Marc Chasanoff took a quick glance at his contact sheet, found the number he was looking for, and dialed it right away. As always, he was moving in fast forward.
“Hello,” a voice answered.
“Hey, is this Maurice?” Chasanoff asked.
“No, this is Joe.”
Shit.
In his haste, Chasanoff had dialed the wrong number. He meant to call Joe Young’s agent, retired NBA forward Maurice Evans. Instead he called Joe Young. Chasanoff—an experienced basketball executive and former scout who had been with the Pelicans organization for twelve seasons—was hoping to gather some intel about where Young was expected to be picked in the upcoming G League Draft. Evans was the person to ask about that—not Young. But Young was the one on the line, and Chasanoff figured, Oh well, let’s roll with it.
“Hey, Joe, this is Marc Chasanoff, general manager for the Birmingham Squadron. I was actually trying to reach out to your agent.”
Chasanoff was forthright about his goal: to find out Young’s range for the 2021 Draft. Birmingham was very interested in Young—he was the number-one target on its draft board—but at the moment, the team was not in a position to get him. Not even close. The Squadron had traded their first-round pick to Iowa for Zylan Cheatham. As of this phone call, roughly twenty-four hours before the draft, Birmingham held the number forty-seven pick and the number fifty pick. Young would be long gone by then. His flights would be booked to whatever city was lucky enough to draft him.
What Young—a six-foot-two sharpshooting guard formerly with the Indiana Pacers—brought to the table was, in many ways, obvious. Only a handful of players in the 2021 G League Draft pool had touched an NBA court before. Young had logged over one thousand minutes in the NBA, scored 20 points in an NBA game, and gone head-to-head with NBA All-Stars like Paul George and Jeff Teague every day in practice.
Since his career first took off at Yates High School in Houston, Texas, Young had been an explosive scorer, later nicknamed “Joey Buckets.” It was in his blood—his father, Michael Young, was an unstoppable offensive player during his own pro career, once leading the entire Italian League in scoring. Joe could pull up from deep, finish over taller defenders at the rim, and regularly destroy teams with his midrange jumper. His speed and handles enabled him to create something out of nothing on any possession. As a senior at Yates, he carried his squad to a perfect 34-0 record, averaging 27 points per game and winning Gatorade Texas Boys Basketball Player of the Year. He spent two seasons at Michael’s alma mater—the University of Houston—and then transferred to Oregon, where he registered 1,388 total points, the highest mark over a two-year span in program history. The Indiana Pacers selected him with the forty-third pick in the 2015 NBA Draft, and while he didn’t get much of an opportunity in NBA games, he would often dominate in practices.
“If he wanted to take anybody off the dribble, he could,” said Dan Burke, an assistant coach for the Pacers from 1997 to 2020 who is currently on the Philadelphia 76ers’ staff. “There were some practices where it was like, Jeez, can anybody guard this guy? That three would be going, and you’d push up on him, and he’d go by you. If you didn’t help, he’d finish. If you did help, he started finding guys.”
“Joe was crazy. He was one of the best guys I’ve ever played against as far as practice,” former Pacers teammate Thaddeus Young told The Athletic. “He didn’t get very much burn in games. But in practice, you could not stop his ass. If we were here and doing five-on-five, he would score 30. I swear to God. He’s an NBA player.”1
An NBA player, maybe. But not a player in the NBA.
Indiana declined to pick up the team option on Young’s contract in 2018, which led him to sign a seven-figure deal with the Nanjing Tongxi Monkey Kings of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). In China, opponents really “could not stop his ass.” Young was one of the top players on the entire continent for the next three seasons, putting up some of the craziest numbers in CBA history. He won the league’s scoring title in his second year with an average of 38.3 points per game. The buzz about him grew in the United States, especially when he scored 48 or more in seven straight outings, including a legendary 74-point performance (the third highest scoring output in league history). Joe’s CBA highlight tapes were almost comical—in many of them, he looked like a high schooler competing against a bunch of tall third graders. He could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.
