Every time Ingles lost, he would get angry, garnering a similar outburst when he could not nail something in practice.

“If he could not do something, he would get frustrated very quickly. I remember some of the sessions that we did he would kick a ball that hard, because he could not control his emotions when things were not going his way.

“I tried to educate him and say, ‘mate, you have to let that go, you cannot kick a ball every time something does not go right’.”

The pair still joke about the relentlessness of the sessions today, the last words out of Heal’s mouth when they reunite invariably some form of, ‘Joe, hold your follow-through’. Heal, now a coach, also commentates on NBL games for FOX Sports Australia, and he has one particularly loyal viewer tuning in from Salt Lake City.

“I will be getting texts through from Joe as I am commentating and it’s always banter. I run a segment out here where I have a three-point shooting contest against the current NBL players and do an interview at the same time. Joe will often send me messages saying, ‘mate, you would never beat me now’.”

“It’s a really easy reply - 'mate, you have never beaten me, and you cannot change that’."

Ingles’s continued love for the NBL is one of the many examples of how passionate he is about basketball, and how he remains grounded and connected with those who helped him get this far.

“He just doesn’t strike you as the sort of guy who is going to go out and buy a Lamborghini”, Walding says. “He would be happy with his old beat-up Ford. He has not accepted fame, and good on him.”

Whatever he is driving, it often takes Ingles back to his roots. When Clarke’s Saint Mary’s teams play at BYU in Utah, depending on Ingles’s schedule he will still get in his car and head to the game.

“I think that speaks volumes about him”, Clarke says. “He does not have to do that, but when he can he will.”

Quite beautifully, Ingles was back playing for Clarke at the 2012 Olympics in London when his former coach was an assistant under Brett Brown, who now tells Ben Simmons what to do for the Philadelphia 76ers. During the London Games, Ingles was also back playing alongside Newley, the latter unsigned at club level and the former unhappy with his place on the depth chart in Barcelona.

“Head coach Xavier Pascual was a really good coach, but he also had his guys who he relied more on”, says Wallace, Ingles's Barcelona team mate at the time. “We had Juan Carlos Navarro, Pete Mickeal, Erazem Lorbek. I think Joe was better, more talented, but those guys were just veterans.”

“Despite the limited time, you could also say Barcelona put him on the radar”, Newley adds.

The 2012 Olympics did that too, to a bigger degree.

“I think Joe realised in London that if he plays well, there may be some other things at the end of it”, Clarke says.

Newley says it was never a conversation between players to try and perform better against NBA stars at the Games, and although Ingles had a stand-out game in a loss against the USA in the quarter-finals - 19 points, 8 rebounds and 6 assists in 40 minutes against the likes of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant - it was the final play of their fifth group game against Russia that opened his eyes to Ingles’s talent once again.

The Boomers were down one point with just over four seconds remaining, and Brown had drawn up an inbounds play involving three AIS alumni. Ingles received the ball in the right corner, and was waiting for Dellavedova to set a screen for Patty Mills at the top of the key. Mills got separation above the three-point line and Ingles, with his weaker left hand, flung a sharp and accurate one-handed pass to one of his closest friends while at the Institute, who hit a three to win the game.

“To see Joe execute that, I thought, ‘yeah, he is a next-level player’”, Newley says.

“I am sure the London Olympics was when the NBA started to show genuine interest”, Clarke adds.

As it were, Ingles remained with Barcelona for a third and final year.

“Joe and I came in as backups”, Wallace says. “If you play one or two bad games, the coach’s confidence in you takes much more of a dip over there, and you are held more accountable by stats.

“Joe is seven inches taller and stronger than Navarro, and I think he would probably win one-on-one. But Navarro was incredible. All of our players on Barcelona were really good. Practice time was invaluable to Joe, but that is why it was hard to build opportunities and confidence.”

Wallace and Ingles, along with Brazilian Marcelinho Huertas, called themselves the ‘L Team’, their favourite spot to eat being a sushi restaurant called Parco that they would dine at on Fridays. “If there are 14 lunch and dinners in a week, we would eat 10 of those together”, Wallace says.

Ingles, who could never fully build his confidence or have the influence on teammates in Barcelona that he has since shown in Utah, nevertheless had the ultimate strong finish while playing his last game for the club in a game five playoff loss to rivals Real Madrid.

“He had something like 28 points, shooting lights out, and it was kind of a ‘screw you for not playing me’ game”, Wallace says. “That is a great representation of Joe. He had an opportunity, had fought through adversity, and when he got his chance he just said, ‘hey, this is me’.

“He kind of told Barcelona that they had made a mistake by not playing him more.”

