, before he'd played a minute of high school ball, when a bout of imposter syndrome set in.
"I was just like a random dude there, and everybody else knew each other," Green said. He was homesick and unsure of his talent. But he played well, even if he didn't realize it, himself.
"Right after that camp," Green remembers. "The rankings came out and I was No. 1. It was shocking."
From that point on, Green and his family dedicated themselves to fulfilling his basketball promise. They moved from the farm in Livingston to Fresno, so he could attend area powerhouse San Joaquin Memorial High. When Green was a senior, in search of even better competition, he transferred to Prolific Prep in Napa.
Purganan left her job as a nurse to work remotely from a small apartment in Napa, which is three hours from Fresno.
"It was a sacrifice, but we wanted the best for Jalen," she said. "We wanted to make sure that he is prepared in all aspects, making sure that he got the competition, making sure that this is what he really wants to do.
"He left all his friends, but he loves the game and he knew he could visit his friends anytime." That was the same thinking behind his jump from high school to the G League.
"My ultimate goal is to get to the league," Green said. "So when the G League came up, it was a great option because it puts you one step ahead of everybody in college. You're more on NBA terms, you're learning a lifestyle, the business of basketball. So it's like an advanced step above college."
That was the plan, anyway. Before the pandemic. Before the world turned upside down.
But the long wait is over now, and the task before Green is the same as it was as he waited to get on the court at UCLA.
"I'm ready," Green said. "I'm ready. I've got a lot of work to do. I'm just trying to stay locked in on what I've got going now, and get better every day."
BY THE AGE of 15, there were few places in the basketball world Jalen Green could go and retain some level of anonymity.
Green's highlight tapes had become the stuff of internet legend. He'd been ranked the No. 1 player in the high school Class of 2020 before he ever played in a high school game. Documentary filmmakers had been following him and his family for years.
But when Green walked into the UCLA men's gym in the summer of 2017, trying to earn his way onto the main court for the legendary summer hoops run, only a few people knew who he was.
"I didn't know him from a can of paint," said former UCLA star Rico Hines, who helps organize the games each summer. "Everyone and their momma always texts me about different cats, telling me to bring them out."
Hines had invited Green to drive down from his hometown in California's Central Valley on the recommendation of a mutual friend, but made no promises about how much run he'd get with the NBA players, including Kevin Durant, who were scheduled that day.
"I remember Brandon Jennings was there that day. He knew who [Green] was," Hines said. "But Brandon was like, 'You might be the No. 1 player in the country but you gotta prove it in here.' It wasn't like trash talk. It was like, 'Let's see it.'"
Green waited and waited on the sidelines as the pros played on what Hines called "the winners court." Sometimes he'd jump into games on the two other courts, known as the "losers court" and the "losers' losers court."
It took hours for him to get a chance to play in the featured game. Finally, when one of the pros was done for the day and ready to tap out, Hines looked over at Green and pointed for him to go in the game and guard Durant.
"I mean, at first you could tell he was kind of, 'Damn, I'm on the court with KD,'" said former Houston Rocket Bobby Brown, who is a regular at the UCLA game. "I'm pretty sure KD scored on him a few times at first. But then he got out on a fast break ..."
The dunk that Green unleashed is on tape somewhere, but Brown will never forget it.
"I'm sure it was a regular dunk for him," Brown said. "But everybody in the gym just looked at each other like, 'Ooooooh, s---!'"
Brown was one of the only people in the gym that day who knew of Green and his reputation for highlight-reel dunks from social media. But after that day, there were a lot more believers. "A lot of guys have had their coming-out parties in that gym," Hines said of the famous summertime hoops haven, which has been a favorite of L.A.-based stars like Marquess Johnson, Baron Davis, Kobe Bryant, Russell Westbrook and Magic Johnson.
"It's where reputations are made. But you have to earn your spot. And Jalen definitely did that day."
Jalen Green grew up on a farm outside of Merced, in the heart of California's agriculturally rich Central Valley. Photo by Juan Ocampo/NBAE via Getty Images
MOST FUTURE SUPERSTARS have origin stories like this in their past. A few key moments where their enormous potential is revealed to themselves or the rest of the world, and everything that comes afterward is about living up to it.
