It was warm enough to roll down the windows as Cheatham cruised on Arkadelphia Road toward Birmingham-Southern. He wore a black-and-gold Versace robe that draped down to his knees, and he sang along to the booming car stereo. He looked, and felt, like royalty. And why shouldn’t he? It was November 17, 2021, his twenty-sixth birthday. He was healthy and inching closer to his NBA dream. He was thankful to be in this position—to have made it this far—given everything he had been through.
Even after escaping South Phoenix, Cheatham was often reminded of the perils he had circumvented. As a senior at Arizona State University, he was arriving home from dinner one night when his father called with tragic news. Cheatham’s younger brother, twenty-two-year-old Wanyaa Stewart, had been shot and was in critical condition. Cheatham raced to the hospital, but Stewart did not survive.
The two had been close growing up, playing Pokémon and sports together. They had similar personalities: loud, witty, good-humored. Cheatham moved away during high school; Stewart stayed behind and was swept into a dangerous lifestyle. Still, Stewart was always rooting for his big brother to make it, always encouraging him to keep going. The news of his passing left Cheatham heartbroken. “I just remember him not being Z,” said Darvis Fletcher, Cheatham’s best friend. “He was quiet. He just didn’t seem like himself.”
Basketball was Zylan’s escape, his safe place. Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley told him to take all the time he needed, but Cheatham showed up to practice the next day. “That’s what I did because being out on the floor, being around my guys, being in a position to get better in that hour, hour and a half, two hours or whenever we are out on the floor, it offers me a time to just take my mind off everything and just focus on the game I love,” Cheatham told reporters. “It’s almost like people go to the beach or read books. My happy place is on the court.”1
Over the past few years, Zylan had been quietly coping with another heartache: his mom, Carolyn, was battling cancer. He and Carolyn were extremely close; for much of his childhood, it was just the two of them. She looked out for him through all the tough times, ensuring he always had something to eat, even if it was just a Hot Pocket or Hamburger Helper. Every day, Zylan watched her get up and go to work—first at Bank of America and later at Humana—no matter her exhaustion. It allowed him to be a kid, to pursue basketball and not worry so much about their circumstances. He wanted to make it to the NBA for her, to be able to buy her a new house and give her a new life and repay her for all the sacrifices she had made for him.
“She’s literally the super woman, like a superhero. To see her going through what she’s going through now is just unbelievable,” said Zylan. “It just doesn’t seem fair to me. She’s literally been the best person ever. I just don’t understand how something like this could happen.”
There were good days and bad days—hopeful moments and painful moments—but Carolyn’s condition was gradually deteriorating. It weighed on Zylan, more than he even knew.
After he was waived by the Thunder in 2020, Cheatham was invited to join the Minnesota Timberwolves for part of their training camp, with the expectation that he would play for their G League affiliate. Cheatham reported to Minnesota around the same time that his mom was scheduled to have an important doctor’s appointment back in Phoenix. Before taking the floor, he was required to pass a routine physical exam. Cheatham failed his stress echocardiogram, a test of how well one’s heart and blood vessels are working under stress. He continued to take the test every day—and continued to fail. As a result, Cheatham wasn’t allowed to do any physical activity and was stuck in his hotel room. Waiting. Praying. Trying to relax. It was only after his mom’s appointment was done—and went well—that he started to feel better and finally passed the test. The irony was that Cheatham’s stresses tended to fade away on the court, not holed up in some hotel.
At practice for the Squadron, regardless of what he was shouldering away from basketball, Cheatham was always upbeat. On his birthday, he was even bouncier than usual. This wasn’t Z; it was “Versace Z.” Imagine a little kid on the blacktop, finally freed for recess, releasing all of his pent-up emotions at once. Now add thirty inches to his height and 150 pounds to his frame. That was Versace Z.
During full-court five-on-five action, the trash talk began. Most of the time—this day included—Cheatham went after Banks. The two were typically matched up against each other, and Banks made for an easy target. He was the second youngest player on the team at twenty-three years old, still adjusting to the pace and physicality of the pro level. His kindhearted nature was at odds with how the coaches wanted him to play. They didn’t want their six-foot-ten, 250-pound center to be Mr. Nice Guy. They wanted Banks to be a beast, bullying his way to the rim and dominating the glass. They wanted him to be like Cheatham.
“I am a nice guy—it’s not conducive to being a beast,” Banks said. “You gotta flip that switch. When the shit talking comes out, that’s when the nice guy goes out the door, for real.”
