Mychal Mulder tossed and turned in his bed, only sleeping for 20-30 minutes at a time.

It was the night of March 9, and Mulder — a shooting guard fresh off a 10-day contract — was anxious. His entire basketball career, from unheralded high school recruit to seldom-used college player to G League gunner, had led to this moment: waking up to sign a three-year deal with the Warriors.

“I could barely sleep,” Mulder recalled. “I just kept feeling like it was the morning already, you know?”

Two weeks removed from what he called the “best day of my life,” Mulder is living with his parents at his childhood home in Windsor, Ontario. The coronavirus pandemic, which shut down the NBA little more than 24 hours after he signed his Golden State contract, has forced people around the world indoors. As Mulder passes his days lifting weights and watching Netflix, he is thankful to have found some professional stability just in time.

Center Dragan Bender and guard Chasson Randle, both of whom saw their 10-day deals with the Warriors cut short by the crisis, weren’t so fortunate. Given that neither probably did enough to warrant a training-camp invite from Golden State, Bender and Randle could be headed to the G League or overseas once play finally resumes.

Mulder’s former teammates with the Sioux Falls Skyforce, the Miami Heat’s affiliate, won’t have the final eight games of their G League season — as well as a potential playoff run — to audition for a 10-day contract in the NBA or a lucrative deal in Europe. That could easily have been the case for Mulder, who, as recently as late February, was a complete unknown to Warriors head coach Steve Kerr.

Kent Lacob — Golden State’s director of team development — convinced general manager Bob Myers to pluck Mulder out of South Dakota and sign him to a 10-day contract. In his two games this season against the Warriors’ G League affiliate, Mulder had combined to score 56 points on 17-for-36 shooting (14-for-30 from 3-point range).

What Golden State didn’t know then was that Mulder had spent months studying the Skyforce’s film in hopes of becoming a solid defender. During his two seasons at Kentucky, Mulder was anchored to the bench because coach John Calipari couldn’t trust Mulder to stay in front of his man.

But there was Mulder, in his second NBA game Feb. 29, defending Suns guard Devin Booker. All four shots Booker took against Mulder missed. By the time his 10-day contract ended, Mulder had showed he could be a “3-and-D” wing in the NBA, pairing reliable defense with 3-point shooting.

When Kerr last week spoke to media for the first time since the NBA shutdown, he singled out Mulder, saying: “It’s such a strange time for him. He finally made it, and we were getting ready to play games in Toronto and Detroit, where he was going to have tons of family and celebrate his accomplishments.”

For a couple of days after his rookie season suddenly halted, Mulder hung around the St. Regis hotel in San Francisco, reading about the coronavirus online and getting up shots at the Warriors’ practice facility. When Golden State closed Chase Center to players, he boarded a near-empty flight to South Dakota.

After packing up his belongings at his Sioux Falls apartment, Mulder drove his Cadillac CTS 14 hours to Windsor, a city of about 220,000 people on the Detroit River where hockey dwarfs basketball in popularity. His lone Division I scholarship offer coming out of Windsor’s Catholic Central High School was from nearby Detroit Mercy.

Seven years, two colleges and two G League teams later, Mulder is his hometown’s first NBA player to have played in the regular season. His roster status, however, is hardly secure. Because Mulder’s contract is only partially guaranteed over the next two seasons, the Warriors could waive him at any point before next fall’s opener and not be out a dollar.

“There’s definitely a sense of urgency still,” Mulder said. “For someone like me, that sense of urgency has been there. It’s not something I’m uncomfortable with. It’s just another thing that fuels me every day.”

Connor Letourneau covers the Warriors for The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: cletourneau@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Con_Chron