Leaving the low minutes and sushi behind, Ingles concluded what would be his last stop in Europe in the best possible way by winning a EuroLeague title with Maccabi Tel Aviv in 2014. Later that year, he had his close call with the Clippers, being the last cut in preseason, before the Jazz signed him.

He had finally made it to the NBA.

Kyle Goon, who covers the Jazz for the Salt Lake Tribune, sees first-hand Ingles's comfort at the highest level. And it starts with making the opposition uncomfortable. Ingles, Goon says, “gets in opponent’s craws in this incredibly annoying and personal way. One of his attributes that you notice is he touches people. He is very touch-oriented.”

“He can get under people’s skin”, Clarke adds, “but it’s not in an overt way.”

“What annoys people more than most is he does not hold onto it, and he can laugh at you. Other people hold onto it. I don’t know whether he got that at the AIS, but it was certainly something we always coached; next job, next play.”

Ingles, during the Jazz’s playoff series with the Clippers in 2017, drained a three over DeAndre Jordan and spent the next few seconds staring down one of the more physically impressive players in the league.

“It was this weird image of the dad-looking Joe Ingles with the balding hair nailing the three in the face of Jordan, and then taunting the dude”, KSL.com’s Andy Larsen says. “It’s something I will never forget as a reporter.”

Ingles’s lack of fear is another trait that stacks up well against the awkward-looking image created for him. “He is competitive and not scared of playing anybody”, Dellavedova says.

It stems from a special confidence, one that leads to results you would perhaps not expect from someone who does not look or act like a prototypical NBA player.

“I never saw him put down a decent dunk”, Goriss chuckles. “I used to call him lazy. He never wanted to do it. The AIS guys used to tease him that he wasn’t a flashy dunker. Even in warm-ups, I don’t think he would throw down a dunk; he would just do the normal lay-ups and shoot threes. He did not want to waste too much energy.”

“His heart was always in the right place”, Heal says. “He did not disrupt other people or thought he was better than he was. He was just that lovable larrikin.”

It remains a big part of his life today, one that is centred around his twin daughters, Jacob and Milla, and wife Renae, who feature very regularly on his Instagram feed. Ingles was in Melbourne to witness the birth of his ‘Twingles’ in July of 2016, and 36 hours later was on a flight to South America for the Rio Olympics.

“The family pictures show who he is”, Maker says, as does his approach with Dante Exum, who some believe was a factor in the Jazz originally signing Ingles so as to nurture yet another AIS-turned-NBA starlet.

Exum’s young career has been ravaged by injuries and when he sustained yet another one at the beginning of this past season, Ingles welcomed him into his family home while his teammate waited for his family to arrive from Australia. By now, everyone has seen the picture of a young Exum wearing an Ingles Dragons jersey, his elder statesman at one point in time his favourite player, and while the latter will never let him forget it, when things get serious, he cares more than most.

One year after the London Olympics, Steve Walding walked into King O’Malley’s Irish pub in Canberra expecting nothing more than a quiet pint. Unlikely as it was, he soon bumped right into Ingles, Dellavedova, Dave Andersen and Newley - guys he taught - sharing beers and banter around a table.

“All Boomers, all Lake Ginninderra boys”, Walding says proudly. The Australian team had just finished their last day of camp and were winding down. At this stage, Ingles had not yet cracked the NBA, and Andrew Bogut was the player carrying the flag for Australia.

“They were all joking around and talking about Bogut and how much money he was earning. Joe was saying, ‘Bogut is in another league, he has got money that we can only dream about’.”

Four years later, Ingles signed a four-year, $52m deal with the Jazz.

The first year of that deal was this past season, one the Jazz warmed up for with an exhibition game against the NBL’s Sydney Kings. It was to be the beginning of Ingles’s best season as an NBA player, one in which he averaged 11.5 points - his first double digit campaign in the US - 4.2 rebounds, 4.8 assists and a clinical 44% from three.

What better way than to start it against a team from Australia. And on the Kings and making the trip? None other than Brad Newley.

Once settled in Salt Lake, Newley called Ingles and asked if he could pick him up from his hotel.

“It was basically the same old same old. He was wearing his Chuck Taylor’s, his jeans and his black hat which he always wears”, Newley says.

Same style, maybe, but the roles had reversed. Ingles was driving Newley in his car, back to his house, and they were not heading for the drive-through.

The biggest sign of how much life had changed; Ingles’s wife Renae cooked steak and fresh vegetables, putting a bow on their fast food days.

The Aussies shot the breeze until midnight, reminiscing about the special and comical moments that had delivered them to this point in time. Newley was not complaining that the food had changed but better still, Joe Ingles, having proven his worth as a basketball player, looked and remained the same.

Except he wasn't. The awkward-looking underdog was now in the NBA.