Well, the shit talking was out, and the nice guy was headed for the door. Cheatham attacked Banks relentlessly, as if the tiny BSC gym was filled with scouts. He got to the paint and finished strong. He drilled a few shots from the perimeter. Banks wasn’t backing down, but he wasn’t quite matching Cheatham’s production either. And Cheatham’s energy? That was always unmatchable. If Cheatham was there, it was impossible to be the loudest person in the room.
The buzzer sounded: water break, two minutes.
“Coach him up, Mery! He needs it!” Cheatham hollered, as Coach Andrade was walking Banks through some defensive adjustments. Andrade was a standout defender herself during an illustrious playing career.
The clash continued. Coach Pannone had a unique scoring system for scrimmages—midrange baskets were worth nothing, unless they came with fewer than four seconds on the shot clock; assists were an extra point; turnovers were minus a point. Nonetheless, whenever they were keeping score, things tended to get chippy. And Cheatham tended to be one of the culprits.
Nearing the end of practice, Zylan grabbed a defensive rebound, drove the length of the court, leapt toward the rim, and, at the last second, decided to kick the ball out. He contorted slightly in the air to create a passing lane but was moving too fast to align his feet for a normal landing. His body was off-center. His weight was shifted. One leg hit the ground first, planting at a weird angle and buckling beneath him. Cheatham went tumbling to the floor, his six-foot-eight body crashing with a thud. He immediately clutched his knee.
Then he screamed: a piercing sound that caused the rest of the gym—the rest of BSC, it seemed—to fall silent. Rolling around on the baseline, he continued to groan in agony. Gilchrist Schmidt, head athletic trainer, sprinted to his aid. Players fanned out, staring down at Cheatham with expressions of profound concern. It didn’t look good.
It didn’t feel good either. Cheatham was sure that his season was over. In that moment, with the intensity and acuteness of the pain, his mind went to the darkest place possible. I’m done. No more basketball. No more NBA. Any sort of serious injury would change everything. Even a nagging one that slowed him down just a bit could deter NBA teams from taking a chance on him. Cheatham already carried some swelling in his knee from prior—thankfully minor—injuries. This one, however, didn’t feel minor.
Practice was called. Coach Pannone assembled the team. Usually they spoke for a bit in the huddle, breaking down the day’s work and relaying any important announcements. This time, they just put their hands in the middle and faintly mumbled, “1, 2, 3, family.”
Cheatham was helped to the trainer’s table in the corner of the gym. He sprawled out, resting a hand on his knee, replaying the last few minutes in his mind. Why did I do that? What was I thinking? How could I have been so reckless? Schmidt examined the area and ran through a series of preliminary questions, just to get a sense for what they could be dealing with. “Where’s the pain?” he asked. Zylan pointed a bit higher than the back of his knee, more on his hamstring. Phew, Schmidt thought. Not an ACL. His initial impression was that the area got, in layman’s terms, overstretched. Like, really overstretched. Because of Cheatham’s preexistent swelling, a freak landing like that, where the knee bent so sharply, would be excruciating.
“When you have really no space in your knee—when you’re bending your knee, you already feel more pressure in it because you have a little bit of fluid in it—and then it gets cranked down on like that, it’s going to feel like, I just jacked something up,” Schmidt explained.
Schmidt was hopeful that it was nothing serious, as he informed the coaches. Of course, nothing could be ruled out until an MRI was conducted, which would be arranged right away. Cheatham was less optimistic. Based on what he was feeling, he was preparing for the worst. Next steps were beginning to be outlined when McGowan, the team’s equipment manager and basketball operations associate, emerged from a side door carrying a birthday cake.
Despite the giant cloud hanging overhead, everyone gathered around the trainer’s table. McGowan held the cake in front of Cheatham and the team performed perhaps the gloomiest rendition of “Happy Birthday” in the history of birthdays: “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Zylan. Happy birthday to you.”
Cheatham wore a smile the entire time. But beneath it, deep down, he was panicking. If this was as bad as he thought it was, it wouldn’t be a happy birthday at all.
“You think this is doable?” Hill asked, turning to face Pannone. It was late afternoon now, several hours after practice had ended, and several hours before Cheatham would limp his way to Topgolf for a birthday celebration. Hill and the Squadron coaches had gathered in the Skylight Lounge, reclining on cozy couches as radio hits played softly in the background.
Hill didn’t doubt that it was doable himself—of course not. He just sought confirmation, to gauge for sure whether Pannone and the rest of the staff truly believed what they were telling him: that if he adhered to the player development (PD) plan laid out before him, he could make it to the NBA.
And so he looked Pannone in the eyes, measured his expression carefully, and waited for a response. “T.J., what were you saying about Malcolm the other day?” Coach hollered.
