Kevin Murphy follows the same ritual almost every morning. He takes a piece of paper out of his wallet — the same page he has kept since his junior year of high school — and he re-reads messages he has written to himself. It is a list of his life's goals.
One aspiration is straightforward: make an NBA roster.
The sheet of paper, with its scrawls in ink and pencil, is tattered now, with worn corners and deep creases.
"It went everywhere with me," Murphy said.
Murphy's use of the word "everywhere" is apt. His quest to carve out a niche within the world's most prestigious basketball league has been an odyssey.