Greivis Vasquez seems happy, and why wouldn’t he be? He’s 28, almost unreasonably confident, an NBA millionaire, living the dream. What could be better?

“The best four years of my life were at Maryland,” says Vasquez, with feeling, before a game in Chicago last week. “I was the man there. It really made me who I am right now.”

College is a formative experience for a lot of people, and it’s the last training NBA players get before they hit the league. The best players become names that resonate — they become part of tradition, honoured alums. But throw out Vasquez’s name to Maryland people, and it’s . . . different. It’s the legend of Greivis Vasquez. It’s love.

“College Park is a weird place, because it’s not urban, per se, but it’s not a college town either,” says Sean Gentille, the hockey writer for The Sporting News, who attended Maryland at the time. “It’s not Georgetown, and it’s not (the University of Virginia). It’s other. And I think — maybe I’m projecting — that’s fertile ground for an inferiority complex.

“He loved the place a lot more than I did, and that made me love it a little more. It was immeasurably great to have a guy like that in your corner. He was loud and unapologetic and unorthodox, and it just felt right.”

“He was the cockiest player I ever played against,” says Tyler Hansbrough, who was an All-American for all four years, three of which occurred with Vasquez in the ACC. “Ever.”

“What it meant to me was that — those things can happen,” says his coach, Gary Williams, who retired in 2011 after 22 years and a national title with the Terrapins. “You get hardened as a coach, and then you get a guy like Greivis, and that makes it all worthwhile. It really does. You know, you’re not supposed to have favourites? Every coach has favourites. And Greivis was definitely a favourite.”

When he arrived as a freshman Vasquez walked into Williams’s office and saluted and he told the coach he was ready for duty — it became a famous story — but he wasn’t embraced outside of that. He was wild, in a way that Raptors fans may distantly recognize. He took crazy shots at the wrong time. He turned the ball over, a lot. His English wasn’t great, but he believed in Greivis — according to former teammate, his first conversation with the team’s starting point guard was that he was going to take his job — and in interviews that confidence could come across as cartoonish.

“Some people took it in the wrong way,” says Vasquez. “And even some people at Maryland didn’t understand me at first, because I’m so passionate. I love this game so much that some people thought I was arrogant, so many things, so they did give me s--- all the time. At first it was a rough relationship, because at first even my home school was, well, hating on me, everywhere I was going. But I’m a tough kid.”

He got nicknamed “Huevos” by SportsCenter anchor Scott Van Pelt, a College Park native and Maryland alum, after one big-time shot as a freshman. He felt like an outcast, though.

“The first six months when I entered to Maryland I couldn’t take regular classes,” says Vasquez, who played prep school basketball after coming from Venezuela. “There’s 35,000 students going to Maryland, and I was taking English as a second language with three or four other guys — they were from the Middle East, Asian, and there was me. Every time I went back to the locker room my teammates were like, ‘I was in this class, and there were 100 people in this class, and this pretty girl,’ and that, and I was like, in class with three or four guys, and I was frustrated. For a second I thought about playing overseas.”

But he spent a lot of time in the gym — a habit adopted from high school, where he played with Kevin Durant — and his herky-jerky, left-hand right-hand, runner- and floater- and spinning-drive game got better. The Maryland fans sort of accepted him? Sort of. Whatever. He kept spitting confidence — shimmying after threes, taunting opposing crowds. He didn’t back down, ever.

“I still hear about it from him every day,” says James Johnson, who was also in the ACC at Wake Forest. “Every day.”

By the end of his sophomore year, he felt like Maryland was coming around. In his final two seasons, he was the man.

“Against Duke he made a shot that (Duke coach Mike) Krzyzewski still talks about as the most amazing shot anybody ever hit against him in a clutch situation,” says Williams. “And that was Greivis. As he developed, he knew how good he was, and he believed in himself. He could miss 10 shots and he would take the 11th shot. He wasn’t afraid to create something.”

In his last two years, Vasquez was in full bloom. He dropped a 35-11-10 triple-double against North Carolina the year the Tar Heels won the national title. He called Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium, home of the best college basketball crowd in the country, “my house,” and Maryland beat Duke for the regular-season title the year the Blue Devils won it all. He waved his arms, taunted the crowds, cupped his hand to his ear walked like the man with the biggest huevos in the room. At one game Vasquez was about to seal the contest at the free-throw line, but before he did he turned to Van Pelt, his pal, who was in the crowd, and mimed his nickname.

“He points over at me and gives me the Sam Cassell,” says Van Pelt. “I love the kid.”

Vasquez had already drawn the ire of the league, but now every opposing crowd focused on him. Finally.

“He loved it,” says Johnson. “He was one of the guys who embraced that kind of stuff, and felt like that was like respect towards him.”

