Javon Small will take first steps into NBA at Salt Lake City Summer League
That was nearly four months ago now during the Big 12 tournament, where his final game for WVU was a 67-60 upset loss against Colorado.
'I've got to be more aggressive throughout the whole game,' Small said that day. 'They had me running around, and then I'm just a natural playmaker, in my opinion, so I just thought I could make the right play.
'I started dishing the ball off, but, yeah, I just got to be more aggressive.'
Small will walk into the Jon M. Huntsman Center at 7 p.m. Saturday, another college arena — the University of Utah's — but with more on the line.
He's a professional now, one fighting and clawing just to prove he belongs at the NBA level after getting drafted 48th overall by the Memphis Grizzlies last month.
His first opportunity comes in the Salt Lake City Summer League, where Small and his summer league teammates will play Oklahoma City.
Memphis is also scheduled to play Philadelphia and Utah before the team travels to the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, where every team will be represented.
Fighting for respect, that's a basketball story Small has already lived numerous times over, well before he enrolled at WVU in 2024.
A native of South Bend, Ind., where football is king, Small literally grew up with a basketball in his hands or somewhere close by.
'We introduced him to basketball at about 2 or 3, because he had an older brother that played,' Small's mother, Jovanna Wright, told South Bend television station WNDU. 'But when he started sleeping with that basketball, taking that basketball every single place we went, dribbling it wherever we went, I knew that he was serious.'
Small's freshman year at Riley High School in South Bend didn't produce a lot of playing time, so Wright moved the family to Indianapolis.
She moved him again, this time to Compass Prep in Chandler, Ariz., for his senior season, which fell during the COVID-19 pandemic.
'You've got to do what you've got to do when you've got children, right?' Wright said. 'By any means necessary, and I wanted Javon to be able to experience college life with no debt.'
Small's fight to get noticed by the basketball world began in those days, but it was a struggle.
Indiana State offered him the opportunity to return close to home.
There were other offers from Ball State and Kent State. Virginia Tech was his only offer from a Power Conference School coming out of high school.
Small decided East Carolina was his best option, likely seeing an opportunity for playing time, because the Pirates had gone 19-31 in the two seasons before Small arrived on campus.
He came off the bench and played just two minutes in his first college game.
The rest, as they say, is history. Small went from averaging two points a game as a college freshman to 15.8 per game as a sophomore at East Carolina.
He rolled the dice and ended up at Oklahoma State for a season. Small became an instant leader for the Cowboys, but on a team that finished tied for last in the Big 12.
OSU head coach Mike Boynton was fired at the end of that season, Small put his name in the transfer portal again, and he wound up with the Mountaineers for a season.
There is no wrong way to describe that season in Morgantown.
It brought a historic road win against Kansas, where Small and a depleted Mountaineers' roster that had been ravaged by injuries went into Allen FieldHouse and pulled off a 62-61 shocker.
Small finished with a double-double with 13 points and 11 rebounds.
There was another upset over No. 3 Gonzaga, an overtime win in which Small put himself on the college basketball map with 31 points in 42 minutes.
There were just as many shocking losses, too, like the one against last-place Colorado in the Big 12 tournament or a 28-point gut punch against rival Pitt.
When you added it all up, Small still put together one of the finest individual seasons ever for a WVU point guard: 18.6 points, 5.6 assists and 4.1 rebounds per game.
Small will take his first NBA steps today amongst so many others in the same situation.
Armando Bacot played in the national championship game at North Carolina, is the Tar Heels' all-time leading rebounder and a former All-American.
He went undrafted in 2024.
Ace Baldwin was a former Atlantic 10 Player of the Year at Virginia Commonwealth.
Among the Grizzlies' 19-man summer league roster is a host of players who were once stars in college, but are now scratching and clawing for their own shot at the NBA life.
Just like Small.
It is not an easy path that lies ahead for the 6-foot-1 guard. He will not be coddled like Memphis' 2025 first-round pick, Cedric Coward, who is also on the summer roster.
Small will sign a two-way contract, which ties him to both the Grizzlies and the team's G League team, the Memphis Hustle, for one season.
He'll attend training camp in September and will likely spend the majority of his first season shifting between the Grizzlies and the Hustle.
After that, it becomes an unknown.
It's a situation Small has faced before.
'(The Grizzlies) are getting a competitor, a hard worker and somebody who is going to bring positive energy every single day. They are just going to get a dog,' Small said.
July 5: vs. Oklahoma City, 7 p.m. (ESPNU)July 7: vs. Utah, 9 p.m. (NBA TV)
July 8: vs. Philadelphia, 7 p.m. (NBA TV)
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