Birmingham needed a guy like that. A proven talent capable of creating offense and making things happen. The sort of player who gets nicknamed “Joey Buckets.” The team’s current roster, while solid, didn’t have many go-to scoring options. It lacked firepower, another give-me-the-ball-and-get-out-of-the-way type of star. Yes, the roster was loaded with high-character people. But character alone wasn’t going to win games. They needed a Joe Young.
There were some question marks about Young, however, or at least reasons to dig deeper. His reputation around the NBA was slightly tarnished. In the business of basketball, narratives about players—whether accurate or misguided—spread like rumors in an elementary school cafeteria:
Did you hear that Alex still pees the bed? Can you believe that? How insane! Alex is a bed-wetter!
Did you hear that Alex got into three fistfights in the locker room? Can you believe that? How insane! Alex is a locker room problem!
In the NBA, narratives circulate fast. Reputations stick with the permanence of tattoos. Labels follow players everywhere. When front offices gather intel, they do their best to sift through all the narratives—to get closer and closer to the truth about a player. The bad narratives obviously vary in severity. Some warrant nothing but shrugs; others are deemed unforgivable. And of course, the more talented a player, the more teams are willing to tolerate. NBA superstars can get away with a lot. But players on the fringe? They can’t get away with anything.
Consider Rod Benson, a dominant force in the D-League between 2006 and 2010. The six-foot-ten undrafted forward led the entire league in rebounding during the 2007–08 season and averaged 14.1 points and 9.7 boards in 2009–10. Off the court, Benson liked to blog about his experience in the minors—a hobby that, as he soon discovered, deeply troubled NBA teams. In the eyes of executives, he became “the writer.” Might he present distractions? Expose locker room secrets? Spend too much time punching keys instead of practicing free-throws? The label was enough to prevent Benson from ever getting an opportunity in the NBA. “My biggest crime was writing about my Myspace messages and that I thought Steak ‘n Shake was delicious,” said Benson, who had an extremely successful career overseas and is now a columnist for SFGATE. “The thing I couldn’t change was that I was already known as a writer before I got good enough as a basketball player.”
One of his college teammates at the University of California, Berkeley, was later hired by the Atlanta Hawks. He reached out to Benson after his first day on the job. “I just had a meeting, and I know exactly why you’re not in the NBA now,” the friend told Benson. “You’re never going to be in. After what we just talked about on my first day, there’s literally no way.”
Like Benson, Joe Young was a player on the fringe. His slightly tarnished reputation was built on minor mistakes, primarily the lack of maturity he showed as a young professional and an obliviousness for how the NBA business sometimes operates. He did nothing that would deter other franchises from expressing interest, say, he had been a top-twenty pick in the 2015 NBA Draft, as opposed to the forty-third pick. During his three seasons with the Pacers, Young wasn’t the subject of negative headlines. He never got suspended by the organization. He wasn’t racking up fines or showing up late or getting into fistfights. What tarnished his narrative was much subtler—things that fans and reporters didn’t necessarily know about: how he sometimes carried himself, his attitude toward certain decisions, his private dealings with coaches and executives.
Rookies, especially second-round picks, are expected to behave in a certain way, to embody a certain humbleness. When a player hasn’t yet earned his stripes in the NBA, he is supposed to act accordingly. That means abandoning any ego, accepting a lesser role without question, and conducting himself in a manner that communicates, I am thankful and ecstatic to be here, and not, I want and deserve more.
Young joined an already talented Indiana Pacers roster on the rise. He was buried on the depth chart behind more established guards: George Hill, Monta Ellis, Rodney Stuckey (and later, All-Star Jeff Teague, Aaron Brooks, and Lance Stephenson). The face of the franchise was Paul George, a dynamic forward just entering the prime of his career. By some strange coincidence, a day after Young was drafted by the Pacers, he found out that George was in fact his fifth cousin. Relatives started calling Joe’s mom, Tina, to ask if she had any idea about her son’s relationship to Paul. The connection, as official paperwork confirmed, dated back to twin sisters who were slaves in Opelousas, Louisiana, during the 1800s. According to family research, Young’s maternal fourth great-grandmother, Olympe Donato, was the twin sister of George’s paternal fourth great-grandmother, Merice Donato.
