L
UBBOCK,TEXAS,
isn’t particularly close
to anywhere—the
nearest major city is
Dallas, about a five-
hour drive east. Point being, as Jarrett
Culver begins his professional basketball
career, he’ll be living and hooping
somewhere other than home for the first
time in his life.
By the time you read this, of course,
you’ll know where Culver—the star of
Texas Tech’s unlikely run to the NCAA
title game—landed in the 2019 NBA
Draft (No. 6 to the Minnesota Timber-
wolves —Ed.). But you probably don’t
know the depth of his relationship to his
hometown, the place where his parents
settled, where he learned the game,
where he chose to stay for college
even when other programs came calling.
Until now, he’s simply never had a good
reason to leave.
“My hometown is amazing,” Culver
says. “It’s not the biggest place, but
it was great growing up there—every-
body supports each other, everybody
shows love.”
It’s easy for Culver to feel that love
now: The former Coronado HS standout
who stayed home for college and led
the local university to within a single
possession (or missed call...) of a national
championship before jumping to the draft
lottery. But even before his impressive
all-around game attracted wider fame,
Culver knew what Lubbock meant to him.It meant growing up the son of a
preacher, in a family that instilled the
faith that he still calls “my rock.” It meant
battling his two older brothers, Trey and
JJ, in every sport imaginable, but
particularly on the neighborhood courts.
He shares one of his favorite childhood
memories, of a night when he lost a run
of games to his older brothers, before
finally the streetlight came on—the
signal to come in for the night. “But I
lost, and I didn’t want to go in, so I just
stayed outside,” he recalls. “I ended up
getting in trouble because I didn’t want
to go in. We kind of got into it—I punted
the ball across the street. They were
always bigger, faster, stronger and
usually beat me at everything. That’s
kind of what gave me my competitive
drive. I always wanted to be better, or at
least as good as them.”
His older brothers set a high bar: Trey
recently wrapped his career at Tech as an
NCAA champion high jumper with
Olympic aspirations, while JJ was an
NAIA all-district performer at Wayland
Baptist. But at the time, it wasn’t clear
how far Jarrett’s talent and sibling-
generated motivation would take him.
Going back to his high school days, he
didn’t make varsity at Coronado as a
freshman, and when he eventually did
and started putting up head-turning
numbers—20 ppg as a junior, then 30
ppg as a senior—he was mostly an
afterthought in the national rankings.
Growing to 6-7, he topped out as athree-star prospect in the Class of 2017.
Looking back, he blames his un-
der-the-radar status in part on loca-
tion—“Not a lot of people got out to
Lubbock to see what I could do”—and
also on his relative late-bloomer status;
unlike some other prominent members
of the 2019 lottery class, Culver wasn’t
an Instagram highlight star at 14 or 15.
But Texas Tech coach Chris Beard saw
plenty to offer the hometown kid a
scholarship, and after a slow-building
freshman campaign in 2017-18—in which
he started most of the second half of the
season—Beard’s faith was more than
justified last year.
“Going into my sophomore year, when
all the preseason rankings and awards
came out, I wasn’t in a lot of them, and
that kind of drove me,” he says. The
payoff: 18.5 points, 6.4 rebounds, 3.7
assists, and a rep as one of the best
defenders in the nation en route to being
named Big 12 Conference Player of the
Year. He says he didn’t really expect the
award, but he also wasn’t surprised.
“It’s something that I worked toward,
to be one of the best players in the
conference, so at the end of the day I
would say I expected it, just because of
how hard I worked.”
And now fans who only really learned
about him during the Red Raiders’
title-game run will get a chance to see
the fruits of all that work, night-in,
night-out in the League. Not bad for a kid
who never left home. SSLAMONLINE.COM 59Coming from a small city, not many people knew about
Timberwolves rookie Jarrett Culver until Texas Tech’s impressive
NCAA tournament run. Allow us to formally introduce you.KID
HOMETOWN
WORDS RYAN JONES // PORTRAIT STEPHEN DENTON