LAS VEGAS — As Mike James orders his breakfast in mid-July at The Country Club at the Wynn Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, his agent, Neal Rosenshein, politely asks the 6-1 point guard a peculiar question.

“Have you had any water to drink this morning?”

James answers in the affirmative before ordering orange juice an hour before he heads off to practice with the Suns at Summer League. Wondering where the source of such an inquiry would come from, I ask the pair if water consumption is something of a running joke between the two, who have been in a working relationship in the five years since James graduated from Lamar in 2012. But it’s not a joke. It’s a very real question from an agent who cares about the health of his client.

You see, James is not a fan of water.

“If it doesn’t taste good, it’s not good for you,” James says with a smile — one where you can’t quite tell immediately if he’s serious or joking — in regard to the substance that accounts for something like 60 percent of the human body. Instead, when thirsty, his habits have always been to replenish with Gatorade, or the aforementioned juice he ordered at the Wynn.

But over the last few months, James has been educated on the importance of water to his body’s functions, and he is trying to incorporate it into his diet. It’s just one eccentricity of many, just one change in a life rife with constant turnover over the last decade.

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James’ path to the NBA is hard to comprehend on the surface. In fact, over the last decade, the soon-to-be 27-year-old rookie has never spent more than two consecutive years in a single place, all while grinding his way into the league as an undersized offensive dynamo. He’s gone from JUCO, to low-major, to Croatia, to Spain, to Greece.

And after playing in the Euroleague each of the last three years, James has signed a two-way contract with the Suns to try and reach his ultimate goal: the NBA. On the surface for those educated in the economics of basketball, that might seem like a strange choice. The product of Portland, Ore., had offers of over a million dollars per year from teams in Italy, Spain and China. He’s finally established himself as a tried-and-true commodity overseas. Why risk that to take what amounts to about a quarter-million dollar contract in the NBA this season?

“I wanted just to stay close to home,” James said. “With the way the money is set up in the NBA now, if I play well I think my ceiling is higher in the NBA. But just to be home and not have to go overseas for so long is just a better opportunity for me.”

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For James, it’s easy to see why this opportunity should intrigue him. First and foremost, unlike most two-way players, the Suns have no intention of sending James down to the G-League at any point. That essentially means he’s set up on a 45-day contract with the team worth approximately $225,000. In that vein, this is a make-good deal. And consistently, that’s the situation where James has made headway in his career — whether he realizes it or not.

“Everyone else says I bet on myself more than I do,” James said. “Mostly, I’m just confident and feel like I can play wherever I go. So I guess you can say (I bet on myself).”

If he plays well and earns his spot, the Suns will have every incentive to convert his two-way deal into a standard player contract, and he’ll be well on his way to earning that big payday he mentioned. Plus, Phoenix is in the midst of a youth movement, with high-level past lottery picks like Devin Booker, Dragan Bender and Marquese Chriss. Despite his rookie status, James — who the Suns have been in contact with over the last three years after a Summer League outing in 2015 — fits perfectly into their rebuild as a veteran presence at the point that can both score and facilitate.

More importantly, though, James should have every opportunity to earn that spot in Phoenix. Starting point guard Eric Bledsoe is perpetually rumored to be on the trade block. Backup point guard Tyler Ulis is expected to be ready for the start of the season, but he is coming off surgery in the early summer. Brandon Knight tore his ACL in July, and will miss the entire 2017-18 season.

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Sure, Phoenix is also always rumored to be the landing spot for point guards on the trade block. But as the roster currently stands, there’s a major chance for James to establish himself in the NBA. And if his performance doesn’t materialize after his 45 days on the roster, he’ll likely be free to take his chance elsewhere.

If it would come to that, James’ agents feel confident that he can get a seven-figure payday overseas midway through the NBA season given the offers they had on the table before he signed. The math for them doesn’t measure out as much of a risk for him to take a two-way contract. If it was an expected value equation, they believe the upside of the NBA paired with what they believe to be the lack of downside in European offers makes this a smart play despite leaving guaranteed money on the table.

