In the spring of 2016, he was told that Jalen Green would be stopping by Fresno’s San Joaquin Memorial High, where Roznovsky coached the boys basketball team.
“I was told, ‘Hey, there’s a Jalen Green coming on campus tomorrow to visit the school,’” Roznovsky said.
“Right then, and then seeing him that summer going into his freshman year, we started playing, and I said, “This guy’s going to the league,’” Roznovsky said.
He played for three seasons at Memorial before moving to Napa to play his senior season at Prolific Prep, a basketball academy where he would play a national schedule against top teams around the country.
Yet with Green weeks away from reaching the NBA, with the Rockets holding the second pick of the draft, there is a sense that he has been a sensation and a celebrity for so long that none of it feels new.
“He doesn’t really feel the pressure, like he’s kind of used to it at this point, even under the big lights, the cameras around him,” said Kyle Micheli, a friend and former teammate at Memorial.
“We were going into big games in high school, playing in front of crowds we’ve never played in front of before, in front of college coaches.
“He has a mindset he doesn’t back down from anything,” Micheli said.
Green’s ambitions, the demands he places on himself along with the elite basketball company he has kept, prevent him from becoming too impressed with himself or the acclaim.
At 19, he has felt stardom for years, since he was barely old enough to be called a teen.
“During the course of our 40-game high school season we were traveling from state to state,” Prolific Prep coach Joey Fuca said.
Some of that seems to come from a confidence that does not seem to bring arrogance.
Though Oklahoma State’s Cade Cunningham is widely predicted to be the first pick of the draft, and a majority of mock drafts have USC’s Evan Mobley the most likely selection of the Rockets with the second pick, Green believes his should be the first name called.
Even before Green’s play in the G League bubble, where he averaged 17.9 points on 46.1 percent shooting, Green expected to be the first pick of a draft a year later.
“Not that he would not like to be the two, the three or the four.
Green’s mother, Bree Purganan, said she does not know where her son got the ability to have confidence without conceit.
And he knows how quickly it can be taken away, that there’s always somebody out there working just as hard.
I always tried to instill in him you have to be humble, be thankful for what you’ve got, where you’re at.
“The more time he spent in the gym, the more time he wanted to be trained, the more time he wanted to go to practices, I realized he was serious.
The highlights fill videos but Fuca said it is Green’s style, from his insistence on shorter shorts to his easy confidence that explain “the following that he has.
Jalen is a once in a lifetime player to coach, especially on the high school level.