In late October, 2018, Juan Toscano-Anderson sat in an office in Santa Cruz with his head hung, shoulders hunched and his eyes fixed to the floor.

Then the giggles started.

Moments before, he had been told he was going to be released. But Santa Cruz Warriors general manager Ryan Atkinson, head coach Aaron Miles and director of player development Kent Lacob told him that only to see his reaction when they revealed that he would, in fact, make the team. The oldest trick in the book.

“I’m like, ‘What are y’all laughing at?’” Toscano-Anderson said after a recent Warriors’ practice. “They’re like, ‘We’re going to keep you.’

“I just wanted to jump up for joy and start screaming.”

Only a few months before, Toscano-Anderson, 26, had called Atkinson, asking to attend an open tryout. It was that audition that put him on the path to leave a six-figure salary and celebrity in Mexico’s top professional league and, this season, sign a contract with his hometown Warriors.

Following four years at Marquette, Toscano-Anderson went undrafted in 2015 before he played three-plus seasons in Mexico, where he emerged as one the country’s best players by winning two league championships and an MVP award.

He was in the middle of his fourth season when Jabari Brown, his childhood friend who played for the Warriors’ G League affiliate in 2017 and 2018, convinced him to reach out to Atkinson and gave him his phone number.

At first, Toscano-Anderson was reluctant. The face of Mexican basketball, he was making a comfortable salary and living in a plush apartment while playing in his maternal grandparents’ home country.

Then again, he didn’t have much more to prove, and was already making about as much money as possible in Mexico.

“I was like ‘What more can I do?’ And I mean that humbly,” Toscano-Anderson said. “I just want more for myself. I’m so competitive that I’m always trying to look for new things to chase.”

Seven years after blossoming into a four-star recruit at Castro Valley High School, Toscano-Anderson walked into an open gym on the fifth floor of the Oakland Marriott City Center hoping to secure a spot on the Warriors’ G League roster.

One of about two dozen anonymous players, Toscano-Anderson believed he was among the more talented and accomplished in attendance. However, a versatile forward who prides himself on playing team basketball, he didn’t know which of his skills to show off.

“There was a lot of talent there, and I knew I was one of the better team players,” Toscano-Anderson said. “But I didn’t know what they were looking for. I didn’t really know what direction they were going.”

Still, he and five others impressed enough to earn a training camp invite. Not a guaranteed roster spot, but enough to motivate him to keep working toward his NBA aspirations.

Between the tryout and the start of training camp, Toscano-Anderson played two games in the 2018-19 season with Fuerza Regia de Monterrey before he exercised a clause in his contract that allowed him to attend an NBA training camp for two weeks.

On the final day of his two-week stint in Santa Cruz, Toscano-Anderson still did not know if he was making the team, and he risked a six-figure salary if he did not return to Mexico by that evening.

So Toscano-Anderson asked Atkinson for clarity, and Atkinson told him he’d get back to him. Fifteen minutes later, a room of Warriors’ executives had fun in telling Toscano-Anderson that he made the team.

This meant giving up more than $100,000 a year and the status of a league’s best player to become one of the last guys on a G League bench. Toscano-Anderson gave himself a year to make it from there to the NBA. Related Articles Giannis Antetokounmpo wins second MVP award; Is an NBA title with Warriors next?

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“If it didn’t work out, then I was going to leave and go back to Mexico,” Toscano-Anderson said. “But things are rolling pretty fast and things are working out for me.”

He worked his way from the end of the bench to the opening introductions, starting in four of Santa Cruz’s last five games of the season. He considers playing on that team the most fun he’s had in his career.

After impressing in Warriors training camp in San Francisco last summer, Toscano-Anderson decided to give himself another year and re-upped with Santa Cruz. Though he sometimes missed his life in Mexico, he decided he owed it to himself to see this opportunity through.

On Feb. 6, when Toscano-Anderson awoke in Santa Cruz to his 8 a.m. alarm, he checked his iPhone and found several missed calls and an unanswered text from Lacob: “Wake your behind up.”

The upcoming trade deadline would leave the Warriors with only nine players, five fewer than the league’s minimum requirement.

There were no jokes this time around. Lacob, almost two years after being part of that gag in Santa Cruz, told Toscano-Anderson over the phone that Golden State planned to sign him for the rest of the season.

“I think everybody here, coaches and management, really believes in Juan,” Kerr said. “Loved having him in training camp. He’s one of those guys you love to coach. … He’s earned this opportunity, for sure.”

In six games this season, Toscano-Anderson is averaging 6.8 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 1.3 steals in 20.2 minutes per game. His ability to fill a box score and play both forward spots could be an asset for the Warriors next season and, more than a year after his last game in Mexico, he believes his best basketball is ahead of him.

His contract will expire at the end of the season and, between now and then, he hopes to do what he did in that open tryout in 2018 and earn the chance to stick around a little bit longer.

“I bet on myself and now I’m in the biggest league in the world, the best league in the world,” Toscano-Anderson said. “So, I mean, it worked out for me.”