Throughout the past week or so, Pat Spencer has become extremely popular within the Golden State Warriors fandom. The 29-year-old forward wasn’t a five-star recruit or a star basketball player coming out of college. Spencer was actually a superstar in another sport. Yet, threw it all away to pursue basketball. His rationale was quite simple.
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Since Stephen Curry has been out with a quadricep injury, every other member of the Warriors has had to step up. And Spencer has undoubtedly taken the biggest leap in the four-time NBA champion’s absence. He has scored in double digits in the last four games, including a career-high 19-point performance against the Cleveland Cavaliers, while leading the Warriors to victory.
What makes Spencer’s ascension in the NBA noteworthy is that it was never supposed to happen. Before the NBA was ever in the picture, Spencer was a star lacrosse player at Loyola University. He wasn’t just great at the sport, but arguably the greatest lacrosse player in NCAA history.
He broke countless records en route to being the top overall pick in the 2019 Pro Lacrosse Draft. However, his heart was never fully in Lacrosse. Basketball was always his first love, but one main deterrent kept him from pursuing the sport throughout his college career.
“I was a little bit undersized in high school,” Spencer said to the media. “Lacrosse just seemed like a more viable option at 5-foot-4, 120 pounds, trying to get recruited. So I put basketball on the back burner but knew that I’d be able to pursue my first love, later down the line.”
Spencer was able to do just that in his final year of eligibility. He abandoned lacrosse dreams to play basketball for Northwestern. At this point, he was no longer the undersized basketball player he was in high school. He stood at 6-foot-3 as a member of the Wildcats. However, this decision didn’t land well with many people, leading to plenty of outside noise.
“I don’t think there were too many people thinking I was going to the NBA. I don’t know if there were too many believers outside of myself,” Spencer said.
That belief went a long way as Spencer would go on to have an overall successful year against Division 1 competition. He averaged 10.4 points, 4.1 rebounds, and 3.9 assists on 43.6% shooting from the field. Although he was solid, by no means was he NBA-level.
“I didn’t shoot the ball well in college. Had a lot of work to do on my jump shot. My body wasn’t where I wanted it to be. So that year was big for me as far as the learning curve, knowing what I was figuring out and what I needed to do to get to this level,” Spencer added.
Evidently, he has learned from those lessons. Spencer has carved out a role for himself on the Warriors that should still be there once Curry returns to the lineup. The third-year pro is a testament to the lengths hard work can take someone.