Green, who turned 19 on Feb. 9, has continued to build off that star turn in the UCLA gym three summers ago. But it'll take a decade or so to know if he lives up to the promise of his talent. He has been compared to younger versions of Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady, called a cross between Zach LaVine (athleticism) and Bradley Beal (shooting), and been featured in several documentaries, including one called "Prodigy" on Quibi.
A former coach nicknamed him the Unicorn, because of his unique talents. (He has since backed away from that nickname a bit because Dallas Mavericks stars Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis were also given that nickname -- a unicorn isn't as special if there are three of them.)
Most NBA scouts expect him to contend for the No. 1 pick in this summer's draft.
Last summer, when he trained with NBA players like LA Clippers swingman Paul George, Green held his own and then some.
"I love him. I love his game. I think he's got a mix and a combo of almost every elite guard in the league. ... He just explodes off the floor. It's legit like a trampoline."——Paul George on Jalen Green
"I love him. I love his game," George said. "I think he's got a mix and a combo of almost every elite guard in the league. He can shoot the ball, he's explosive, he can handle it. At his size, he can play both guard positions. I think his athleticism is really what stands out so much about his game.
"He just explodes off the floor. It's legit like a trampoline."
So why isn't Green a household name or making the SportsCenter Top 10 like other Class of 2020 stars like Cade Cunningham (Oklahoma State), Evan Mobley (USC) or Jalen Suggs (Gonzaga)?
Because he's still waiting to play his first official game in nearly a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last spring Green decided to forgo college and become the first elite prospect to join the G League as part of a new initiative to create an alternative to both college and international leagues, where prospects can earn a six-figure salary, sign endorsement deals and receive NBA-level coaching and experience right out of high school.
"When you think about some of the larger conversations of what's happening in the high school space and the college space, I think we all understood this is something we needed to do," said G League commissioner Shareef Abdur-Rahim.
"And if there's one guy you'd want to start something like this with, it'd be a guy like Jalen. His skill level, his athleticism, his maturity ... He has that thing, however you define it, but you know it when you see it."
The only problem is no one has been able to see much of Green since last spring, when the remainder of his high school season was canceled -- along with the rest of the sports calendar -- due to the global pandemic.
Instead of playing in the McDonald's All American Game and other showcases, Green went into lockdown. But unlike the rest of his high school class, Green didn't get to pick things up in the fall with the start of the college basketball season. He and the rest of the G League had to wait while the NBA figured out what to do with them and their season.
"Like I tell the guys, 'The pandemic is the boss. It's in charge of the direction that everything goes in,'" said former Denver Nuggets head coach Brian Shaw, who coaches Green on the G League's Ignite team. "So obviously it's not exactly the way we envisioned it being, but you've just got to roll with the punches because everybody in every industry is having to pivot whenever you need to pivot to continue to work and make things work."
Instead of traveling around the country, matching up with other G League teams and playing on national television, Green and the Ignite team have been training in Walnut Creek, California, for the past six months in relative obscurity.
Shaw made a point of closing practices to family, friends and scouts so the players could focus on training without any distractions. The G League's health and safety protocols made things even more isolating.
Then in the fall, when college basketball started, the pangs of the road not taken started kicking in.
"I'm sure there was this feeling of, 'Did I make the right choice? Because nobody's talking about me now because they haven't seen me,'" Shaw said. "But I keep reminding him -- in the meantime, you've been putting in the work every day."
And now, with the G League getting ready to start play this week at the same Walt Disney World campus where the NBA finished its season last fall, Green will finally get a chance to show what he can do.
"I'm ready," Green said. "We haven't played in so long, and I'm just excited to get games going. It's going to be televised -- so I'm just ready to show out."
Back when fans could witness dunks, Jalen Green awed onlookers. Photo by Ernie Sarmiento ESPN5, Philippines
THIS SOUNDS A bit like the wait Green experienced before getting on the winners court at UCLA, before he could prove he belonged. But those hours he stood on the sidelines weren't nearly as productive as these past few months have been.
As comfortable as Green is in the spotlight -- he already has a following of over 1.1 million on Instagram and 80,000 on Twitter -- this time of under-the-radar preparation has done wonders for his game.
