Gino Littles blamed it on the basketball.

All summer he worked on his jump shot. He practiced until his game’s greatest weakness felt like a strength. But now it was two days before the biggest tryout of his life and shot after shot rattled off the rim.

It had to be the ball. His trainer, August Mendes, brought a new NBA-style ball to their Friday morning workout. Its leather still shined. After a few shots, Gino decided it was too slick. He switched to his own well-worn ball, planted his feet and flicked up a jumper. It fell short.

“Value your shot,” Mendes told him. He gestured around his apartment complex’s half-sized gym, pointing at competition that wasn’t there. “A lot of these guys, they don’t value their shot. Value yours.”

Gino’s shot was two days away, at an open tryout with the NBA G League’s Northern Arizona Suns. It was Gino's first step toward winning a spot in the NBA's minor league and earning the title he had chased all his life: Professional basketball player.

"I'm going to be a pro," he said. "This is what I'm going to do."

Young Gino had dreamed of the NBA. But for 22-year-old Gino, the dream would start far from that glory, in a small arena in Prescott Valley that rarely drew more than 2,000 fans. The G League — called the D-League until Gatorade bought the rights — is basketball's second division, filled with prospects who aren't yet ready for the NBA and mid-career veterans who never will be. Salaries start at $35,000, plus housing and health insurance. Most players hope to move on quickly. A rare few reach an NBA roster.

Gino didn't plan to stay long. He had scheduled the first few years of his career: Sign a contract. Earn a chunk of playing time. Prove himself. Make an NBA Summer League roster. Jump to the NBA, or sign for more money overseas. Retire by 26.

"Everybody wants to go to the NBA," he said. "But then as you get older, you realize it’s a little unrealistic."

Still, he kept playing, because the game had given him everything.His earliest memory was set in an NBA arena, sitting in the stands as his dad coached the Denver Nuggets. Gino joined his first league at 5 years old. Basketball became his identity. His friends knew him as Gino, the basketball player. He had leveraged his potential career into a brand, with sponsorships from a sports drink and a coding company. His Instagram account had more than 25,000 followers.

Without basketball, a small part of him worried, all that could go away.

“If I didn’t play basketball, would people show me as much love?” he said. “It’d be interesting. It’d be interesting to see how many people…”

His voice trailed off.

“I don’t do it for that.”

He did it partly because few others believed he could. Gino was a skinny 6-foot-1 guard with a shaky shot and 107 games of small-college experience. He walked on at the University of Texas-San Antonio and played his way into a scholarship. Then he transferred closer to home, playing his final year at Northern Arizona University, where NBA scouts never looked.

So it made sense when he went undrafted. But he believed there was a contract out there somewhere. His agent thought a Canadian team, a club in up Windsor, was about to make an offer.

It all started with his first tryout since high school, on a Sunday in September.

“Whatever moments you get right here, it’s a rare opportunity that not many people get,” Mendes said during a break in their workout. “You’ve got to capture it.”

“Yes, sir,” Gino replied. He ran to the 3-point line and nodded at Mendes, who threw a chest pass into his waiting hands. Gino uncoiled his body and flicked his wrist. The shot went in. So did the next. Gino picked up speed. “Can’t miss,” he yelled at himself. “Can’t miss.”

After the last shot fell through, Gino jogged to the baseline. He crumpled against a wall and slid to the floor. Sweat streaked down the glass wall.

“It’s ready,” Mendes said. “You have one great day Sunday, it’s on.”

Searching for a basketball home

Later that day, Ryan Okwudibonye strolled past security and into the basement of downtown Phoenix’s Talking Stick Resort Arena, looking for a quiet place to talk. Staffers smiled as he passed. Ryan had spent much of the past few months in this building, playing on the male practice squad for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury. Lately, it was the closest he could get to real game action.

He jogged down a flight of stairs and turned down a dark hallway, past the Suns' main gym and the roadies building a stage for that night's Journey concert. He was almost there. Then a security guard called after him.

“Where are you going?” the guard asked.

“The practice court,” Ryan said, pointing down the hallway. He explained that he helped the Mercury in practice.

“The season ended yesterday,” the guard said. The Mercury didn't need him anymore.

So Ryan ducked into an elevator and headed outside, unsure where to go next.

