San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Santos beating the odds for Brazil
Warriors forward, his country’s only active NBA player, plays out a childhood dream
Gui Santos was playing a video game in his Santa Cruz hotel room last month when he received a call from his agent: You’ve made it. You’re an NBA player.
“At first,” Santos said, “I was confused.”
The plan had long been for Santos to join the Golden State Warriors once the contract with his old Brazilian club, Minas, expires at the end of this season. But after watching him improve faster than anticipated over a 16-month span, Warriors management wanted to change course and sign him to its 14th roster spot.
Santos, 21, understood the significance. In addition to realizing his childhood dream, he would become Brazil’s only active NBA player.
Not long ago, Brazil’s Leandro Barbosa, Tiago Splitter, Anderson Varejão and Nenê held significant roles on winning teams. Now, with Brazil’s top league faltering and several former prospects toiling in Europe or Asia after short-lived careers in the United States, Santos shoulders the expectations of 45 million Brazilian NBA fans.
By merely making the Warriors’ 15-man roster, he gave young players back home reason to hope. Less than 1 ½ years ago, with the draft’s fourth-tolast pick, Golden State took a flier on a raw, skinny teenager with a shaky jump shot. It thought maybe, just maybe, Santos could earn a guaranteed NBA contract by the 2024-25 season.
Yet here he is, speeding up the timeline as Brazilians call him an inspiration on social media. At 6-foot-8, 220 pounds, with a 7-foot wingspan and high basketball IQ, Santos is precisely what a the Warriors need: an energetic forward on a three-year minimum deal who can guard multiple positions, initiate the offense and roll hard to the rim.
Though he likely won’t crack the rotation this season, he should become more important the closer Stephen Curry (age 35), Klay Thompson (33) and
Draymond Green (33) get to retirement. In the meantime, Santos will continue yo-yoing between the NBA club and its G League affiliate in Santa Cruz.
Despite logging only 4.7 more minutes per game in the G League this season than he did last season, he is averaging 10.6 more points per game. This speaks to some key changes in his shooting stroke. As Warriors head coach Steve Kerr watched video of Santa Cruz’s Nov. 21 win over the Salt Lake City Stars, he noticed that Santos finally is repeating the same motion: balanced frame, minimal follow-through, relaxed shoulders, spread fingers.
“I’m a big fan,” Kerr said of Santos, who had 27 points on 11for-17 shooting (4-for-7 from 3point range), nine rebounds and four assists in that Salt Lake City game. “He just knows how to play. He’s versatile. He’s one of our best cutters, and he’s really working hard on his shot. … That’s the biggest thing for his development: becoming a very consistent 3-point shooter.”
Santos has plenty of motivation. Since Nenê retired 3 1⁄2 years ago from an NBA career that spanned 1,056 games and 11,746 points, Brazilian players haven’t enjoyed much success at the sport’s highest level. Didi Louzada, Lucas Nogueira, Cristiano Felício and others had intriguing
upside, only to wash out of the league within several seasons.
When journeyman point guard Raul Neto signed with the EuroLeague’s Fenerbahçe in August after receiving no offers in NBA free agency, Brazil was without an active NBA player for the first time in decades. Santos attributed that to a few factors. Barbosa, Splitter, Varejão and Nenê were core members of the Brazilian national team for so long that the younger generation’s development suffered.
This past summer, after a tumultuous couple of years, Brazil’s top league nearly shuttered when the sport’s national governing body stopped backing it. Some of the remaining teams have prioritized Americanborn players over local prospects. With basketball having lost some appeal, many of Brazil’s tallest athletes instead choose volleyball, whose national team is a world power.
Still, Santos believes he can help spearhead a Brazilian resurgence in the NBA. While in his hometown of Brasilia this past summer, he trained with two other top Brazilian prospects, Overtime Elite’s Reynan dos Santos and Samis Calderon. After their workouts, dos Santos and Calderon talked with Santos about what it would mean to South America’s largest country if all three of them made it big in the U.S.
“I feel like it’s kind of my responsibility to help put Brazilian basketball back on the map,” said Santos, who has totaled four points, four rebounds and one assist in 12 NBA minutes this season. “If I can have a good NBA career, maybe it’ll help pave the way for others.”
That’s far more realistic than it was a year ago. During Santos’ first couple months with Santa Cruz last season, he put his head down and drove toward the rim almost every time he caught the ball.
Coaches pleaded for him to execute their movement-heavy system. But even though Santos had become conversationally fluent in English through American TV and movies, he didn’t always understand what staffers were saying.
Some nights, he lay awake in bed as he wondered whether he would have been better off staying in Brazil. Several months earlier, after taking him as a draft-and-stash prospect, the Warriors presented Santos two options: stick with Minas, the Belo Horizonte-based club where he had become a go-to scorer, or join Golden State’s G League affiliate.
Eager to expedite his American dream, Santos took a huge pay cut and moved into a threestar hotel just a few blocks from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. When he wasn’t playing like he had hoped, he FaceTimed his father, Deivisson.
Though long known in South American pro leagues for his bruising style, Deivisson, a 6foot-11 center, hadn’t gotten the chance to play in the U.S. — even in a minor league. “You’re where you need to be,” he often told Gui during those calls. “You can make the NBA. I know it.”
To help ease his homesickness, Santos started frequenting a small Brazilian brunch restaurant in Santa Cruz, where he befriended waiters between bites of a Brazilian stew called feijoada. By last season’s midpoint, he was feeling more comfortable. After averaging 14.5 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.4 assists over Santa Cruz’s final eight games, he helped lead Golden State’s summer-league team before emerging as a core player for Brazil’s national team at the FIBA World Cup.
“I saw him dominate Canada at FIBA,” Warriors guard Klay Thompson said. “That’s all I needed to see. He’s going to be a solid pro.”
The 20 pounds of muscle Santos gained over the previous year allowed him to hold his position down low against bigger forwards. Few doubted that he had made enough progress to warrant one of the Warriors’ three two-way deals, but Minas made that impossible.
It only permitted Golden State to buy Santos out of the rest of his contract, which ran through 2023-24, if it signed him to a 15-man roster spot. With the Warriors committed to maximizing what’s left of Curry’s peak years, Santos figured he would have to wait another season to make his NBA debut.
Then he received that call from his agent, Aylton Tesch, on Nov. 6. With just 13 players on their 15-man roster, the Warriors only had one more day to sign a 14th player and reach the league minimum. After cutting elder statesmen Rudy Gay and Rodney McGruder in preseason, general manager Mike Dunleavy had scoured the market for a high-ceiling youngster, only to realize that the best one available was already in Golden State’s system.
Little over a week later, on Nov. 16, Santos made his NBA debut with 3:52 left in a blowout loss to Oklahoma City. After posting two points, three rebounds and an assist in that garbage-time cameo, he returned to his Chase Center locker stall to find his iPhone flooded with messages.
“Almost every day, I see someone online reminding me that I’m Brazil’s only NBA player,” Santos said. “I wouldn’t forget anyway, though. It means too much to me.”