The unlikely journeyman Lakers clutch hero: Matt Ryan’s whirlwind ride from Team USA (no, not that one) to L.A. (2025)

Two texts were waiting for Matt Ryan, but he was too excited to follow up on either.

This was Feb. 27, 2022, and Ryan was a G Leaguer playing for Team USA. Not that Team USA, the one you’ve heard of, or care about, that plays for Olympic gold, but the group that’s slogging its way through a bunch of obscure games to qualify for the FIBA World Cup in the Philippines. If they do qualify, then the Matt Ryans of the world don’t get to go to southeast Asia; they stand aside as American NBA stars take over.

But on the last Sunday in February, in front of a few hundred fans in a glorified gym on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., the Matt Ryans of the world beat Mexico, and he was fired up.

“He took it so seriously,” remembers David Stockton, who is the son of Naismith Hall of Famer John Stockton and on the USA team with Ryan. “Nothing mattered to him but the team.”

This was the last day this version of Team USA would ever be together. After the game, there was a bus ride back to the Marriott in Georgetown, and then another to Dulles International Airport for flights home or to the appropriate G League destination. Ryan was ticketed for Grand Rapids, Mich., where he would rejoin the Gold — the Denver Nuggets’ minor-league affiliate.

This is why he should have checked his phone.

One message was from his agent, Eric Fleisher. The other, from David Lewin, assistant general manager of the Boston Celtics.

Ryan saw the messages, and they said roughly the same thing. “Great job this week. Call me, as soon as you get this.”

Ryan put the phone down and got back to the handshaking and hugging in the locker room. Sean Ford, longtime chief operations man for USA Basketball, headed into the room looking for Ryan. “Have you spoken to your agent?” Ford asked, then urged Ryan to do so when he said he hadn’t.

The bus rolled toward the hotel, and a call came to Ryan’s phone. It was a number he didn’t recognize, so he let it go. Too loud on the bus to hear, anyway. When the bus pulled in front of the Marriott, and Ryan stepped off it, he could see his breath in the winter air as he pulled out his phone and stopped feet from the door. He listened to a voicemail that was left … by Celtics president Brad Stevens.

By this time, Ryan’s parents, grandparents and brothers who’d driven down from New York for the games were gathered in the lobby. He told them about all the texts and calls to his phone and stepped away to return that call. Stevens told him, “You’re an NBA player,” and the Celtics were signing him immediately to a two-way contract.

He was flying that night to Boston, not Michigan.

“I talked to Brad for like five minutes and then hung up the phone and started crying,” Ryan said. “My family, my family was crying, and then coach (Jim) Boylen came over to me and saw that I was crying, and he started crying.”

Ryan, 24 at the time, was in his first G League season. He’d gone to three colleges — Notre Dame, Vanderbilt and Chattanooga, shooting a combined 36 percent from 3 — and had his final season interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. He was passed over in the NBA Draft then, in 2021, didn’t get into the G League bubble. He was delivering food out of his car for DoorDash and working at a cemetery in Yonkers, N.Y., near his childhood home, the year before his phone rang with Stevens on the line.

After all the hard work. The hours alone in the gym in Yonkers while the world was shut down and he didn’t have a team. Callouses from the shovel. Swimming laps at a local pool to keep in shape. Playing about a dozen G League Games, where he shot 38 percent from 3. He was headed to the NBA.

But Ryan and his family and Boylen, the former NBA coach who is directing this Team USA group, weren’t just crying because things had generally turned for the better for Ryan.

When Ryan arrived the week before in Washington to play for Boylen, he had no offer from the Celtics. Nothing was imminent. But Stevens sent a scout to watch Team USA’s workouts and games and was blown away by the reports. Ryan was ripping the nets with his shot.

In the two World Cup qualifying games, against Puerto Rico and Mexico, Ryan, a 6-foot-7 wing, took 18 shots, all of them 3s. He made nine. And then Stevens called.

Ryan had shot his way into the NBA.

“When I was home alone, and I was in a gym alone, just shooting for hours and hours a day, like, I was convincing myself that I was the best shooter in the world,” Ryan said. “Now I come here, and I’m playing with the best player in the world.”

Hereis theLos Angeles Lakers, where on Wednesday night Ryan drilled a game-tying 3 to send to overtime a contest the Lakers eventually took from the New Orleans Pelicans. The BPITW mention refers toLeBron James.

Fast-forward from that fateful February day in the nation’s capital to the present. Ryan, who was with the Celtics through the summer as part of their summer-league roster, was a late invite to Lakers training camp and made the roster by shooting 36 percent from 3-point range in preseason games for a team that, shall we say, doesn’t shoot so well.

When I spoke with Ryan last week, his place on the Lakers was tenuous. He played 18 minutes on opening night, and knocked down two 3s in rotation minutes against the Nuggets Sunday in the Lakers’ first win, but he had multiple games in this young, already trying Los Angeles season when he didn’t play at all. Lakers officials urged a cautious approach, to see if Ryan’s status evolved. His career high 11 points on 4-of-11 shooting against the Pelicans came at the perfect time. And that shot, an impossible, fadeaway 3 from the corner as time expired, is a magical moment for a player at any point on his journey.

More shots are coming his way.

