INDIANAPOLIS – Pacers President Kevin Pritchard is sitting up there, sitting next to Malcolm Brogdon, and he’s beaming. He’s saying stuff about Brogdon that you might find hyperbolic, things you might even find silly, things like: “This is an epic day for the franchise.”

Like: “This is one of the best days in this franchise’s history.”

Like: “This is the day we pinch ourselves.”

Kevin Pritchard wasn’t being hyperbolic. Wasn’t being silly. Wasn’t talking entirely about basketball, either.

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This was an epic day for the franchise. Let me show you why.

'The better I do, the more people are helped'

The kids weren’t just skinny. They were emaciated, starving, dying. They were standing outside an orphanage in Ghana, staring at the buses going by, hoping someone, anyone, would share a bite to eat, a sip to drink.

Malcolm Brogdon was on that bus. He was 9. He shared his lunch.

So did the rest of his family, understand. A young man like Malcolm Brogdon, he doesn’t just appear. It takes the right grandparents, the right parents, the right older brothers. It takes a village to raise a child like this.

Or in Brogdon’s case, two villages.

One was in Ghana, the other in the southeastern African country of Malawi. That was another trip the Brogdon family took when he was a kid, a few years after Ghana, because Malcolm’s parents wanted their kids to see the larger world outside suburban Atlanta. Malcolm’s dad, Mitchell, is a former trial judge who has become a civil court mediator. His mom, Jann Adams, is a vice president at Morehouse College who earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from IU. One of Malcolm’s grandparents was a church bishop, another an elementary school principal. His brothers are attorneys.

As for Malcolm Brogdon, a 6-5 guard coming off one of the single greatest shooting seasons in NBA history, he could have gone to Harvard. Could have gone anywhere, with his grades coming out of Greater Atlanta Christian School. He chose Virginia for its combination of powerhouse basketball and powerhouse academics.

It was after Ghana and Malawi, where he saw starving children searching the ground for kernels of rice, that Brogdon made a decision.

“My passion would be to help people in third-world communities,” he says. “To do that, I had to have the resources.”

He was 12.

Brogdon is telling that story Monday, putting us with him on a bus in Africa, then bringing us back to the business at hand: Professional basketball.

“Since then,” Brogdon continues, referring to his trips to Ghana and Malawi, “the dream has been to play in the NBA, have a great career. The better this team does, the better I do, the more people are helped.”

This is the newest professional athlete in Indianapolis. Go ahead, Pacers fans: Pinch yourselves.

Historically great shooter, too

OK, fine. The basketball.

Malcolm Brogdon is, as I said earlier, coming off one of the single greatest shooting seasons in NBA annals. That’s not me talking; that’s the statistics.

In the history of this league, just eight players have taken enough shots to qualify for – and achieve – the holy grail of shooting, what’s called a 50-40-90 season: 50 percent from the floor overall, 40 percent on 3-pointers, 90 percent from the line. Those eight players include Larry Bird and Reggie Miller, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry. It includes Mark Price, John Stockton, Dirk Nowitzki. That’s seven.

Malcolm Brogdon is No. 8.

It was last season, when Brogdon shot 50.5 percent from the floor, 42.8 percent on 3-pointers, 92.8 percent from the line. Playing on a balanced team featuring league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo (27.7 ppg), All-Star Khris Middleton (18.3 ppg) and Eric Bledsoe (15.9 ppg), Brogdon averaged just 11.7 shots per game – less than Bojan Bogdanovic (13.0) attempted last season for the Pacers – to post a relatively humble scoring average of 15.6 ppg.

But the shooting is gaudy, and the defense is outstanding as well. Brogdon isn’t a big steals guy – he averaged 0.7 steals per game last season – but he’s a terrific defender nonetheless, smart and physical at 6-5 and 230 pounds. As a senior at Virginia, league coaches voted him the ACC Defensive Player of the Year.

All of that is why the Pacers see Brogdon (age 26) and Victor Oladipo (27), a pair of combo guards in a league veering toward position-less basketball, as their backcourt of the future. Who’s the point guard? Neither. Both. Doesn’t really matter, does it? Each can handle the ball. Each can create for others. Each can shoot.