“The Duke fans, being very clever, they prepared things to say in Spanish to Greivis, and they had sheets so the kids who didn’t speak Spanish could say the same thing,” says Williams. “So at the end of one game, we win the game, and the one that sealed it, Greivis makes one of his crazy drives with about 40 seconds left, puts us up eight.

“So he makes it, goes out of bounds, and makes sure he turns wide so he runs by those students that sit there for Duke. And whatever he said to ’em, it couldn’t have been real nice, because they were ready to come over the top of the railing after him. And he was laughing, smiling, having a good time.”

It wasn’t always fun. At places like North Carolina State and Florida State and Virginia Tech he had crowds yelling at him that he was a Mexican, holding “DEPORT VASQUEZ” signs, screaming at him to get a green card, that he didn’t love America, U-S-A. Nasty, stupid stuff.

“It was like racism, and it pisses me off,” said Vasquez, who was born in Venezuela. “Because I came here to pursue the dream, I didn’t come here to take somebody’s job.

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“(But generally), you know what? I liked the attention. I always liked the attention. Even now, I like the attention. Obviously in the NBA it’s a little bit different, you’ve got to pick your spots. It’s a different pace here in the pros. I want everybody to have eyes on me and see what I do, and how I do it. And I want to prove to everybody, look, I can do this. So you’ve got to watch me. You don’t believe me? Just watch.”

He won those games, defiantly. Vasquez still gets serenaded by local fans when the Raptors play in Washington. Van Pelt loved Vasquez so much he would eventually attend the NBA Draft in New York to watch him get drafted. Bomani Jones of ESPN says Vasquez is one of his favourite college players of all time, because “the fearlessness, passion and refusal to back down under any circumstance. How did Greivis deal with the N.C. State fans? He came out and showed them his green card. Just the ultimate wrasslin’ heel.” The Duke Chronicle ran a fond farewell column called, “Adios, Amigo.”

Greivis, if you know him, loves and believes in Greivis. At Maryland, though, people eventually loved and believed in him as much as he did.

Vasquez and Gary were the beautiful match. Williams had a couple recruiting classes that didn’t pan out, and the heat was back on. But he and Vasquez would talk in his office about politics, life, other sports. Williams helped talk Vasquez through his parents’ divorce. They were both so emotional. Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post says, “In general, my favourite part about Greivis was the way he made Gary Williams seem young and happy again.”

And then came the last game, in Vasquez’s third NCAA appearance. Maryland was down nine with two minutes left against a good Michigan State team in the second round, and here came Greivis. A spinning three-point play, a steal that led to a layup, a three-pointer off an inbounds, and Maryland was down 80-79. “The vivacious Venezuelan, from Caracas with love, in Spokane!” bellowed Tim Brando on CBS.

Vasquez put the Terrapins ahead on a runner off the glass with 39 seconds left. He put them ahead again 81-80 with 6.6 seconds left on another spinning, fearless herky-jerk drive. “You don’t just score 10 points in 1:50 against a Michigan State team,” says Williams.

And then Michigan State hit a three at the buzzer, clean. It was over.

“He couldn’t talk,” says Vasquez. “We couldn’t talk. At this point, we haven’t talked about it. It was the most hurtful loss. That was the first time I saw Gary cry, and everybody was shocked. I stood on the court watching the replay, because the shot this kid hit was unbelievable. And I had an unbelievable game, probably the best game of my career, 10 points in a minute and a half, put the team up, tough shot.

“And I’m looking at the replay and I’m walking by myself back to the locker room, and I see Gary, and I saw Gary couldn’t hold it and he started crying, and I started to cry, and the whole team started crying, even the managers. Everybody cried so much. We cried for 30 minutes, and the media came, and I was still crying.

“I never felt worse for a player, and for the team, but really for Greivis,” says Williams. “Because he did everything he had to do to win that game for us. I’ve never felt that way after a loss in the NCAA tournament. And I lost a few in the NCAA tournament. Never felt that way for an individual player.” His granddaughter was four or five when Vasquez was there. She plays basketball now, and she wears Vasquez’s No. 21.

In the NBA, it’s different. Vasquez is a useful player, not a great one. He leans towards self-promotion, but tries to tamp it down. He still believes, though he’s on his fourth team in five years. He’s happy enough, but the NBA isn’t often love. The NBA is business.

So when he thinks back to Maryland, Vasquez smiles. Nothing could ever be better. He was the man, and he convinced everybody he was the man. It’s easy to get nostalgic.

“It’s like immortality, like something that would never die,” says Vasquez. “If I go to heaven, I think Gary is the guy who got me mentally (right), and really shaped me up to be an NBA player. I owe the school so much, and I’m so thankful.”

It was great, right? It sounds like it was great. He nods. “It still is.”