GIDEON GEORGE HAD been in the United States just a few days when he spotted the basketball shoes at the bottom of a garbage can in a dorm room at New Mexico Junior College.
It was 2018, and the young player had just flown from Nigeria to a country he only knew from the movies, hoping to build a career in a sport he was still learning. Back home, this pair of shoes would have cost his parents a month's salary, but here, his teammate wore them a few times, didn't like the fit and tossed them in the trash.