Roughly twenty minutes after the final buzzer sounded, Young reemerged from the locker room, still wearing his sweat-soaked black undershirt, uniform shorts, two arm sleeves, two leg sleeves, two pairs of Nike socks, and brown Jordan sneakers. Birmingham had just notched one of its most impressive wins of the season—107–102 over the Agua Caliente Clippers, the top team in the Western Conference—to improve to 5-5. After losing to the South Bay Lakers, the Squadron had won four of five and three straight with Cheatham back in the lineup.
It wasn’t unusual for players to retake the Legacy Arena court after a game. Most of the time, guys who saw limited or no action wanted to get some shots up before going home. It was extremely unusual, however, for a player who logged thirty-eight minutes to come back out for extra work, especially when that player had been nursing a knee injury and the team was scheduled to play again the following evening.
Young hadn’t shot well in the win—finishing 5 of 19 from the field and 1 of 8 from three—though he did contribute in other ways. His presence always made a difference on offense because he commanded so much attention. He actually had the best plus-minus (+11) on the team that night and turned it over just once against Agua Caliente’s stout defense. Still, he was frustrated. After starting the regular season on fire, Young had cooled off. He had hit just four of his last twenty attempts from behind the arc and knew how important his three-point percentage was to scouts.
So, it didn’t matter that the Squadron would be taking on the Santa Cruz Warriors in less than twenty-four hours—Young felt compelled to shoot his way out of his slump. The alternative, he knew from experience, was to go home and toss and turn in bed, thinking about his struggles. At around 9:30 p.m., he started a postgame workout with the help of two rebounders. On the opposite basket, Riley LaChance had begun a workout of his own.
Young led with midrange jumpers. He gradually worked his way out to the three-point line, hitting every spot on the floor. He shot in silence, eyes locked on the rim. Fans cleared the seats. Employees quietly went about sweeping the arena. Drowsy security guards lingered by the exits. John Petty Jr. caught up with some friends who had come to watch the game. Joseph Hooven, head of PR, sat at the scorer’s table, punching keys on his laptop. LaChance wrapped up his workout and returned to the locker room. Young kept shooting.
And shooting.
And shooting.
He hardly missed.
He continued for forty-five minutes—far longer than the typical postgame workout. He made a total of 450 shots and wrapped up by going 50 for 50 from the free-throw line. After thanking and dismissing his rebounders, he parked himself on the sideline opposite the Squadron bench. He just wanted to sit for a moment and think. Breathe. Reflect.
There were over seventeen thousand seats in Legacy Arena, and only a few were presently occupied. Slouching in his, Young scanned the vacant building. Massive bags had formed under his eyes. He was clearly exhausted. How could he not be? The Squadron had played five games in the last eight days, and Young had played significant minutes in all of them. With defenses keying in on him and refs not blowing many whistles, he had also taken a beating. His right knee, which he massaged softly, had been hurt for a while, but missing games wasn’t an option right now, nor was making it public that he was currently dealing with a nagging knee injury. It was better for NBA teams not to know about it than to know that he was fighting through it.
It was more than all that, though. Young wasn’t just physically drained—he was mentally drained, psychologically drained, emotionally drained. He wasn’t all the way there yet, but for the first time all season, he sounded defeated. He just couldn’t understand why his phone wasn’t ringing. He had done everything the coaches had asked of him, everything the scouts were supposedly looking for—more, even. He had embraced a leadership role and been the ultimate professional on and off the court. He wasn’t playing selfishly. He wasn’t forcing anything. He wasn’t being sloppy or careless with the ball. He was competing on defense, averaging 1.6 steals and sometimes picking up ninety-four feet from the basket. Sure, his shot had been up and down, but he had shown his versatility and broader skill set: 40 points against Stockton, 32 points and 7 assists against Salt Lake City, 16 points and 3 steals against Oklahoma City, 14 points, 11 assists, and 7 rebounds against Rio Grande Valley. And now, with Cheatham back, Birmingham was winning games against good teams.