The cousins ended up hanging out a lot—perhaps too much, at least from the perspective of others within the Pacers organization. Young emulated the team’s superstar in many ways. He acted similarly, purchased similar things, drove similar cars. He wore flashy jewelry and designer clothing. He starred in multiple Gatorade commercials alongside George. But Young wasn’t like George—not when it came to their status in the NBA. One was a second-round pick on a rookie contract; the other was one of the league’s top players, making $17 million a year.
Does spending recklessly and rocking expensive jewelry actually matter when it comes to basketball? Does it affect one’s ability to put a ball in a hoop? Of course not. But it can rub people the wrong way. It can be taken as a sign of immaturity, as a foreshadowing of bigger problems to come. Picture a freshman swaggering through the halls of his high school, clutching a Versace backpack and wearing large Gucci shades. Harmless? Yes. But what would the teachers think?
“Those things—they piss people off [in the NBA],” Pannone explained. “Then it becomes water-cooler talk. Then it just spreads. It’s all narratives. What does buying a bunch of stuff have to do with winning basketball games? It really doesn’t.”
“I think he wanted some of that lifestyle, and he got caught up in that—‘Yeah, I want to be like Paul [George],’” Burke said. “You just can’t have that same lifestyle. You gotta be a little more down [to the] level where you’re at.”
“Paul would include Joe in little things—little deals and commercials and all that stuff. Once you’re a rookie and you’re [involved] in these things, you’re like, Oh, I made it, kind of thing,” Squadron assistant coach Perry Huang added. “So you can start kind of acting a fool. That’s basically what happened with Joe. He just acted bigger than his paycheck, basically. When you start acting like that, whether it’s fair or not, a lot of NBA personnel don’t like guys who are boisterous like that that haven’t made it. There’s this flamboyant personality that sometimes you have to tone down.”
Here’s how Korey Harris, one of Young’s assistant coaches in Beijing, framed the dilemma:
We grew up on a certain era of basketball where our stars were a little more brash. It was before social media. It was before a lot of this stuff was accepted. Now you can come flossy to the game and be wearing a hundred chains and your drip be crazy, and that’s cool. They’ll throw it up on an NBA affiliated Instagram page because that’s what everybody’s into. But when we were kids, [NBA commissioner] David Stern was telling everybody, “You gotta put on a suit.” And then certain guys bucked the trend. I think Joe has some of that—it’s not like he’s trying to rebel; he just wants to be able to express himself. Some teams view that as a question mark. Like, hey, can he buy in? Can he be on board with the way that our organization asks our players to move? Can we invest money in him and know that he’s going to be reliable—like, we’re not going to have any type of negative press?
It didn’t help that Young was a tad bullish when it did come to basketball. Confidence is a good thing for a player to have, as long as it is held in check. If not, it can easily be construed as arrogance. Confidence also cannot interfere with a player’s patience. In the NBA, players have to wait for their turn. Newcomers are expected to do so patiently, without ruffling any feathers and with an understanding that the NBA is a business. That’s particularly true for newcomers who were drafted in the second round and should have minimal expectations when it comes to playing time.
“I think his frustrations ran over. We say it a lot, maybe too much, but a lot of kids want stuff now,” said Burke. “They want fast. Really, you can’t blame them. In the world of sports, that window is pretty short. So you can’t blame them on that aspect too. Part of being a pro is not just collecting a check; it’s not just coming in for workouts; it’s not just getting on the bus on time. All of that is important, but I think one hard aspect that these kids fail to grasp—there’s a certain hierarchy. There really is.”
That hierarchy is built on a number of factors, not just talent: experience, trust, versatility, fit, need. In a billion-dollar business like the NBA, money is obviously a factor too. The bigger a player’s contract, the bigger a team’s investment in that player. And the bigger a team’s investment, the more it seeks in return. Translation—the players who are paid more are likely to get a greater opportunity to prove themselves on the court.