In that game back on opening night againstGolden State, the Lakers were missing Troy Brown andDennis Schröderwhen coach Darvin Ham turned to Ryan. He shot 1-of-3 from deep, but the Lakers made just 10-of-40 3s in the loss to the Warriors, and James said afterward: “I mean, to be completely honest, we’re not a team that’s constructed of great shooting.”

To the extent that James knew anything about Ryan — well, before Ryan tied the game for him Wednesday — he almost surely is unaware of how Ryan made it to the league in the first place.

But James will throw almost anyone a pass, once, and if that no-name, maintenance worker at the cemetery makes the shot, he’ll get another chance.

“Every day I’ve got to come in and prove I’m the best shooter in the gym,” Ryan said. “The biggest difference between what I’ve experienced so far in the NBA compared to prior teams is just the trust between teammates. Being on the Lakers now and playing with such prestigious players, I find myself open a lot but not getting the ball because the trust isn’t there yet.

“Playing with LeBron, who has had just so much success in his career and has had success with shooters, I think a time is coming where he’s really gonna look at me, like one of those next really good shooters that he has. At least, that’s what I can hope for.”

If Ryan sticks with the Lakers and shoots his way into Ham’s rotation, it would be a feel-good story in a locker room that seems consumed by Russell Westbrook’s awkward fit and Anthony Davis’ various injuries.

Already, his story is a shining example of the Team USA you seldom hear about.

For every Olympic showdown you’ve seen between the Kevin Durant-led Americans against France, or every Team USA romp in London, paced by James, there are two or three games where the players in USA jerseys are young men you’ve never heard of or had forgotten. Most of these games are played during the NBA season, when 99.99 percent of the basketball world is not paying attention to FIBA qualifiers. And when the games are in the summer, American stars skip them anyway. It’s the Olympics, maybe the World Cup, and otherwise, don’t bother me — in that order.

The Americans who join in these qualifying tournaments are playing in sweltering arenas in Cuba or Brazil or Argentina or Puerto Rico. It is their job to win enough games so that Team USA qualifies for the World Cup (and playing well there is how it gets to the Olympics), even though the attention and the spoils will not belong to them. And if they lose, they could cost USA Basketball its No. 1 world ranking.

There is always a pride factor when it comes to accepting an invitation to play for one’s country. But in many cases, the decision comes down to which opportunity offers the best chance to make the NBA.

Ryan is one of two players from Team USA’s current qualifying cycle in the NBA. The Celtics awarded their final roster spot to Justin Jackson, who starred for the Americans over the summer.

“Everybody can play at the NBA level on that team,” said Stockton, who has played briefly in the league and will open this campaign in the G League with Fort Wayne. “It’s all about the opportunity.”

When NBA players say no or are unavailable, Ford tries to build a roster of G Leaguers like Ryan, with former NBAers like Stockton or John Jenkins, who starred over the summer for the Americans and is back in the G League with the Ignite, or Langston Galloway, who two seasons ago was in the NBA Finals with Phoenix and is now out of pro ball. He will play for Team USA in its next World Cup qualifier, this month in Washington. Joe Johnson and Jordan Bell played on that team with Ryan too.

“Matt is an example, and there are others, of us being able to showcase a player, just kind of give someone an opportunity,” Ford said. “For us, it’s gotta help their career, like, ‘Well I’m going to USA Basketball to help them, but it’s gonna help me too.’”

Ryan first landed on Ford’s radar in December, when Ford was hurrying through the Las Vegas airport on his way to catch the end of the annual G League showcase. Ford bumped into Scott Howard, who oversees the Grand Rapids team, and he told Ford about a lanky gym rat who shoots hundreds of shots a day named Ryan, who might be a good fit for the Americans.

The next month, Ford was at his own son’s lacrosse game when he learned a player who had committed to Team USA needed to drop out. Ford’s next call was to Ryan, who accepted almost immediately.

“Some guys are like, ‘Let me talk to my agent,’” Boylen said. “He was so excited to play for us, and he said to me, ‘Coach, I’ll take any role you give me.’ Then he goes out and shoots 9-of-18, and next thing you know, he’s on the Celtics. So there you go. The pureness of heart of that kid. The guys who commit to us, they continue to learn and grow.”

Stockton and Ryan became very close through their brief Team USA experience together. Ryan swears by Boylen and would jump at another chance to play for him.

These were the bonds Ryan was thinking of that day in February after beating Mexico. They were the cause of the delay in him checking his phone.

On the bus from the Marriott to Dulles, where Ryan would fly to Boston, he sat near Galloway, who’s played more than 450 NBA games and averaged 10-plus points for the Pistons four seasons ago.

Like Ryan, Galloway wasn’t drafted. He knows what it is like to get the kind of calls and texts Ryan had received after Team USA’s win. As the bus rolled along that wooded road in Virginia, connecting the capital to the big city to the massive airport, Galloway was sitting close enough to Ryan to offer him some parting advice.

“He was like, ‘Whoa, like, that happened fast,’ and I said to him, ‘Hey, look, don’t worry about anything else. You just go take care of your business,’” Galloway said. “Go have fun and enjoy the ride, and look up at where he is now. It’s crazy.”

After that shot Wednesday, let’s hope he checked his phone.

(Top photo: Gary A. Vasquez / USA Today)