In today's Growing Up the Montana native talks about the journey that brought the former D-League call-up to Cleveland ...

When I was 14 ... I grew six inches that year – from 5-10 to 6-4.

I was in a lot of pain, physically, since I was growing so much. Everyone just said, ‘Start playing basketball.’ And I was new to the area from a new school and trying to fit in and make new friends. And kept doing it and I actually enjoyed playing basketball, so I kept playing. And it pretty much became the main focus of my life.

That was my first organized basketball experience ... in the church. And then the junior high season started. But the church ward got their hands on me first. And so, I would play three levels – deacons, teachers and priests. And so some nights I would have three basketball games all in a row.

I’d be exhausted, but when you’re a kid that young, you’ve got a lot of energy to burn. Nowadays, if you asked me to do that ... I don’t think so.

My best coach ... (and I guess he was my first real coach) was Carrie Rupp at East High School.

He’s currently the coach now at Louisiana Tech University. He was a great guy and he taught me so much – all the basics and the principles of things. But the most important thing he taught me was to always play hard, no matter what – bad calls, turnovers. If you always play hard, you won’t have any regrets. He encouraged in me a strong worth ethic. I attribute all that to him.

He was great with me; he never got negative on people. He would never get in your face – he would just take you aside and ask, ‘Do you know what you did wrong? OK, don’t do it again. Learn from it.’

Coach demanded ... a high accountability from his players. ‘To whom much is given, much is required,’ he used
to say.

He didn’t let anyone get away with slacking off. Brilliant coach, brilliant guy but, more importantly, a great person. He taught me to always have a good balance between basketball and personal life.

He was my mentor in life. He still is.

My family wasn't necessarily ... very athletic. Dad played baseball in high school and he didn’t have a lot of support from his parents. And when his brother went to Vietnam, he stopped playing. But I’m pretty much the only kid who played sports out of a family where I'm the youngest of five. They were just a bunch of academics.

My family always said 'Be who you want to be, but if you’re going to play basketball, you have to take care of your studies.' They didn’t want me to be a living example of irony to have both your parents being school teachers and have their son getting bad grades.

With my hearing loss ... there are times you’ll miss a play. Sometimes you’ll be a step off on a play.

But on the other hand, you’ll be so visual, you feel like you can see everything. You can almost get ahead of the play if you know what’s coming. It’s like a game of chess and you learn to look for patterns and tendencies.

Sometimes I’ll get hit really hard on a screen because I can’t hear it called out by a teammate. When you play in a loud gym, in a loud arena, it gets so noisy anyway that, at times, everyone’s deaf.

Playing overseas was a tough experience. I started out in Instanbul, Turkey – which was a great city. But the team I was playing for wasn’t paying me, so I wound up leaving. That was six weeks into my rookie year.

I went to France and did a quick substitution job for a guy who broke his foot. I played in a gorgeous city about an hour north of Paris called Rouen. I enjoyed that city a lot more than I did Paris, actually. (It used to be the capital of British Normandy – Joan of Arc was burned at the stake there. Richard the Lionheart was buried there.) Incredible history – I loved that town.

I finished up in Spain and I liked Spain a lot. Good culture – very laid-back. Not like the French – so testy and touchy about everything.

I got the call from Idaho ... from the coach, who asked me to come give it a shot.

I was making $12,000 gross, and obviously that wasn’t helping out the bills at all. I was playing behind four other guys. But last March, the starting center broke his leg and the starting power forward went to Turkey, ironically, to play for the same team that didn’t pay me.

I was like, ‘Hey, good for you. Good luck over there.’

So I stuck with it ... in the D-League and over the last month of last year, I was averaging 22 points and 13 boards per game.

This year, I got my call-up with the Cavaliers and it’s been a great experience – the timing’s been great. Everything just worked out for the best. I’m thrilled to be here in Cleveland and the entire experience with this organization has been very positive and very professional.