But they are not equals. Not in this city. Again: That’s not me talking. Not the statistics, either. This time, it’s Brogdon.

“This is his team, his franchise,” Brogdon says of Oladipo. “I want to help Victor be an All-Star every year – be a superstar. That’s important to me.”

But that’s just basketball. Other things are important to Malcolm Brogdon, too.

Finally: Great player chooses the Pacers

There’s a photo of Brogdon crouching next to a pool of fetid water, the only water the village he’s visiting can access. He has just filled a bottle with water. It’s yellow.

In October, joining forces with former Virginia football star Chris Long’s “Waterboys” initiative, Brogdon launched Hoops2o, a non-profit with the 2018-19 season goal of raising $225,000 to build wells in eastern Africa. That’s a specific dollar amount for a specific reason: Each well costs $45,000, and can serve up to 7,500 people. Brogdon and the four NBA players he recruited to help – his starting five, he calls it – wanted to build five wells. That would serve 37,500 people.

They raised more than $256,000, with fans able to participate on the Hoops2o website (waterboys.org/hoops2o).

Brogdon went back to eastern Africa after the NBA season. That’s where he is holding the bottle of yellow water. It’s also where he was caught in another photo. Happier, this one: Brogdon, smiling in front of a group of kids. Behind him, math facts are scrawled on a concrete wall. Multiplication tables, it looks like. He’s bringing water and education to people literally dying for both.

This is no ordinary person the Pacers just signed. He doesn’t do Twitter, and shut down his Instagram account last season because he was tired of the nonsense. He recognizes the power of social media, though, and says he will bring back his Instagram account this season to promote his Hoops2o project.

“I might have someone else run it for me,” he says. “I don’t really like seeing what’s going on with everybody else.”

Not normal, this guy. In a league where players dream and even scheme their way to the coasts – to Miami, to California, to New York – Brogdon has dreamed of playing for the Indiana Pacers since before the 2016 draft. After meeting with the Pacers at the 2016 NBA Draft Combine, Brogdon told anyone who’d listen: That was his team. Some of the names have changed, but not entirely. Nate McMillan had just replaced Frank Vogel as coach. Pritchard was working alongside then-President Larry Bird.

The ethos then is the same as the ethos now – teamwork, hard work and humility – which is why Brogdon was saying this on Monday, when he was introduced as the newest Indiana Pacer:

“I’m as happy now as I’ve ever been in my basketball career.”

Next to Brogdon, Kevin Pritchard is beaming. So is McMillan, and McMillan isn’t normally the beaming type. While Pritchard tends to wear his emotions on his sleeve, McMillan covers his with a thick coat of old-school seriousness.

The Pacers had identified Brogdon as their No. 1 offseason target, but thought they had almost no shot – “a 10 percent chance,” Pritchard estimates – until owner Herb Simon changed the tenor of the talks by calling his Bucks counterpart with a personal plea. On the first day of free agency, June 30, the Pacers brass was on a conference call when Pritchard broke the news: We’re getting Malcolm Brogdon.

“I think I started screaming,” McMillan says.

“He did,” confirms Pritchard. “That was the most excited I’ve seen him in 10 years. I think he said ‘really?’ 10 times in a row. Herb was on the call, too. (Nate) kept going: ‘Really? Really?’”

The Pacers are getting a great young player, one who wants to be here, to serve Oladipo and Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis. And they are getting a great young man, who answers this way when I ask Brogdon why, in a league where great players choose to go elsewhere, he keeps choosing Indianapolis:

“Indiana is an original basketball state,” he says. “I know people here love basketball as much as any city, and this team is really embraced in this community. I’m excited to get to be part of it, get to know it better, understand the needs so I can help – make an impact.”

In Milwaukee, they had a nickname for Brogdon: “The President.” The story I’m about to tell you isn’t the genesis of that nickname, just a confirmation. It comes from Craig Robinson, the Bucks’ vice president of player personnel during Brogdon’s rookie season, a man who would know a little on the topic – his sister is Michelle Obama – and who once said: “I want to be Malcolm Brogdon’s campaign manager when he runs for President.”

The Pacers’ starting point guard, for President?

Doesn’t sound so silly. Doesn’t sound silly at all.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.