sport news Paolo Banchero's journey to being the No 1 pick in 2022 NBA draft trends now

As a young starry eyed kid in Seattle, Paolo Banchero was given one rule by his dad: play two sports until you reach six feet, eight inches.

It made sense. Mario, his father, was a walk-on tight-end at University of Washington while his mother, Rhonda, left the same college as the basketball team's all-time leading scorer, before eventually winding up in the WNBA.

High-level sports evidently ran in the family.

Unsurprisingly Banchero thrived in both football and basketball from as young as six years old. With a football and basketball aficionado on either side of the kitchen counter for him to learn from, his athletic IQ across both the turf and the court sky-rocketed.

'I think he would have been a first-round draft choice. There's no doubt,' Monte Kohler, former football head coach at O'Dea High School, told Sporting News.

Banchero stood tall as a 6-foot-7 quarterback that had a solid arm and an enviable ability to escape the pocket and outrun pursuing defenders: Taller, stronger, faster, plain and simple.

In one season as QB at run-centric O'Dea - before he passed the 6-foot-8 threshold set by his dad - Banchero threw for 191 yards, completing 15-of-36 attempts to help his school win the state championship in 2017.

'I'd say it was very close,' his then-team-mate Owen Prentice added to Sporting News, when asked if Banchero ever considered sticking with football and chasing a future in the NFL.

'I wasn't sure which sport he would pick. There were a few times we tried to convince him [to switch back to football]. He would brush it off and joke about it. We all understood that's the way he was going.'

While it is easy to say now having been drafted No 1 overall in the 2022 NBA Draft by the Orlando Magic, basketball always felt like the path. Football may have been his favorite sport growing up but his body was morphing into a physique ready made to plug into the NBA.

He was 6-foot-7 as a freshman in high school. He was a kid with a man's body.

His basketball journey was no hand-out from his mom, though. In fact, as an assistant coach at Holy Names Academy, an all-girls school in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Rhonda would only let him practice on the court if he quit joking around.

Fundamentals, even then when he was just starting out, would take center stage.

'I see him throwing up trick shots or just hooking the ball up. And I stopped or pause, go over there and tell him, 'Don't practice bad shots. Don't practice that mess,'' Rhonda explained to Andscape. 'And he was just always listening. Coachable, even from that age.'

As he grew up, slowly Paolo was integrated into 5-on-5 against some of the girls in the team. It quickly became apparent they were better. Their handle was smoother and his athleticism alone wasn't getting the job done. It was a further reminder of the need to master the fundamentals.

By the time he put his football helmet down and focused solely on basketball, Banchero was gaining national attention from a host of college scouts. Here was a forward with a guard's handle who could score on anybody.

Coached at O'Dea by Jason Kerr, Banchero, now towering at 6-foot-10, masterminded a run to winning the 3A state championship in 2019.

'Winning takes priority over everything,' Kerr later told the Duke Chronicle of Banchero's mindset.

'It's what makes him a team first guy, it's what makes him a really good leader. It's what makes him the first one at the gym and the last one to leave. He's driven to be successful, and whatever it is, even if it's, 'I'm trying to be a good friend to my boy over here.' He's gonna be the best version of that because it's just kind of what motivates him.'

And yet his biggest critic was Rhonda. As praise pieces on Banchero were being penned and scouts began to wax lyrical about his vertical and his handle, stories are told of how his mother, much like her father had done during her developmental years in school, would be incredibly critical of her son's game.

Her critique became so frequent and so intense that eventually this high-school phenom told her to stop watching his games. He wanted her away from whatever gym he was playing at.

'It actually impacted our relationship negatively,' she explained to the Athletic. 'He was like, 'I don't want you to come to any more of my stuff: like, my games or anything.' So for a year, I didn't. And it was hurtful, but it wasn't. I understood it.'

Rhonda was a mother that was incredibly protective of her son and off the court and her words carried no greater weight than in 2018.

Banchero, then 15, was leaving a Chris Brown concert with some friends when he, along with close friend and fellow player Noah Williams, were pulled over by police as they travelled home in a Jeep.

Police believed it to be stolen - it belonged to Williams' mother - and pulled over the two black teenagers. Rhonda had long told Banchero that were this ever to happen, give your name, co-operate and put your hands on the dashboard. It was soon to be potentially life-changing advice in an incident that went on to shape him.

The Seattle Times reported at the time that a police officer pointed a gun at Williams' head without providing an explanation to the terrified boys. Rhonda later claimed another officer struck her son in the chest but retreated when hearing his age.

The case was later thrown out when the Jeep was proven to be completely legitimate but it left an indelible mark.

'I've had some encounters where I had to do the right thing in situations that were tricky,' Banchero said in 2020, when he finally opened up on the incident in light of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by an officer. 'Just knowing what my mom had taught me and using that was big.'

Banchero and Williams later chose to sue the King County Sheriff's Office for their conduct.

The young basketball stars were delivered an apology and $80,000 as compensation. New use-of-force guidelines were also enacted by the force to prevent any such repeat.

Back to the court, a place where Banchero was the man in control, tough love from his mum would prove no long term barrier as his stat line soon became impossible to ignore.

He put up 20.4 points, 10.7 rebounds and 4 assists per game during his sophomore and junior seasons.

Further recognition arrived when he was crowned the Gatorade National Junior of the Year in 2020. Offers flooded in.

University of Washington, where his parents went - and met - was attractive, as were heavyweight college basketball programs at Duke, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Duke is the Mecca for college ball, producing NBA stars such as Kyrie Irving, Jayson Tatum, Brandon Ingram and Zion Williamson in recent years, in a system made famous under the guidance of Mike Krzyzewski, aka Coach K.

Then there's Kentucky,

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