"He was pretty quiet at first," Shaw said. "But what I've come to find is that he really wants to watch a lot of film. He wants to watch film of himself, but we haven't had, other than practices, there is no content for him to watch of himself.
"So I've just been showing him different things on different players that I want him to pick up from those players. Like I've sent him video of Penny Hardaway, of Kobe, of PG, of Bradley Beal. And he loves watching film."
Shaw has also made a point of teaching Green and his fellow elite prospects, like swingman Jonathan Kuminga, the nuances and lingo they'll need to understand once they get to the NBA.
"They all know how to play with the ball in their hands in the style that they played in high school or AAU," Shaw said. "But it's a different ballgame when you add some structure, when you're not the best guy anymore and you have to play a different role and learn how to play without the ball in your hands.
"So my goal is to help these guys improve and prepare for what's next and what it takes to be a pro on and off the court, how to develop a routine so that you can sustain and remain consistent. I want whoever coaches them next to be like, 'This guy is a lot more prepared than the last five or six batches of guys that I've had over that period of time that entered the league.'"
That's also the job of Brown and the veterans on Ignite like Jarrett Jack, Amir Johnson and Reggie Hearn.
"What I love about him, is he just wants to play basketball all day, every day," Brown said. "It's not always like that. You see kids like Jalen with all the hype and they get too caught up in it. But he's really all about basketball."
Jalen Green arrives in Orlando for the G League bubble on Jan. 31. Photo by Chris Marion/NBAE via Getty Images
THAT SIMPLICITY OF purpose is how Green's basketball story began, too. He grew up in an agricultural community in Central California, learning to play on the same cracked-pavement court where his mother, Bree Purganan, had learned the game from her father, Jamie.
"It wasn't really a court," Purganan said. " It was just a driveway with cracks in the cement. The ball was always bouncing off the cracks, but we made it work."
Their family had lived on this farm near the almond orchards in Livingston, California, since her grandfather immigrated from the Philippines to the U.S. a generation earlier.
"It's all country out there. So our nearest neighbor was probably like a mile away."——Bree Purganan, Jalen Green's mom
"It's all country out there," she said. "So our nearest neighbor was probably like a mile away. There was not a lot of traffic there, so we were able to just play in the street without a car coming by."
Green learned the game on that ragged court out by the almond orchards. He played around the clock. And by the beginning of eighth grade, he was getting really good.
The famous story -- for those who have watched one of the documentaries on Green or read stories on his rise -- is that he taught himself to dunk that summer before eighth grade because his stepfather, Marcus Greene, had promised to buy him a pair of Jordans once he was able to.
But the story Green likes to tell about that period in his life, when the dream of playing basketball in the NBA one day started to come into focus, is wholly different. He'd been invited to the Pangos Junior All-American Camp in February of 2016, before he'd played a minute of high school ball, when a bout of imposter syndrome set in.
"I was just like a random dude there, and everybody else knew each other," Green said. He was homesick and unsure of his talent. But he played well, even if he didn't realize it, himself.
"Right after that camp," Green remembers. "The rankings came out and I was No. 1. It was shocking."
From that point on, Green and his family dedicated themselves to fulfilling his basketball promise. They moved from the farm in Livingston to Fresno, so he could attend area powerhouse San Joaquin Memorial High. When Green was a senior, in search of even better competition, he transferred to Prolific Prep in Napa.
Purganan left her job as a nurse to work remotely from a small apartment in Napa, which is three hours from Fresno.
"It was a sacrifice, but we wanted the best for Jalen," she said. "We wanted to make sure that he is prepared in all aspects, making sure that he got the competition, making sure that this is what he really wants to do.
"He left all his friends, but he loves the game and he knew he could visit his friends anytime." That was the same thinking behind his jump from high school to the G League.
"My ultimate goal is to get to the league," Green said. "So when the G League came up, it was a great option because it puts you one step ahead of everybody in college. You're more on NBA terms, you're learning a lifestyle, the business of basketball. So it's like an advanced step above college."
That was the plan, anyway. Before the pandemic. Before the world turned upside down.
But the long wait is over now, and the task before Green is the same as it was as he waited to get on the court at UCLA.
"I'm ready," Green said. "I'm ready. I've got a lot of work to do. I'm just trying to stay locked in on what I've got going now, and get better every day."
