Jacob Forchheimer

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Daniel Safdeye was juiced. It was October, 2021, and he’d just watched his Knicks beat the Celtics in double-overtime in the 2021 season opener. Outside Madison Square Garden, swaying up and down, he let loose a taunt in the voice of a Twitter troll personified, with a thick New York accent: “KD don’t you regret not coming to the Kniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicks?” KD, of course, was Kevin Durant, who that offseason had spurned the Knicks to join the Brooklyn Nets.

Yuta was drawn to basketball the same way many players his age were: by watching Kobe Bryant. His parents both played professionally: mom for the national team and professionally for the Chanson V-Magic, dad for the now-defunct Kumagai Gumi Bruins in Tokyo. Dad had the Lakers game on TV one day, and Yuta was hooked. At the time, his parents seemed like natural models for his career: no Japanese-born player had ever earned an NCAA Division I scholarship.