SAN FRANCISCO – You're a 2016 NBA lottery pick, selected eighth overall. It's time to shine. Get your game on and, eventually, fatten your bank account.

Three years and three teams later, you're on the outskirts of the league.

As days and nights last summer came and went without a phone call or a text message or so much as a July 2nd Happy Birthday greeting, Marquese Chriss concedes that during his 90-day turn as a free agent there were moments when he wondered if that is how his dream would end.

"It sucked, man," he recalls in an extended recent conversation with NBC Sports Bay Area. "You go into free agency trying to stay as optimistic as possible. I understood that the big names were going to sign in the first three or four days. But a lot was going on, especially with the Kawhi (Leonard) situation. It had a lot of us waiting. People in my position, just trying to find a spot to fill in those last couple roster spots ... it was hard."

July flips to August, which silently slides toward September. September arrives and roster spots are drying up and, still, not a peep for a 22-year-old forward/center 39 months removed from being a top-10 pick out of the University of Washington.

"I'd be lying," Chriss says, "if I didn't admit that I saw certain people signing and thought, ‘Damn, I can do the same thing if I was given an opportunity.' But I don't ever want to be that person who knocks somebody else's hustle. I wish the best for everybody because I want people to wish that for me."

Not until NBA Media Day, on Sept. 30, as the last of the league's teams were opening camp, did Chriss feel he could exhale. The Warriors offered a non-guaranteed contract. An invitation to join them in training camp. It was the best deal available, so he jumped on it.

Even the Warriors, in the midst of massive roster overhaul, weren't so sure he'd make it.

"I heard he was coming to camp, and I just thought, ‘Whatever.' Honestly, I didn't think anything of it," coach Steve Kerr says. "Every year, we bring guys into camp and there are five guys who are going to get cut. I just kind of assumed he's going to be a camp invite and we're probably going to cut him.

"But after the first day, I thought, ‘Oh, wait.'''

Chriss is 6-foot-9, 240 pounds. He has a 7-foot-1 wingspan and a 38-inch vertical leap. He still possessed the gifts that convinced the Phoenix Suns to send three players -- including Bogdan Bogdanovic -- and two future second-round draft picks to the Kings for the right to present Chriss with a two-year contract two weeks later. He signed, guaranteeing his first $6 million NBA dollars.

Three years later, Chriss is on his fourth team and carrying the baggage that comes with being abandoned by the Suns after two seasons, traded twice in less than six months -- from Phoenix to Houston, then Houston to Cleveland -- as well as serving an NBA-mandated one-game suspension for his part in an on-court scuffle with Serge Ibaka, who served three games.

He came to the Warriors knowing his career was at a crossroads, hoping it wouldn't die under a pile of back-page transactions, identifiable mostly by undertones of questionable character.

"It's people's perception," Chriss says. "I can be a loud, outspoken person when I'm playing and the complete opposite when I'm not. I'm chilling. I don't say much, except to my teammates. But I'm just expressive, and sometimes people take my competitiveness that for anger. As a competitor, when I'm going against somebody who doesn't want me to win, I take it personally. That's how I am.

"And I don't want to change. I just want to be able to channel it in a positive way."

That's what Kerr and his staff saw in the first workout. Veteran forward Draymond Green, a three-time All-Star who has a soft spot for fellow firebrands, saw the same attributes. The original gifts. Draymond went to Kerr and urged him to find a way to keep Chriss around.

The lifeline Chriss had grabbed days earlier was about to resuscitate his career.

He also realized he was running out of opportunities.

"I had to become an adult," Chriss says, taking blame for past mistakes. "Realizing that I had to leave childish acts in the past. I'll probably still have some lapses where there are signs of immaturity. But I'm continuing to grow. I'm growing up and I understand that I can't take this opportunity for granted."

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