“I said a lot of things,” Saint answered, smiling. He was hardly brief. A few days prior, he had told Pannone that he thought Malcolm had a real shot to be called up to the NBA during the 2021–22 season. Hill’s defense would appeal to NBA scouts, Saint reasoned. He just had to shoot at least 40 percent from three-point range—which, as of this meeting, he was not doing.
“Do you think it’s doable?” Pannone asked, flipping the question on Hill.
“Yes,” he replied, without hesitation.
Forty-five minutes earlier, Hill had entered the room unsure of what to expect. He wore shorts and a white T-shirt with the words “God’s Plan” printed in big letters across his chest. He had picked up a late lunch from Chipotle (his first meal of the day) but told the coaches that he would wait to eat until the meeting was over. This—whatever it was exactly—deserved his full attention.
Coach Huang, who worked most closely with Hill throughout the season, had put together the plan and was leading the presentation. This type of thing wasn’t a given in the G League—the Squadron staff went above and beyond to ensure that each player understood his individual roadmap to the NBA. They would leave no stone unturned when it came to development, lest a player miss out on a potential million-dollar opportunity because of their negligence. Thus, the attention to detail in Huang’s plan, down to the intricate design of the PowerPoint slides, was striking.
It began with a rundown of Hill’s numbers from his past two seasons overseas, ignoring his complicated stint in the Israeli Basketball Premier League. There were the basics—his points, assists, rebounds, and turnovers per game, along with his shooting percentages. Having meticulously pored through all of Hill’s footage, Huang was able to chart more specific metrics as well. In a table entitled “Shooting Breakdown,” he had separated Hill’s shots into five categories: rim finishes, paint shots, overall 3s, catch & shoot 3s, and off-the-dribble 3s. Those categories were further divided into four subcategories, based on how Hill took each shot exactly.
For example, the table indicated that Hill shot 27 of 43, or 63 percent, at the rim. Of those rim finishes, he was 2 of 2 when he used his left hand and 25 of 41 when he used his right hand. He was also 16 of 23 when he jumped off of two feet and 9 of 18 when he jumped off of one. All this data was put to use—Huang pointed out, for instance, that players tended to elevate quicker when they jumped off of one foot, which would be a necessary adjustment for Hill should he reach the NBA.
Hill nodded along as the presentation continued, his eyes bouncing back and forth between Huang and the large television screen. His three main development goals, according to the coaches, were to increase his three-point efficiency, become an All-Defensive player, and be contagious with his energy. Huang challenged Hill to impart his good habits—his routines—to the rest of the team.
Though just twenty-six years old, Hill had the approach and demeanor of a vet. He was one of the most disciplined players on the Squadron, perhaps too disciplined. Coaches sometimes worried that he was doing too much. Even Pelicans center Jaxson Hayes, who was with Hill during training camp, admitted, “I ain’t never seen somebody like that.”
Hill had been uniquely motivated since childhood. Growing up in Fairview Heights, Illinois, he never tried to fit in or follow others. He enjoyed anime (still does) and video games (not so much anymore) but never let those interests interfere with the pursuit of his goals—one of which, of course, was to make it to the NBA.
After getting so far ahead in school, Hill skipped the second grade. The move concerned his father, Malcolm Sr., a former Division II basketball player at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and longtime coach, who knew how much an extra year could do for his son’s athletic development. “So we doubled our amount of work during workouts because we were trying to make that year up,” he said. “And Malcolm didn’t mind doing the work.”
As he got older, Hill maintained that intense mindset. He was a big Kobe Bryant fan—his dog was even named after the late Lakers legend—and tried his best to emulate the “Mamba Mentality.” Hill’s stepbrother, Clayton Hughes, remembered him running several miles a day in middle school and constantly going to the gym. “Some people just know that they are destined to be great,” Hughes said. “Malcolm has always been that way.”
“What really helped him separate from the rest of the competition was that he was never afraid to work,” Malcolm Sr. said. “If I said, ‘Hey, let’s go to the gym and work on this,’ there was never any pushback from him. Never. Not one time. He always wanted to improve his game.”
“He would work above and beyond the expectation,” added Machanda Hill, Malcolm’s mom. “So, the expectation would be that you show up for practice and you go home. Even at an early age, and he still does this now, he would show up to practice early before everyone else, just to get shots up. Or he would stay after practice late to get shots up. Or we would come home and he would go outside and work on his ball handling or go to the local park and shoot free throws or run the track.”
