Three’s a charm
This year, the Thunder’s Jerami Grant had the best season of his career. And so did two of his childhood friends.
Four seasons of NBA dunks under his belt, Jerami Grant still can’t escape one surrounded by friends.
Grant’s former DeMatha Catholic High School teammate, Quinn Cook, figures Grant’s had better dunks in the past eight years, but he’ll never forget a baseline slam toward the end of the 2010 Washington D.C. city championship against Ballou.
Cook — then a junior, now a Golden State Warrior — ran up the floor to congratulate the kid he’d known since Mini-Mix basketball at the Kettering-Largo-Mitchellville Boys and Girls Club. Grant’s older brother, Jerian — then a senior, now a Chicago Bull — completed an intricate handshake with little bro. Another then-senior — now Indiana Pacer — Victor Oladipo pointed at a camera and flashed the smile Thunder fans briefly got to know over one season.
It’s rare enough when childhood friends
became NBA players. It’s even rarer when three of them — Cook, Oladipo and the Thunder’s Jerami Grant — have their breakout seasons at the same time and help teams to the playoffs.
“I was like the fourth option in high school,” Oladipo, 25, said of DeMatha, the prestigious school in Hyattsville, Md., 25 minutes northeast of downtown Washington, D.C. DeMatha had four former players in the playoffs this season, including Philadelphia’s Markelle Fultz.
“They were just more skilled than I was back then. There was Quinn, there was Josh Selby, there was Naji Hibbert, Jerian Grant. Marcus Rouse was on that team. We were loaded.”
Oladipo speaks humbly but has turned into the best of the DeMatha bunch. Following a trade from Oklahoma City to Indiana last summer, Oladipo emerged as an All-Star and one of the best all-around players in the NBA.
“I still got a lot of work to do. A lot of room to improve,” Oladipo said of being the best of the current NBA players from
DeMatha. “There were a lot of talented guys on that team. To be considered that is a blessing.”
Oladipo was traded from Orlando to the Thunder in June of 2016, followed by Grant getting traded to from Philadelphia to Oklahoma City in November 2016. But at least they wereselected in their respective drafts — Oladipo out of Indiana in 2013, Grant out of Syracuse in 2014. Cook had the longest journey to NBA stability.
After winning a national championship as a senior at Duke, Cook went undrafted in 2015, then bounced around the league on a series of 10-day and partially-guaranteed contracts.
He appeared in just 14 games for Dallas and New Orleans in 2016-17. After Cook was waived by the Pelicans in October of that year, it wasn’t uncommon to see him in the stands at Chesapeake Energy Arena, a few rows up from the Thunder bench, watching his childhood friends play side-by-side.
This season, the 25-year-old Cook was waived in preseason camp by Atlanta before signing a two-way contract with Golden State. After Stephen Curry sprained his right ankle in early March, Cook started six games.
Curry returned March 23 and suffered an MCL sprain in his left knee which ruled him out for the remaining 10 regularseason games. In that span, Cook averaged 15.4 points and five assists as a starter while shooting 50 percent from 3-point range.
His play earned him a two-year contract from
the Warriors.
“It’s huge,” Grant said of Cook earning the deal. “Just for him to go through everything … I’m happy for him and excited for him and I know the sky’s the limit.”
The same goes for Grant. Year 2 in Oklahoma City for the 24-year-old showed rapid growth, as he averaged a career high in field-goal percentage (.535) while finding his comfort zone at power forward.
“When you see his game progress every year since he’s been in the league, college, everywhere he’s been his game has gotten better because he puts in so much work,” Cook said.
“Obviously he’s getting more comfortable. He just gets to be himself and play off his instincts, and I’m so happy for him.”