Young didn’t have a full grasp of these concepts. He didn’t see the big picture. As a rookie, he appeared in just forty-one games, averaging 9.4 minutes per contest. As a sophomore, he saw action in just thirty-three games, averaging 4.1 minutes. Young was training hard, taking the right steps, following the rules, performing well at practice. So why wasn’t he playing more?
“I think it got ahead of him, where he thought, you guys owe me some playing time,” Burke added. “Sorry, that’s just not how it works. When you start having to manage guys toward the end of the bench on that every day, that kind of grows. It affects the team. I’m guessing Joe probably has some regrets on that. It’s like all of us; I would have been a better kid if I was a parent first. But it’s not a right or wrong, it’s just part of the learning and the timing of a roster and the fit of a roster. Joe was just on the outside all the time looking in, as far as rotation.”
“It was just an unfortunate chain of events in terms of his fit,” said reporter Zach Pearson, who has been covering the Pacers for various outlets since Young’s stint with the team. “He was super well liked by the fan base because of his hustle, and he was just fun to watch when he had those good flashes.” Pearson recalled two life-sized cardboard cutouts being in the team store at Bankers Life Fieldhouse: one of big man Myles Turner, a lottery pick seen as a future centerpiece, and one of Joe Young.
Although he was putting in a staggering amount of individual work, it didn’t help that Young was constantly posting about it on social media. Whether intentional or not, it screamed “look at me” and “acknowledge this,” which didn’t sit well with Indiana’s coaches.
People around Young did little to encourage patience. On the contrary, they often fed Young’s ego. His confidence never diminished; it grew and grew. “I’m thinking the best players play, because I felt like I was the best person in the gym,” he later said. Much of that belief centered on his ability to light it up on offense. Young wasn’t as impactful on the other side of the ball, which contributed to his lack of minutes too.
“At a young age, entering the NBA, he wanted to play a lot more than what he actually played,” Michael Young, Joe’s father, said. “And his representation would tell him, ‘Hey, just go talk to the coach.’ I don’t think he got the best advice there. And I don’t think he did anything wrong. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with somebody wanting to play.”
“I think [Pacers head coach] Nate McMillan was more of a no-nonsense guy,” explained Pearson. “Joe’s a second-round pick, he’s hungry, he wants to get out there and prove himself. And McMillan was just a this-is-how-we’re-going-to-do-it type of coach. If you have qualms about it, I’m sorry. He was doing it his way. And Joe maybe thought he had more that he could show and do.”
Young would meet with the coaching staff or with general manager Kevin Pritchard and president of basketball operations Larry Bird. They all preached the same message: Be patient, your time is coming. But Joe didn’t always react to that well. He was overly confident and overly ambitious. When his minutes fluctuated or decreased, he became noticeably frustrated; he stopped working as hard; he didn’t bring the energy and enthusiasm that was expected of role players and benchwarmers. His attitude resonated poorly, especially for someone in his position.
“It was my maturity,” Young later said. “I knew that I was good enough to play on the court, but did I have the mindset and the mentality to cheer my teammates on, like they would do for me if I was out there? I didn’t have it. I would be over there mad. Like, what am I mad for? I was young.”
He was periodically assigned to Indiana’s D-League affiliate, the Fort Wayne Mad Ants. Young looked at those transfers as a demotion, not as an opportunity to grow and develop. His actions reflected that perspective. The Pacers assigned him to the Mad Ants for the 2017 D-League Showcase in Ontario, Canada—a decision that did not excite Young. Still, it offered him the chance to make a good impression on representatives from every NBA team. Young did not take advantage.
He started Fort Wayne’s first game and seemed uninterested, hogging the ball and launching some questionable shots outside the flow of the offense. The Mad Ants came into the Showcase with a 15-7 record, one of the best in the D-League. But with Young, their most skilled playmaker, struggling—17 points on just 6 of 15 shooting in thirty-three minutes—and the rest of the guys providing little assistance, they got blown out, 102–78, by the 9-13 Windy City Bulls.
