How the 2020 NBA draft was a reminder that high school basketball in Texas is as good as anywhere

Tyrese Maxey and RJ Hampton have been friends since they were in first grade, playing against one another on the AAU circuit, facing off as Dallas-area high school stars and staying in touch every few days leading up to the NBA draft Wednesday night.

Now they’ve reached another milestone in their relationship.

The Philadelphia 76ers drafted Maxey with the No. 21 overall pick in the 2020 NBA draft. Three spots later, the Milwaukee Bucks selected RJ Hampton at No. 24 and traded his draft rights to the Denver Nuggets.

It marked the first time two first-round picks in a single draft hailed from the Dallas area since Prime Prep’s Emmanuel Mudiay (No. 7) and Euless Trinity’s Myles Turner (No. 11) in 2015.

They led off a deep class of local graduates: Duncanville’s Jahmi’us Ramsey (No.43 to the Kings) and Jalen Harris (No. 59 to the Raptors) were second-round picks. Mason Jones (Triple A Academy) signed with the Houston Rockets as an undrafted free agent later Wednesday night, according to a report from ESPN’s Jonathan Givony.

“Another reminder,” Mavericks president and general manager Donnie Nelson said before the draft started, “that basketball in Texas at the development levels is as good as any in the United States.”

For the last six months, each day has been similar for Maxey as he looked forward to the NBA draft, which, finally, happened Wednesday night after two pandemic-forced postponements.

The former South Garland star set his alarm daily for 4:50 a.m. He’d be in a Los Angeles gym for his first of two-a-day on-court workouts, separated by a weight lifting session, by 6 a.m. Maxey took about 1,600 shots a day to refine his mechanics and add more arc to his 3-pointer, steady improvements to solidify his first-round pick grade.

Maxey, the 2018 SportsDay Boys Basketball Player of the Year, has been working toward playing in the NBA since he was 8 years old and his dad, Tyrone, would sit him down to watch film after his AAU games.

It was around that time Maxey also became friends with Hampton, whose dad, Rod, was also highly influential in his rise through the basketball ranks.

Hampton took a more unconventional path to the NBA, graduating a year early from Little Elm in 2019 and playing professionally for the New Zealand Breakers of the Australia National Basketball League, rather than in the NCAA.

Hampton’s statistics against mature, more experienced competition weren’t as flashy as when he dazzled as a consensus five-star recruit in Dallas, and a hip injury ended his 2019-20 season in mid-January, about two months before the coronavirus pandemic did the same for college prospects.

But the Nuggets, who will receive Hampton’s rights from Milwaukee’s original pick, saw potential in Hampton to contribute from the start with his speed and craftiness at the rim, which he’s been honing in Dallas and with former NBA players Penny Hardaway and Mike Miller in Memphis.

Ramsey’s selection made Sacramento the professional home on his winding basketball path.

The 6-4, 195-pound guard played his first two high school seasons at Mansfield Summit, including on the junior varsity team as a freshman. Then he transferred to IMG Academy (Florida) for his junior year before playing his last high school season as the leader of Duncanville’s 2019 state championship team and the 2019 SportsDay Boys Basketball Player of the Year.

As a Texas Tech rookie, Ramsey averaged 15 points a game and shot 42.6% from three while flashing the confidence and explosiveness that should translate well to his debut with the Kings.

A year and a half after graduating from Duncanville, Ramsey is at once an NBA rookie, the current Big 12 Freshman of the Year and, because of the pandemic, also still a reigning high school basketball state champion.

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A growing list

A list of all first-round NBA draft picks who graduated from local high schools in the last 15 years:

Find more high school sports stories from The Dallas Morning News here.