He had spent his entire adult life searching for a basketball home, chasing open roster spots to three colleges and three countries. Basketball was all he wanted to do, but his parents were growing uncertain of his path. They had watched him bounce among a junior college in New Mexico, two schools in California and a handful of low-level clubs he found through Facebook: The second-division Spanish team that played in cities Ryan couldn’t pronounce, the Chinese tour that drove him around Hunan Province like a knockoff Harlem Globetrotter and the Moroccan club that wanted him for only one tournament.

It was enough for Ryan to call himself a pro. He took pride in that. But he was 26 years old, without a stable life or a steady home. He worried that he'd never reach his potential.

"I had to learn the hard way," he said. He was a thick 6-foot-8, but his career hadn't come with the kind of guidance that molded his teammates into NBA players. Foreign coaches didn't know how to maximize his offensive game. He grew frustrated playing with teammates who didn't speak his language. The money wasn't as good as he'd heard.

Now the thought of going back overseas exhausted him: Another one year contract, another country that wasn't home, another delay in the inevitable end of his career. He decided he'd rather not play at all than play in another set of empty foreign gyms.

He considered the G League — the tryout — his last chance.

“I don’t have a backup plan right now,” he said. “It’s a one-shot deal for me.”

But he felt few nerves as he awakened Sunday morning and started the two-hour drive to Prescott Valley. A friend rode with him. Ryan wanted to get there early, making sure he had time to warm up, but bad directions and a last-minute dash to print his paperwork erased the cushion. By the time he walked into the gym, it was already after 9 a.m. The Suns' coaches were introducing themselves to Ryan's competition.

The tryout started without him.

'One man down'

Bret Burchard stood at center court and scanned the floor. Thirty-two men stared back at him, listening as he laid out the long odds of their situation.

The Suns' tryout roster was filled with first and last chances: Among the young men convinced they’d been overlooked by basketball’s worldwide scouting system sat alongside at least one middle-aged man who had some free time and a funny idea. The process made them all equal.

Burchard had seven hours to sort them out.

Each G League team could bring up to four players from local tryouts to its preseason training camp. Burchard planned to use all four slots. Those players would then have to prove themselves again, competing for what might be a single spot on the final roster.

Tryout players rarely make the squad, but it does happen. Two years ago, the Suns discovered a guard named Josh Gray. Last year, he reached the NBA.

Talent wouldn’t be enough. The day’s best player might not make it. Burchard needed players who fit the system he was trying to build. He wanted guards who could shoot. Big men who played defense and loved to attack the rim. Guys who played so hard that his fiancée, a hockey fan who once told him basketball players were too soft, couldn’t help but be entertained.

“My goal for this year,” he told the group, “is to build a team that she enjoys watching play.”

The best way to find that team, he believed, was to play as much as possible. He split the players into four randomized teams and sent them to separate corners of the empty gym. An assistant reset the scoreboard, which all morning had read, NAZ Suns 0, Losers 0. The first two teams exchanged names and fist bumps. “Here we go,” Burchard said. He blew a whistle, an assistant tossed a jump ball, and so began the most important game of everybody’s career.

Gino drew attention from his first minutes on the floor. As a pass-first point guard, the game was in his hands. He squatted low on defense and barked encouragement to teammates he'd never met. After each good play, he scanned the sideline, making sure a coach had seen him.

“Yes, Gino!” Burchard yelled after watching him cut into the lane and find an open teammate. “Perfect, Gino.”

Behind him, Suns executives scribbled notes and traded whispers, making quick-trigger evaluations. Some could be crossed off almost immediately. Gone was the stout middle-aged man whose wife watched from the stands. They already knew the tryout veteran who had come each of the past four years. They chuckled at the shaggy-haired guy in worn-out Chuck Taylors who brought along his entire family. In the game’s first 10 minutes, he threw up twice. Then he quit.

Ryan leaned against a wall and watched him walk away.

"One man down," he said.

On the court, Ryan couldn't feel comfortable. He wanted to establish himself as a team-first big man, but everybody knew it was easier to stand out if they scored in bunches. Every possession ended with one player shooting, and at least one more disappointed it wasn't their turn.

The ball rarely came Ryan's way.

“I just didn’t get to do nothing,” he told his friend during a break.

Then he got his chance. A few minutes into the second half, as Ryan lagged at half-court, not bothering to play defense, the ball bounced to him. He was wide open. Nothing between him and the basket. He took a single dribble, then slowed down, as if he knew everybody was watching. He knew it could be his highlight. He took two dribbles and jumped off two feet and cocked the ball behind his head, ready to power through the brief moment of brilliance that would make a coach circle his name.