Before their second game, a matchup with the 17-9 Maine Red Claws, Young was told that he would not be in the starting lineup. Suddenly, during the team’s shootaround, he was feeling banged up and not compelled to play much. He ended up logging fifteen minutes off the bench, scoring 4 points on 2 of 7 shooting from the field. His poor showing that weekend stuck out prominently. Given that he was an NBA assignment player, Young was supposed to dominate the D-League competition.
Perhaps Joe’s greatest blunder, and the one that left the largest stain on his reputation, was telling the Pacers organization that he did not want to be assigned to the Mad Ants again. The implication, of course, was that the D-League was beneath him—that he deserved to be at the NBA level, contributing for the Pacers. “Who was I to say that?” Young later reflected. “I had to be honest with myself. I should’ve gone down there, did my job, and gotten better.” Instead he stayed with the Pacers for a little while longer and then was let go.
“He just wanted to play, and I think it was taken the wrong way,” Michael Young said about his son. “When you watched your dad do something for a living and you wanted to do it, it’s your childhood dream, you get there, you want to play—not in the G League, with the other team. There’s a little bit more pressure on kids when you have a dad that was a pro. And sometimes it can get taken the wrong way.”
Right or wrong, it all became part of Joe Young’s narrative. But there was, of course, more to the story. Sure, Young was immature and naive in his early twenties, fresh out of college and suddenly very wealthy. Now the situation was different. Young was twenty-nine-years old, married with two kids. Three years in China had given him ample time to reflect and grow. He was desperate to get back to the NBA—to rewrite his narrative. The mere fact that he was prepared to enter the G League just a handful of years after refusing to go there was evidence that he had changed.
“If I could get that back, I would change the narrative to how I act now,” Young said. “I would just act like how I am as a father to my kids. I can’t be childish. I gotta make sure I show them how to live life, how to respect life, how to respect yourself, and how to become successful at a high level.”
After doing their homework on Young, Birmingham had no overwhelming concerns about his character; otherwise, the team would have stayed away. Did he make some mistakes as a young professional? Yes. So did most people in the world. Any hesitation about pursuing Young was completely dispelled when Chasanoff (accidentally) got to speak with him the day before the G League Draft.
Without being asked or prodded, Young was candid about his past mistakes, about how he should have handled things differently with the Pacers. He took accountability for his actions. He talked about his family and what it meant to be back home, especially with his wife expecting their third child. He assured Chasanoff that he was ready to be a leader, play the game the right way, and show people a new and improved Joe Young. “I just need one more chance,” he said.
Birmingham wanted to provide that chance. Chasanoff, specifically, wanted to provide that chance. “Look, we’re picking at forty-seven and fifty-three,” he told Young at the end of the call. “You’re not going to be there where we are. But if there’s a way I can get up to get you, you’re the type of guy that I would want to have with our group. No matter what happens tomorrow, I wish you nothing but the best this year. But if I find a way to trade up, trust me, you’re the guy we would want.”
The conversation lasted only ten minutes, but it sold Chasanoff. Had Young denied his prior mistakes, it would have left a sour impression. Instead he was honest, remorseful, mature.
“It was just one of those conversations where you had a good feeling,” Chasanoff later said. “I just had a good feeling with him. And we knew the player. We knew the opportunity we had with the roster. It was more of a gut feeling.” Chasanoff called Pannone shortly after hanging up with Young.
“How’d it go with Joe’s agent?” Pannone asked.
“Yeah, I talked to Joe for a while instead,” Chasanoff replied, chuckling. Then his tone became more serious. “If we have an opportunity to get him,” he added, “we’re going to do it.”
By the morning of the 2021 Draft, however, Squadron decision-makers weren’t convinced such an opportunity would arise.
