Fourteen months from now, if all goes as planned, Jalen Green will be the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft.

Shoe companies will woo him with lucrative contracts. A general manager will proclaim him “The Future.” And finally, after years of tossing his Jordan Retros off his bed at night before he falls asleep, he’ll have a shoe closet big enough to house his massive sneaker collection.

But that’s all in the future, when Green will try to make good on his reputation as the next Kobe Bryant. For now, he’s just another 18-year-old coming to terms with the fact that the coronavirus pandemic has robbed him of senior-year hallmarks: prom, graduation, the McDonald’s All-American Game.

“I was sad because that’s a dream for anyone like me,” Green said of learning that the nation’s premier high school basketball showcase had been canceled. “But, hey, I get it. The virus has gone around the world so fast.”

It was a sunny afternoon in late March, and Green was thumbing through his iPhone on a bench outside his family’s apartment complex in Napa. A 6-foot-5 shooting guard for Prolific Prep, he is tailor-made for the era of likes and retweets, a human highlight reel who grins in pictures and posts regularly to social media.

His Instagram account has 860,000 followers. Dwyane Wade once quote-tweeted a video of Green with the words, “League him!!” His highlights have amassed more than 20 million views on YouTube; one 2019 video, in which LeBron James cheers him at an AAU game, has over 1.7 million.

Such fame has its pitfalls. There are the friends who act as if he has already made the NBA, the distant relatives eager to reconnect, the college coaches willing to do almost anything for a program-changing recruit.

Green’s mother, Bree Purganan, and stepfather, Marcus Greene, work to shield Jalen from distractions. Since Green first surfaced on the national scene in eighth grade, Purganan and Greene have made every big decision for him, from which high schools to attend to which AAU teams to join.

Now, after fielding too many recruiting pitches to count, Green has reached the most important crossroads of his career: Will he spend next season in college or overseas? The decision, expected to be announced Friday afternoon on Instagram Live, will dictate the path of his next 14 months. And it will be his alone to make.

“This is probably the most stressful thing he’s done since he started playing basketball,” Purganan said of Green, who, in addition to professional opportunities, is considering playing for Auburn, Fresno State, Florida State, Memphis, Oregon or USC. “I know it’s a lot of pressure, but he has to feel comfortable. He has to feel right with his decision.”

Green lives on the southern edge of Napa with Greene, his mother and his 9-year-old sister, Jurnee, in a well-kept complex of beige and white buildings. Women walk small dogs in slow circles, men take out the trash in their pajamas, and green waste bins admonish residents to “LEASH AND CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR PET.”

Last spring, Purganan left her job as a nurse and began doing online medical coding so that the family could move from Fresno to the Wine Country. Napa might not have Green’s favorite chain restaurants, but it’s home to Prolific Prep — a basketball academy founded in 2014 that plays a national schedule outside the California Interscholastic Federation, partners academically with Napa Christian High School (enrollment: 125) and touts a roster loaded with Division I recruits.

As Green’s stepfather was quick to point out, “This is not a long-term situation for us. It was all about getting Jalen better competition.”

The neighborhood still feels new enough to Green that, when trying to find a nearby basketball court for a photo shoot, Jurnee had to remind him of one just a couple of blocks from their complex. After Green posed for pictures in a navy sweat suit and red Air Jordan 3 Retros, he started dribbling home when a young boy — no older than 9 — ignored social-distancing guidelines to ask for an autograph.

“You know that kid?” Greene later asked Green, who didn’t have the heart to turn down the fan.

“No,” Green said with a shrug. “Never seen him before.”

Green is used to the attention. Before he was old enough to vote, he counted Stephen Curry as a friend and training partner. Last year, during a workout with Curry and Luka Doncic in Oakland, Green beat Doncic — now an NBA MVP candidate — in an informal shooting contest.

It was a moment of validation for someone who’d learned the game on the cracked driveway of his maternal grandfather’s house in rural Merced County. By the time Purganan — a single mother and former guard at Merced College — moved them to Fresno when Green was 9 to be closer to work, he was beginning to see a future in basketball.

In the sixth grade, Green asked Greene, an assistant coach for his travel team, to start training him. For two hours a day, they cycled through drills at a cramped gym with broken windows and dim lighting in downtown Fresno. When Greene asked one afternoon whether Green would be comfortable with him dating his mother, Green told him, “That’d be cool. I mean, I already look at you as a dad, anyway.”

The summer before eighth grade, Green, then 13, threw down a one-handed dunk in Vans on a court outside his apartment complex. Less than two years later, he was widely considered the top player in the 2020 class.

