Alex Len still remembers the first time he ate a meal away from home. He was 13, just recently moved away from his hometown of Antratsyt, Ukraine, in order to attend Dnipropetrovsk Higher College.
A friend invited Len over for dinner his first weekend there. The friend’s mother had put together several dishes of homemade food, a fine spread for her own son and his friend.
But Len, who was already much bigger than boys his age, was hardly touching the meal in front of him.
“For some reason, I couldn't eat,” Len admitted. “I just didn't like it. I felt so bad.”
The experience still makes him laugh with a tinge of shame. Not too much, though. How ashamed can anyone be for liking his mom’s food more than someone else’s?
Juliya Len wound up cooking for her son far less than most mothers. A former athlete herself, she could neither deny her son’s height nor the opportunity it provided. As soon as Alex expressed the desire to seek the latter at Dnipropetrovsk – a sports academy located in central Ukraine – she backed him up, even if it meant seeing her child walk out the door at least half a decade sooner than most mothers plan.
"When I decided to leave my home town at age 13 to move to a bigger city to go to sports school and play basketball, she supported me...She said, 'if that’s what you want to do, I’m going to support you.' She's always been like that."
— Alex Len
“When I decided to leave my home town at age 13 to move to a bigger city to go to sports school and play basketball, she supported me,” Len said. “She said it was my life, my decision, and she supported me a hundred percent.
“Even to come to America, I was just 18. She was behind me, too. She said, ‘if that’s what you want to do, I’m going to support you.’ She’s always been like that.”
They adjusted for the mother-son moments they were about to miss. Juliya's parting gift to her son was a cell phone, and they called each other nearly every day, multiple times a day, “on my way to practice, from practice,” and so on.
This was a marked change for Len, who had grown up in a culture that respects and revolves around elders. Mother’s Day for the Lens in Ukraine was similar to those lived in the United States, the execution thereof completely thorough.
“On Mother’s Day, my mom wasn't supposed to do anything,” Len said. “My sister and I did the dishes, cleaned and cooked so my mom wouldn't have to worry about anything that day. It was our way to show appreciation for what she did on a day-to-day basis.”
Showing appreciation became a lot easier with the prospect of being an NBA lottery pick with a guaranteed contract. Len’s quickly rising star at the University of Maryland had him rising quickly on draft boards. It seemed just minutes after he’d left his homeland he was preparing for a whole different level of adulthood by declaring for the 2013 NBA Draft.
Juliya, who had visited her son once every few months at Dnipropetrovsk, made the trip to New York. As she sat with her son – now 19 years old, 7-foot-1 and 225 pounds – she pulled out her cell phone – just as the draft was starting – and pulled up a photo.
“You remember this picture?” she asked.
Alex did. It was a picture of a note he had posted above his bed when he was 10 years old. On it was a short list of goals, the kind of pipe dream, when-I-grow-up stuff you dream about achieving when you’re 10.
Juliya pointed to one of the items on the list, written in Ukrainian.
“Make it to the NBA.”
“She was really, really proud that I accomplished my goals,” Len said.