Headquarters for the event was a cozy, windowless conference room in the Squadron’s ninth-floor office suite in downtown Birmingham. The building overlooked the newly constructed Protective Stadium, where the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) football team played its home games. A single table took up much of the room and was covered with miscellaneous items: laptops, printed lists of the draft pool, coffee cups, water bottles, takeout boxes from Zoë’s Kitchen, and a corded conference phone. Seated around the table, in addition to Pannone and Chasanoff, were associate general manager Billy Campbell, associate head coach T. J. Saint, assistant coaches Mery Andrade and Perry Huang, strength and conditioning coach Jordan Kincaide, athletic trainer Gilchrist Schmidt, player-development coach Andrew Warren, and basketball operations associate and equipment manager Dillon McGowan.
Against the far wall rested a giant whiteboard containing all the notes and insights relevant to the draft. The full order was written on the left side. Across the middle, available players had been divided into four tiers, organized by columns. More material followed on the right, such as potential trade opportunities (which easily could have read “potential opportunities to get Joe Young”), team needs (bigs, creators, shooting), a projected starting lineup based on the current roster (Jared Harper, John Petty Jr., Malcolm Hill, Zylan Cheatham, James Banks III), and Birmingham’s picks in the 2022–23 Draft, which could be valuable trade assets.
It was a quiet Saturday morning at the office. Almost eerily quiet. At times, the only noise stemmed from nine floors below, where UAB students flooded the closed-off streets, tailgating for a football game in the afternoon. Their excited shrieks were not-so-subtle reminders that while professional basketball was coming to Birmingham, this was still very much a football town.
Those assembled discussed the team’s primary targets, shared intel, continued to work the phones to explore trade options, and debated between specific players. Most of the staff was familiar with the G League draft process already. There was one new wrinkle to consider this year: the question of coronavirus vaccination status. Unvaccinated players were allowed to participate in the G League but, based on the policies in place, would miss a bulk of training camp. The turnaround was immediate—the draft was on a Saturday, and training camp was set to begin that Monday. Those who were unvaccinated (or vaccinated within the past two weeks) had to pass five days of testing before taking the court. So even if they were coronavirus free, they would have to sit out half of camp. For obvious reasons, teams were wary of selecting those players.
Joe Young was vaccinated. He remained the Squadron’s top target—in their Tier 1, alongside another former NBA guard, Brandon Knight, as well as Gabe York and Tyler Hagedorn. The trades that were “in play” for the Squadron, which were scribbled on the whiteboard, would land them a pick in the early twenties. Surely that would be too late. If the team’s assessments were correct, Young would be picked far higher.
There was pressure, still, to do something. Moving up to the first round could get Birmingham a solid player, even if that player wasn’t Young. The vibe in the room didn’t match that pressure. It was calm and laid-back—more like a casual Monday morning meeting than what the term war room implies. Coach Pannone was, by nature, a master at defusing tension. He could tell someone not to worry without actually saying not to worry, just by making some sly remark. When the staff discussed players with possible “weed issues,” Pannone joked, “Would it help if we opened a dispensary at the facility?” He ended one debate with McGowan by saying, teasingly, “You can play devil’s advocate if you want. . . . I just don’t listen to stupidity.” He was constantly being sarcastic, to the point where he often had to clarify when he was being serious, not the other way around. “I’m never serious until I’m serious,” he said—sarcastically.
The draft, which started at 1:00 p.m. eastern time, was far different from the large-scale, elaborate spectacle that the NBA Draft has become. No packed arena, no fans, no media circus, no ESPN coverage. Representatives from every team did not convene at one specific location. Players did not wear fancy suits, sit in a fancy green room, and walk across a fancy stage to shake the commissioner’s hand. In the G League, the draft was conducted via conference call. Following along was difficult, even for the players involved in the draft. Most found out their futures via social media or just sat by the phone, waiting for it to ring.
So no, the G League Draft didn’t have the allure of the NBA Draft. It lacked all the glitz and glamor or any sense of being momentous. For many, though, the emotions were similar. This might not have been a realization of the NBA dream, but it was a meaningful step in that direction.