As Green blossomed into a local celebrity, Greene told him stories about his own past. He didn’t want Green to make the mistakes he had. For much of Greene’s life, he had been gang affiliated, dealing drugs and solving problems with his fists. From time to time, he drove Green to his old street corners in West Fresno. The message was clear: You don’t want this life. Stay in the gym.

In three seasons at San Joaquin Memorial High School, Green scored 2,291 points, breaking former NBA player Cliff Pondexter’s school scoring record. Grown men stopped Green at Fashion Fair Mall to ask for selfies. Postgame crowds sometimes grew so big and agitated that school officials had to escort him out a back door.

Green’s family considered a handful of high-profile prep schools for his senior year before it picked Prolific Prep, where Green’s friend, guard Nimari Burnett, had spent two seasons gaining muscle and emerging as a five-star recruit. Facing some of the best prospects in the country, Green has eased concerns about his consistency — not only in terms of production, but also approach.

At San Joaquin Memorial, Green was prone to lapses in concentration. At Prolific Prep, he showed an alpha mentality, leading the Crew to a 31-3 record and a berth in the now-suspended Geico National Championships.

Seldom did a game pass without one of his between-the-legs dunks or one-handed alley-oops. Now that Green, ESPN’s top-rated senior recruit, can pair a reliable jump shot with his elite slashing ability, he has everything an NBA team would want in a perimeter scorer.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that, if he was eligible for the draft this year, he’d go No. 1,” said a Western Conference scout, who spoke under the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss prospects. “It’s probably unfair for anyone to compare a high school kid to Kobe, but Jalen might be as good as Kobe was at the same age. He’s that special.”

Green was trying to contort his gangly frame onto Jurnee’s tiny, hot-pink bicycle when he felt his phone buzz. It was a text from the coach of a big-name program he’s considering. Green, grimacing, turned toward Greene.

“Hey,” Green said, his voice heavy with dread, “they’re texting me again.”

Since Green landed his first Division I offers, from Fresno State and Florida State, as an eighth-grader, his parents have screened his calls from college coaches. Though Green appreciates that almost every major program has tried to recruit him, he would prefer to focus on enjoying what’s left of his senior year.

He spends his free time making TikTok videos with Jurnee; scouring the web for his favorite Nikes; and playing with the family poodle, Twilight. Until the family moved last year, his chores were scrawled on the refrigerator whiteboard: “Pick up living room.” “Complete homework.” “Make your bed.”

When one recent conversation turned toward his accomplishments, Green stared at his phone, mumbling so softly that he barely could be heard. All of his awards — including the three gold medals he won with Team USA — sit in a drawer in his mom’s closet. When Fresno’s ABC affiliate asked him to bring his MVP plaque from the 2018 FIBA Under-17 World Cup to its studio for an interview, Green politely declined.

“He just doesn’t want people to see that side, even though they know about it,” Purganan said. “He just wants them to see, ‘Hey, it’s just me. I’m just a normal kid.’”

But most kids don’t help set a fashion trend, which Green did with the short shorts — 16 inches in length and an 11½-inch inseam — that his mom gets custom-tailored. Most kids aren’t one of the subjects of a docuseries titled “Prodigy.”

Most kids, while playing a tournament in Manila, don’t hear fans in the Philippines’ capital chant, “I-DOL-O! I-DOL-O!” — the Tagalog word for “idol” (Green is part Filipino). Most kids aren’t nicknamed “The Unicorn” for their near-mythical combination of size, speed and leaping ability.

Green embraced the moniker for a while, placing his index finger on his forehead after dunks as if it were a horn. As time passed, however, he decided that too many players were being compared to unicorns — Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis included — for the nickname to feel special. After a half-decade in the spotlight, Green understands branding and messaging as well as some NBA All-Stars.

In August, shortly after news broke that Green was weighing whether to play his senior season at Prolific Prep or head overseas, his stepfather shot down the report, saying that Green “has never considered going overseas or leaving Prolific Prep.” But the damage was done. Over the past eight months, many Division I coaches have stopped reaching out because they assume he will go pro and skip college.

After seeing LaMelo Ball and R.J. Hampton boost their draft stock in Australia’s National Basketball League, Green conceded that he views the overseas route as a legitimate option. Some reports suggest that Auburn is the front-runner should he choose to go to college. Others say Memphis.

Green has yet to give even the three people in what he calls his “circle” an indication of where he might be leaning. But wherever Green lands, Purganan, Greene and Jurnee will move nearby.

“If I need to get away from all the craziness next season, I can just go to my parents’ house,” Green said. “Sometimes, when you live in my world, you just need to chill for a while. I’ll just be happy when this whole recruiting process is over.”

Connor Letourneau is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cletourneau@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Con_Chron