“We were coming into that game and I was thinking I had to go out, like I was obligated to score 40.I thought I had to go out and kill and do all the extra shit.” Juice worried about his friend, wondering if this was the right move. Before his first game, he couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning for hours. But instead he was locked away in his room. He wanted to be like them: hooping in front of thousands. He grinded tape with coaches, learned financial literacy and started an LLC while playing a handful of games in a pandemic-shortened season. “You just learn about how to become a pro on and off the court,” he says. Of course, a $500,000 contract doesn’t hurt either. But the Ignite program in the NBA G-League offered an opportunity to get a handle on a world he was alien to. That’s part of the reason Jalen skipped college. And that’ll continue to be who he is, wherever he goes, and he won’t ever forget that.” That’s just part of who he is.That’s just part of his character. The area he came from is not good at all. He’s trying to make it out for several reasons, but one of them is his family. “He comes from a tough neighborhood,” Fuca continues. I tell all these NBA scouts and coaches that call me that it was like coaching LeBron or Kobe when they were in high school.” “It’s a special type of environment for a kid that very rarely happens. Fuca says he had more trouble dealing with people trying to get to Jalen than the kid himself. ![]() “We were traveling with a phenom,” Joey Fuca, his coach at Prolific, tells me. He tailored his craft to a professional level before he was old enough to go to college. He came off the bench in the FIBA tournaments and still propelled America to three gold medals, winning a FIBA MVP at the under-17 World Cup. So, Jalen transferred to Prolific Prep in Napa, California, to play the best high school hoopers in the country. “He was really a celebrity in high school. Enjoy this.” How Jalen composed himself amidst all of this impressed Roznovsky. He’d try to ask ‘should I say no? Should I come back?’ No, man. “It was because of the stardom, the fans, the autographs. ![]() “A lot of our post game speeches after the game were without Jalen,” Roznovsky says. His coaches leaned on him like an assistant by the time he was a junior, but they also lost him to the lights. San Joaquin’s games were packed, and occasionally broadcast on ESPN. That’s when I realized J’s really a big name in Fresno.” “There were tons of people looking, lots of people following him, stopping him, asking him to take a picture. “That was the first time I was like, ‘Whoa, I don’t think we can even go to the mall with you anymore bro,’” Juice says. His reputation swelled to the point where friends say cameras were always around him. “I got everything from the bottom.”īy the time Jalen was a sophomore, he couldn’t stroll through the mall without attracting attention. “Everything I got I worked for,” he says. He looks up from underneath his hoodie with a fire in his eyes. We’re sitting in a booth at his favorite Italian restaurant in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in Los Angeles, where Jalen recently relocated to train. Whether it’s some weak players or the top in the country.” “There’s a lot of talk about Cade Cunningham and other people.but I’m the best player. So of course he’s confident: “I feel like I’m the best player in my class,” he says. In an era of social media-driven popularity fueled by high level performances and delicately cut basketball mixtapes, one emphatic dunk at the right tournament or a supercut of highlights on the proper YouTube channel means thousands of people know your name, flock to your Instagram and revere you as the heir to the NBA throne. ![]() ![]() This was long before he was a potential No. Before he learned to drive, universities from Arizona to USC begged him to commit to their schools. That’s going to come to an end one day.” But the fact is that he was a local icon before he enrolled in high school and an online legend since the age of 15, when he averaged 27.9 points per game at San Joaquin Memorial High School and became the most sought after prep prospect in his class. He blushes and squirms when I try to explain his celebrity to him, even saying at one point, “I'm not going to be playing basketball forever.
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