That discipline carried Hill to the University of Illinois. Then it carried him to a professional career overseas. When he was in Jerusalem during the pandemic, he took his approach to another level. He became, in his words, “locked into life.” Not just locked into basketball, as he had been previously. Locked into everything. He embraced a holistic plan of attack. No more video games after practice. No more junk food. Every decision he made, every action he took, every thought he had—it would all influence what transpired on the court.
Hill liked to start his days in Birmingham around 6:30 a.m. with meditation, prayers, breathing exercises, and yoga. He would walk around barefoot on the grass at Railroad Park, across the street from the Lumen Apartments, to electrically reconnect with the earth—a practice that frequently made him the target of jokes.
Hill’s personality doesn’t exactly fit his intense lifestyle. He’s incredibly approachable, soft-spoken, polite—not the least bit intimidating. The sort of person to ask strangers about their days and express genuine interest in their responses. Whenever he goes back to Belleville East High School, he takes the time to visit his old teachers. “All the teachers loved Malcolm,” said Abel Schrader, who coached Hill as a senior at Belleville East. Schrader loved him too, as did Ray Hoffman, Hill’s coach before Schrader. “Just an unbelievably kind kid, and his family is the same,” added Hoffman. It was no different in Birmingham. Everybody loved Malcolm. They loved his attitude, his humbleness, and, yes, even his strange idiosyncrasies.
The only person Malcolm Hill is ever harsh to is Malcolm Hill. And that’s often. “Come on, Malcolm!” he will murmur under his breath during workouts. “Let’s go, Malcolm! Why are you missing shots, Malcolm? What are you doing, Malcolm?” He has never bought into the idea of natural talent; in his view, talent is built from hard work. Legends aren’t born, they’re forged.
So the mild-mannered Hill is always seeking ways to improve. He reads books about becoming a better man. He writes blog posts, reflecting on his current situation and encouraging subscribers to develop their own routines. “I want everyone who reads this to know and understand that anything is possible,” he once wrote. “I dare you to challenge yourself. Write down a goal and read it every day, multiple times a day.”
That was precisely what Hill had done. At the beginning of the year, while still in Jerusalem, he had written down a goal: Make the NBA by the end of 2021. He believed in it, even though few others did.
“I believe in believing,” he explained. “I think that’s just a part of the journey through life. You don’t really know how things are going to shake out, but if you just walk with that faith—true faith—then things will turn out in your favor. You just have to keep going long enough to see it turn out that way.”
The Pelicans had followed Hill since his days at Illinois. Even when he was glued to the bench in Israel, New Orleans was still intrigued by his potential. Pannone had previously coached Hapoel Jerusalem and understood that Hill’s situation there was tricky. Yarone Arbel, an international scout for the Pelicans, organized a lunch meeting with Malcolm. The two ended up talking for close to four hours—about Hill’s journey, his overseas experience, his distinct approach. Arbel was struck by Hill’s professionalism, especially amid such a frustrating phase of his career.
Malcolm was subsequently invited to join the Pelicans for the 2021 NBA Summer League. After training camp, he landed in Birmingham with the Squadron. How far he had come since writing that far-fetched goal down in his journal was extraordinary. In his eyes, it was all because of his daily routines that he was now on the doorstep of the NBA.
He hadn’t made it yet, though. There was just over a month left to achieve his goal, and Hill remained stubborn in its pursuit. He sweated through multiple T-shirts a day. He never went out or partied, adhered to a strict diet, reduced his phone time, and eliminated other distractions entirely.
“I haven’t seen many people from the G League with his type of focus,” Huang emphasized. “Because in the G League, guys come to us and they’re the misshapen or defective toy—there’s something wrong with them, whatever the case may be. And sometimes they have talent, but they’re just lacking the focus and work ethic. For him, the way he approaches the game is like an NBA player. His nutrition is right. His recovery is right. His weightlifting schedule is right. His sleep schedule is right—on and on and on.”
“Malcolm is not one of those people who can just wake up and do something different,” Hughes reaffirmed. “There’s a routine to everything he does. He probably has a routine for the way he brushes his teeth.”
Hill wasn’t the most athletic player on the Squadron—not even close. Each week, Kincaide tested the players’ vertical jumps; and each week, Hill’s ranked right around the middle. He couldn’t run the fastest either. Birmingham liked to push the pace and Harper was perhaps the quickest guard in the G League with the ball in his hands. Keeping up wasn’t always easy, but Hill gave 100 percent effort on every possession. Most guys didn’t have the stamina to do so—Hill did.
During grueling stretches—two-a-days and back-to-backs—he swore he wasn’t tired. All that he did in the offseason, he would say, prepared his body for these moments. And he wouldn’t allow what limited athleticism he had to be at less than full capacity. “He’s in like a ’97 Honda Civic, and he’s full-on pressing the accelerator, getting the max juice out of it. Literally, the max juice out of it,” Huang analogized.