G League president Shareef Abdur-Rahim and David Wagner, associate vice president, player operations team leader, helped to kick off the event. “Today signifies the commitment of players to pursue a journey to the NBA,” Abdur-Rahim said. He and Wagner took roll call before outlining the draft rules. Each team would have two minutes to make its selection and was asked to do so in a precise manner: Birmingham is ready to select. With the X pick, the Birmingham Squadron select—
The Delaware Blue Coats—which had expressed interest in Young—were on the clock first. Squadron brass anxiously awaited their decision, preparing to hear Young’s name called and having any far-fetched hopes of getting their guy shattered.
Delaware is ready to select. With the first pick in the 2021 G League Draft, the Delaware Blue Coats select . . . Shamorie Ponds.
Shamorie Ponds? It was a complete surprise to everyone in the Squadron war room. Ponds, a skilled six-foot point guard, was a former star at St. John’s University, but he was far down on Birmingham’s draft board. None of their intel suggested Ponds might be the first pick.
There was no time to pass judgment, however; the clock was ticking. The next pick would be made in less than two minutes. Chasanoff and Campbell continued to make calls, trying to trade up into the first round. Hagedorn, an elite shooting big man, went second to the College Park Skyhawks. Then guard Gabe York was picked by the Fort Wayne Mad Ants. Brandon Knight was taken sixth by the Sioux Falls Skyforce. Everyone in Birmingham’s Tier 1 was gone within fifteen minutes—except for Joe Young.
Zaire Wade, the son of former NBA superstar Dwyane Wade, was grabbed with the tenth pick by the Salt Lake City Stars. Former Indiana Pacer and teammate of Joe Young, Lance Stephenson, was gone at number thirteen to the Grand Rapids Gold. One spot later, the Greensboro Swarm selected guard LiAngelo Ball, the brother of Lonzo and LaMelo Ball. The Iowa Wolves used the nineteenth pick, which they got from the Squadron in the trade for Zylan Cheatham, to take Ruot Monyyong, a forward who played at Arkansas–Little Rock.
All the while, Young remained on the board. The longer he sat there, the more aggressive Chasanoff and Campbell became in pursuing trades. Finally, they found a deal. Just before the Stockton Kings were up at number twenty-one, they agreed to send the pick to Birmingham in exchange for the returning rights to guard Devearl Ramsey and a second-round selection in the 2022–23 Draft.2 Details about the trade would be conveyed later, but it was set in stone. The pick belonged to Birmingham. And the pick was—
Stockton is ready to select. With the twenty-first pick in the 2021 G League Draft, the Stockton Kings select . . . Joe Young.
There were some fist pumps and high-fives in the Squadron war room, but not the type of celebratory reaction one might expect. The draft was moving so fast that everyone had to stay focused. Celebrations could wait until afterward—well, maybe not that long.
As the first round ended, what had just transpired began to sink in with Pannone. For a meager price, Birmingham had landed the player it coveted the most in the draft. “We just got our fucking number one. We just got our fucking number one!” Pannone repeated, smiling. “I feel like we’re not celebrating enough!”
At home in Houston, Young was celebrating with his family. “It was big for us, just to get another opportunity,” he said. It represented a new beginning—hopefully a blank slate. Soon, Young would receive a call from Pannone, congratulating him and welcoming him to the Squadron. The conversation went similarly to the one shared between Young and Chasanoff.
“Joe, what makes you want to play in the G League?” Pannone asked. “Why do you want this? What’s your goal?”
Once again, Young was open about his mistakes, about the negative reputation he had developed, about his desire for one last crack at the NBA. “He just opened up the floodgates,” Pannone later explained. “He was super honest.”
Young also expressed a willingness to fill whatever role the team needed. By now, he knew what NBA scouts were looking for and the importance of certain intangibles—being a leader, bringing positive energy, keeping the right mentality—to NBA coaches.
“Look, I don’t care about your past,” Pannone told Young. “I don’t care about your age. I care about who you are today. If I were to be judged off of who I was at twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three years old, I wouldn’t have the job that I have today, like most of us. Everyone’s got the right to grow up.”