So why, then, was his phone not ringing? Well, at the moment, it was because his phone was dead. Young seemed content to go off the grid, briefly blocking out the noise. He had been hearing the same message from his agent recently: “You’re close!” In some ways, it was encouraging. In others, it was gut-wrenching. He didn’t care about being close. He was, just by being in the G League and not China, close.
“I’ve been hearing that this is the most talk there’s been. But, you know.” He shrugged. “I’ve done everything that you can do as an elite player that belongs in the NBA.”
Yes, NBA teams had expressed interest. But the huge wave of call-ups was also beginning to ebb. High tide was turning to low tide. Young certainly could sense that.
Getting back to the NBA had proven far tougher than he thought it would be. He still couldn’t fully wrap his head around the reasons why. “You feel like these people forget about you,” he said. “You start to think, like, man, what else can you do as a player? What else do y’all want me to do as a player?”
He had understood, from the very beginning, that there were concerns about his past immaturity. But “it wasn’t a bad immature,” he explained. “It was just, like, I went shopping with Paul George, and I probably bought the same shit he bought. That’s bad. He comes in with a Ferrari; I come in with a Lamborghini. They don’t like me because of that.
“I’m just to the point where I feel like they’re laughing at me,” he continued. “But I don’t know—who knows? People don’t understand, I’m not going back overseas. If I don’t get back, I’m just going—I’m just going to probably retire. I’m not going back out there. I already told [my agent], like, ‘I’m done. Done over the water.’ My fam is here. And then I can just put a story out, like, ‘Shit, I tried everything I could do to get back.’ I ain’t a bad person—never been to jail, don’t do drugs, I got a family, married. What else do you want out of a vet? Like, goddamn.”
Young had mentioned the idea of retiring before in private workouts with strength and conditioning coach Jordan Kincaide (which had dropped off a bit as the season progressed), but jokingly. Here, he sounded more serious. If he wasn’t getting a call-up this season—a season that Sports Illustrated had dubbed “the year of the replacement player”—then it was hard for him to imagine coming back to the G League.1 For guys on the fringe, there would likely never be a better opportunity to reach the NBA than the few months when Omicron ran rampant. So if the door was closing on the NBA, and Young had no desire to return overseas, that left limited options. In this moment of distress, retirement seemed to be the most appealing. “It’s not quitting,” he added. “It’s like . . . shit, it’s enough when you’ve done everything. Y’all want me to win a championship in the G League?”
Schmidt, the Squadron’s head athletic trainer, walked over to let Young know that an ice bath was waiting for him in the locker room. “I’m gonna ride back with you—I’m about to get in the cold tub,” Young told him. “I’m just thinking about life right now, man.”
He couldn’t bring himself to leave the court—not yet. He spent some time studying the game’s stat sheet. He pondered what scouts were really looking for, considering that he had shown an ability to do pretty much everything throughout the season.
Why hadn’t it earned him a call-up? What were the real reasons he was still here? When Young thought deeply about it—taking into account his past and all the mistakes he had made—he still struggled to find an explanation.
“I think they just—I don’t know,” he said, his voice trembling. “I don’t even know what to say.” There was a long pause, a silence made even heavier by the sight of an empty arena, and the bright lights beaming down on him. “I’m going to take a little nap now and think about it,” Young finally said, crawling down onto the court. It harkened back to his days with the Pacers, when he used to sleep at the team’s practice facility, waking up throughout the night to get more shots up.
It was 10:30 p.m., quiet enough in the building now that falling asleep wouldn’t be so difficult. Young requested that ten minutes be added to the arena’s clock; the loud buzzer would wake him from his slumber. He sprawled out by the three-point line, cradling a basketball in his left arm.
“I’m trying to get back to my dreams,” he said, “so I gotta sit here and dream real quick.”