Hill’s PD plan broke down all of his tendencies, specifying which he should aim to keep and which he should try to abandon. Predictably, the coaches wanted him to stop taking midrange jumpers and focus on shooting threes and attacking the basket. They had a list of new things for Hill to add to his game as well, like expanding his finishing package and becoming a more active cutter.
Huang had gathered film of players in the NBA to analyze. For offense, they studied four-time All-Star DeMar DeRozan’s ability to get to the rim, bump guys off, maintain balance, and create enough space to lay the ball in. For defense, they watched former G Leaguer Alex Caruso, noting how he clung to and chased his man all over the court.
“And he’s making, what, like, $9 million dollars now, coach?” Pannone said, as the tape rolled.
“He’s getting paid,” Huang responded.
Caruso was one of the G League’s best success stories. In August he had signed a four-year, $37 million contract with the Chicago Bulls after morphing into an elite on-ball defender.
The PowerPoint concluded with a screenshot of an unidentified player’s career history from Wikipedia. “Do you know whose career this is?” Huang quizzed Hill. Beginning in 2006, the player had gone from the Toronto Raptors, to the Colorado 14ers (D-League), to Hapoel Holon (Israel), to Donetsk (Ukraine), to Bnei HaSharon (Israel), to Aris Thessaloniki (Greece), to Sutor Montegranaro (Italy), to Piratas de Quebradillas (Puerto Rico), and to Brose Baskets (Germany) before finally sticking in the NBA in 2012. Since then, he had spent time with the Suns, Raptors, Rockets, Bucks, and Heat.
It was the long and winding journey of 2021 NBA champion P. J. Tucker.
For Hill, Tucker was an apt comparison. The two were around the same height, had similar builds, and played the same position. Tucker, like Hill, was not exceptionally athletic but was known for his effort and intensity, particularly on defense. He was usually tasked with guarding the opposing team’s best player, including, in the previous year’s NBA playoffs, former MVP Kevin Durant. Tucker embraced that role. He loved it. He had made a career, and a very comfortable living, off of it.
“Do you know how old P.J. was when he first stuck in the NBA?” Huang asked.
Hill shook his head no.
“Twenty-seven”—a year older than Malcolm. It took time for Tucker to both hone his skill set and get recognized by NBA scouts. The process was long and arduous, encompassing enough stamps to fill a passport, but when his opportunity came, Tucker was ready for it. Hill would be too.
Roughly an hour had passed. Hill’s Chipotle bag remained untouched on the table. He sat on an L-shaped couch, sandwiched between Pannone and Huang, silently processing the information. He knew he was capable of everything the coaches wanted him to do; he had, in fact, done most of it in spurts before. They weren’t asking for much: knock down open three-pointers, zero in on defense, compete with sustained energy, become more of a leader. They didn’t want him to handle the ball, orchestrate the offense, or carry a massive scoring load.
In other words, they weren’t suggesting that Hill take on a leading role. He would never be the focal point of an offense in the NBA—the primary, go-to option. But he could, if he stuck to the plan, be like P. J. Tucker. And unlike others in the G League, Hill was willing to accept that. He had come to appreciate the value of role players—something that was once hard for him to wrap his head around. Before college, he would watch the NBA and wonder why some guys were even on the court. How’s a player good enough to be in the game if he’s averaging just four points? he would contemplate. What’s the point of having him out there?
Hill got it now. He could spot all the reasons, all the little things those guys were doing to help their teams win: communicating, rotating on defense, spacing the floor, hustling, boxing out, taking charges. That would be him if he ever got to the NBA. “Getting on an NBA court is the hardest thing to do,” he once said. “So if you get thrown out there for doing the little stuff, that just shows how big it is in the grand scheme of things, you know?”
As Coach Pannone put it during the meeting that day, “Do the shit that no one else will do, like cutting. It’s so fucking easy. That’s how you get noticed.”
Doing the little things well enough to reach the NBA wasn’t actually “so fucking easy.” Pannone knew that, of course. But his point was clear. It was, for Malcolm Hill, certainly doable.
“In the NBA, a lot of guys are just really awesome at being simple,” Huang later explained. “They’re awesome at simpleness. It’s crazy to say that but it’s really hard for a lot of people to grasp that. For Malcolm, once we gave him that singular focus, he got it. And hopefully he just keeps it throughout the season. That’s gonna be his calling card for his chance to be in the league. And I hope he does it. I really do.”