OAKLAND, Calif. — Alfonzo McKinnie was not exactly getting rich playing basketball for Rayos de Hermosillo in Mexico’s top league, but his contract did include one perk: 40 percent off wings at a sports bar not far from the arena. So McKinnie would plant himself in front of a big-screen TV with a plate of wings, and watch the Golden State Warriors compete in the N.B.A. playoffs without him, which was understandable since the Warriors had never heard of him.

It was the spring of 2016, and the glamour of big-time basketball felt very far away.

“I watched every game,” McKinnie said. “I probably ate everything off that menu.”

At the time, McKinnie was fresh off an eight-month stretch playing for one of the worst teams in Luxembourg’s second division — Luxembourg’s second division! — so Mexico was a step up. For an unsung forward with a surgically repaired knee who was determined to sustain his dream of reaching the N.B.A., at least he was back on the same continent.

“I would keep telling myself, ‘Yo, I have to get under the bright lights,’ ” McKinnie said. “I just felt like that was where I wanted to be in life, and that was where I belonged.”