On the day he learned he didn’t make his high school’s varsity team as a freshman, Bryn Forbes came home uncertain if he was tall or athletic enough to seriously pursue basketball.

The doubts flared up again when he didn’t crack his high school’s starting five as a sophomore, when he seldom got off the bench for his AAU team the following summer and when top college programs showed little interest in him by the end of his junior year.

“I could see him questioning himself at times and I’d always say to him, ‘You belong out there,'” said Bryn’s mother, Sue Forbes. “‘You’re supposed to be playing with these guys.’ You have to have somebody in the background who believes in you even when the rest of the world doesn’t. For him, that was usually me.”

A lack of confidence is no longer an issue for Forbes now that he is on the verge of completing an improbable ascent from going overlooked in high school to gaining a foothold in the NBA. After making a surprise push to earn one of the San Antonio Spurs’ final roster spots last season as an undrafted free agent, the late-blooming shooting guard has done all he can to solidify his place with the franchise this month with a sizzling Summer League performance.

Forbes has erupted for back-to-back 35-point games at the Las Vegas Summer League after leading the Utah Summer League in scoring last week at 21.3 points per game. What’s even more encouraging is that Forbes isn’t relying exclusively on his signature 3-point stroke to post those impressive numbers.

In addition to his 41.2 percent shooting from behind the arc, Forbes has displayed creativity off the dribble that wasn’t part of his arsenal in college. The former catch-and-shoot specialist got to the foul line 17 times in a victory over the 76ers on Sunday and has also shown improvement sinking floaters in the lane or finishing through contact at the rim.

A strong Summer League can only help Forbes stake his claim to a roster spot with San Antonio next season. The Spurs already have 12 players signed for next season and two of their three remaining roster spots could be earmarked for free-agent guards Jonathon Simmons and Manu Ginobili depending on if Ginobili postpones retirement another year.

Forbes’ $1.31 million 2017-18 salary won’t become guaranteed until Jan. 10. Spurs general manager R.C. Buford declined to offer assurance that Forbes is part of the franchise’s future plans, but he did acknowledge that the second-year guard has “put himself in a good position” with his steady improvement over the past year.

“From the first day Bryn was in our gym, it was easy to recognize his ability to shoot the ball, but he has invested in himself and bought into the effort of our development program,” Buford said. “He’s a long way from a finished product, but he continues to grow and put himself in a position to gain the confidence of his teammates and coaches.”

Forbes carving out a niche for himself in the NBA is a scenario few could have envisioned when he started high school a decade ago in Lansing, Mich. The slender, baby-faced sharpshooter stood just 5-foot-7 as a freshman and didn’t surpass 6 feet tall until the summer before his senior year.

Point guards can attract interest from Division I programs at that size if they’re quick enough, but Forbes played almost exclusively off ball for Sexton High School as an undersized shooting guard. One of his high school classmates was Iowa-bound point guard Anthony Clemmons. Another was slick-passing future Michigan State All-American Denzel Valentine. As a result, it became Forbes’ role to run off screens and knock down shots that Clemmons and Valentine created for him.

“He had to be a scorer for us,” former Sexton coach Carlton Valentine said. “When you’re a coach, you put guys in places where you can have success. There’s nothing personal about it. You put guys in places where you think they fit. That’s where he fit for us. He could shoot the three. He could shoot it mid-range. He could flat-out score.”

At first, college coaches treated Forbes as an afterthought because they feared he was too small to defend opposing shooting guards at the next level. The Big Ten coaches that pursued Clemmons and Valentine largely still ignored Forbes even after he sprouted to 6-foot-3 and led Sexton to a second straight state championship as a senior, but smaller Division I programs throughout the region began to take notice.

Story continues