Many NBA players know they were destined for greatness. They’ve been the best players on their teams their whole lives, recruited as young teenagers, told that they will be the next big thing on the sport’s biggest stage. But the journey of Timberwolves rookies Josh Okogie and Keita Bates-Diop looked a little different.
Outside of their versatility, shooting and defensive potential, if there’s something that binds Minnesota’s two young draft picks together it’s that they had to fight for every inch of their success.
Take Okogie for instance—he wasn’t even ranked in the top 150 prospects coming out of high school, and going into the Combine, he wasn’t sure that he would enter the draft.