He missed.

The ball caromed back over Ryan’s head.

At the next whistle, an assistant coach subbed him out.

Time to make the cuts

Other than the blown dunk, Ryan thought he played well. He hustled as much as he could and secured his share of rebounds. He was pretty sure his team won. Hopefully, that was enough to make the coaches recognize him at the second tryout, in Phoenix, where so many players signed up that the line spilled out the door.

“Quick show of hands,” Burchard said once everybody had checked in. They sat in the Suns’ practice gym, surrounded by Mercury championship banners and oversized photos of NBA legends. “How many of you played pro basketball last year?”

Ryan held his hand high. About 15 other players raised theirs.

Gino just clutched his knees and stared at his shoes.

Everything about the Phoenix tryout was more intense than the one before. Maybe it was the NBA arena, or maybe it was the sheer number of players. Almost 100 showed up. Most wore some sort of team-branded gear, walking resumes for the pinnacles of their basketball careers. Among them flailed a few players who "ruined the game," as general manager Louis Lehman described it. They didn't stand a chance. There was no point keeping them around.

“This is the tough part of the day,” Lehman said after two games and a lunch break. His hands fidgeted in his pockets. “We’ve got to make some cuts.”

In a careful monotone, Lehman read a list of numbers, announcing who had earned the right to stay. Ryan and Gino were among them were among the first numbers called.

A few dozen others never heard theirs. They pulled off their shoes, grabbed their bags and walked out, toward the Suns assistant standing by the door. As each man trudged past, he crossed off their name and collected their sweaty jersey. "Thank you," he said.

Then he dropped their jersey into a trash bag.

Soon, the front office staff would cram into a whiteboard-walled office in the guts of the arena. They would fill the walls with names and debate the merits of young men’s dreams.

“There’s quite a few of you guys that are capable of playing in this league,” Lehman said after the tryout ended. “Does that mean we take you to camp? Maybe not.”

Their decisions weren’t due for two more weeks. Whoever earned an invitation to camp would hear from the team by then, Lehman promised. But there wouldn't be time to call everybody else.

Once the deadline passed, those who didn't make it would have to figure it out on their own.

Maybe try Canada...

Gino swore he was in.

He played as well as he could. A couple of shots rimmed out, but otherwise, his jumper held up. His teams won almost every game. Burchard shook his hand. In an interview, the coach called Gino “someone I was excited about bringing to camp.”

But the Suns didn’t need him.

It was a matter of circumstance. The team already had three point guards, and it didn't need another. He was one of the last players cast aside.

“I thought, like, for sure I should be good,” Gino said a few hours after his agent broke the news. “That’s wild to me.”

His agent started searching for other G League openings and reminded Gino that they still had Canada. The team in Windsor was finalizing its offer.

Gino hesitated to sign. Playing abroad was never part of the plan.

But he remembered the missteps of an old friend, a talented player who once had contract offers from two foreign clubs. He wanted to play only in the G League. So he turned down both offers, and the season started without him, and he never found another offer.

Now he sells cars.

So, Gino thought, maybe Canada didn’t sound so bad.

...or somewhere overseas

Ryan refused to believe it. For three weeks he had waited, comfortable in his assumption that he was the best big man at the tryout, shutting out friends and family because he wanted to wait until he could share good news.

But now the deadline had passed, and an extra week after that, and the Suns still hadn’t called.

“I just don’t know what’s going on,” Ryan said. “I just want some clarity, so I can move on with my life.”

Can you provide me some clarity? he texted a Suns employee.

Maybe something had gone wrong. A call didn’t come through, or the deadline was delayed. He tore through the team’s website, looking for a press release or a photo. Proof that somebody else had made it, and he had not.

Unfortunately, the employee replied, you were not selected.

Ryan couldn’t square the result. How could that be it? How could his career end like that, with a one-line text and no explanation? His mind filled with impossible questions. Maybe he should've stayed longer in the gym, or tried to bond with the coaches, or worked more to blend his game into the Suns' style. Was he too old? Too quiet? Just not good enough?

And what was he supposed to do now?

"I don't know," he said. It was a future he'd never considered. Maybe he could go into marketing or advertising. He figured he'd be a good TV personality. Something that let him stay part of a team.

Or maybe he could convince himself to go back overseas. He could swallow his pride and sign for another strange team in another strange country, buying himself a few more months of basketball, keeping the dream alive for one more season.

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