The fact that James is even in this position to take a chance on passing up a seven-figure payday to try and earn an eight-figure one is remarkable in and of itself. The undersized point guard was only recruited by local Division III schools in the Portland area coming out of high school. But one day, he got lucky and was spotted.

“This is a true story,” James says for emphasis. “I went to an open gym with my best friend in high school who was going to Eastern Arizona. And his coach ended up being there. After we finished up playing, the coach offered me a scholarship. So I said yes. I was just trying to find some place to go and play basketball and go to school for free.”

James led Eastern Arizona in scoring both years and became one of the top-20 JUCO players in the country after his sophomore year in 2010. But despite a lot of interest from high-level schools, his play wasn't enough to create actual scholarship opportunities. Looking back, James points to the fact that he was seen as a hot-head.

“Everyone thought I was a head case because I would talk trash to the other team,” James said. “It’s funny now looking back at that because now, where I’m at now, they kind of want you to do that. But that’s just how I play basketball.”

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That propensity to get into it with opposing teams ended up leading James deep into the recruiting process without any offers. Then Lamar coach Steve Roccaforte (now the associate head coach at Virginia Tech) asked one of his assistants to find him the best scoring point guard at the junior college level. When the assistant came back with James’ name, Roccaforte set up a phone call with James to schedule a visit to the school. Things escalated quickly from there.

“I asked Mike how his recruiting was going, and he said that it wasn’t really going all that good,” Roccaforte said. “I asked why not. He said he had a lot of people talking to him, setting up visits and then backing out, this and that, you know. He said that he was ready to get it over with and figure out where he was going. So I said to him that’s why I was calling. I told him I was the head coach, wanted to set up a visit, bring him on out, and that if he liked it I wanted to sign him.

“Mike then just asked me a question. He said, ‘you’re the head coach at a Division I school. Are you offering me?’ I told him yes. He said ‘send the papers over and I’ll sign.’ I was like, ‘Mike, you’re from Portland, you’re in Arizona right now, you sure you don’t want to visit campus in Texas?’ He said ‘coach, I’ll see the campus when I get there, that’s good enough for me.’ So he gives me the fax number, we hang up, I go back to my assistant after this 10-minute phone conversation and tell him to send off the scholarship papers. He signed them and sent them back. It really was (unbelievable).”

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Things continued to go according to plan for James. He scored 52 points in 28 minutes in his eighth college game. In his senior year, he was named the All-Southland Conference team and won MVP of the conference tournament as he led Lamar to its first NCAA Tournament bid in over a decade.

From there, he went on to sign in Croatia for KK Zagreb, where he was third in the league in scoring before moving to Israel to finish the season. After that, he went to Italy’s lower division for a year, then back up to Greece to play for Kolossos in the top division. That’s where his trajectory began to skyrocket.

After leading Greece’s top division in scoring over two months, Baskonia in the Spanish ACB and Euroleague bought out his contract midseason to bring him to the continent’s highest level. Following two years there, he went back to Greece in 2016, except this time playing for European power Panathinaikos. This past year, he established himself as one of the best point guards in Europe, averaging over 13 points per game in Euroleague — good enough for the top 10 in the competition despite only playing 22 minutes per game.

For those counting at home, that’s two colleges, six teams and five countries overseas in just under a decade. When taking that into mind, it’s easy to see why James would value taking the chance to stay in the United States and earn his way into the NBA. Plus, if it doesn’t work out (and James stays healthy), his team believes they can get him a lucrative Euroleague opportunity midseason again, just as they proved nearly three years ago.

But that’s getting ahead of things. For now, James is just focused on making the Suns better, and getting to that first official contract. To do that, he’ll need to be a veteran on a team laden with young players.

One of those players is Josh Jackson. Jackson’s road to the NBA was as simple. He went from high school to Kansas straight to the NBA all within the course of a couple of years. As James and his agents walk into The Country Club, they spot Jackson in the corner of the restaurant. James goes up to Jackson and briefly greets his new teammate before sitting down for breakfast himself.

It may have taken James nearly five times as long as it takes many rookies, but he’s finally got a seat at the biggest table in the basketball world.