A few trinkets and mementos line the shelves behind Wes Unseld Jr.’s desk in his office at the Washington Wizards’ practice facility in Southeast D.C. One is a basketball, still in a protective plastic bag, commemorating his first win as an NBA head coach, a victory over Toronto in his debut last season. There are also two family photos, along with a posted paper copy of the team’s schedule.

On top of a cabinet sit three bobbleheads, still in their boxes. Next to Natasha Cloud, of the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, and Manute Bol, tied for the tallest player in NBA history, is one of a broad shouldered, extremely intense-looking man squeezing a ball with two hands held high over his head. For basketball fans of a certain age, No. 41 in the red, white, and blue uniform is as an unmistakable sight.

Years after the late Wes Unseld Sr. retired from the Baltimore/Washington franchise he took to new heights, first to an NBA finals here, and then to an NBA championship after it moved south down I-95, his presence still looms large over the organization that his son was tapped to revive last year.

Following in his father’s Hall of Fame size 16+ footsteps—Wes Unseld Sr. also coached and served as general manager for the team following his retirement as player—would be no easy task for any coach, let alone one who shares his name. But perhaps there’s no one better suited temperamentally to take on that challenge—after three straight losing seasons and 44 years since the rugged, elder Unseld led them to their last title—than the cerebral, understated Unseld Jr.

“All this is surreal,” says Unseld Jr., 46, who answers questions with the thoughtfulness of a man with an economics degree from Johns Hopkins University, which he is. “I can’t believe I’m a head coach in general, but certainly not here. To know this organization inside out, growing up, and then having the opportunity to be where I’m at, back where it all started, it’s pretty cool.”

Technically, it all started 38 miles northeast from D.C.’s Capital One Arena, in Catonsville, where Wes Sr. and his wife, Connie, made their home. Unseld had come to Baltimore as the second overall pick in the 1968 draft by the NBA’s Bullets, which then played in the Civic Center downtown. A big, bruising low-post player from the University of Louisville, it didn’t take Unseld long to establish himself in the league. That year, he became only the second player in NBA history to win both the Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year awards in the same season. Despite their success on the court (the team made it to the 1971 NBA Finals), the Bullets left town in 1973 for a shiny new arena in Prince George’s County. The Unselds, however, decided to stay put.

“My neighbors were very warm and nurturing,” Connie says. “There was no one here in Baltimore from our family so our neighbors were a support system. They were like a second family to me. We liked Baltimore.”

It was in that same Catonsville house that they raised their daughter, Kim, and her little brother, Wes Jr.

“We had a ball,” Unseld Jr. says of growing up in Baltimore County. “It was family-friendly, lots of kids in the neighborhood. It was a pretty normal childhood of the ’80s, when you got on your bike, you tooled around. Pretty much you had the run of the neighborhood. We spent a lot of time outside, playing all kinds of sports.”

His parents never pushed their children into any particular sport or activity, Unseld Jr. says. Academics were their priority, as well as an understanding that if you started something, you could bet that you were going to finish it. Wes Jr. played the piano, sang in the choir, and liked to read. Baseball, tennis, swimming, and track and field were among his athletic pursuits, but the Unselds were a basketball family, and Wes Jr. caught the bug. From a young age he was a keen observer of the game, and often went to his father’s games at Capital Centre in Landover.

At home, the humble Unseld was cognizant of staying out of his son’s way. After retiring as a player in 1981, he went on to coach the Bullets from 1988 to 1994, but his career on the sideline had a rather inauspicious beginning, a little closer to home.

“When [Wes Jr.] was in elementary school, Wes was the coach [one] year,” Connie says. “And they lost. A lot. Wes said, ‘You played in the NBA, daddy. Why are we losing?’ I just laughed.”

Still, as Wes Jr. grew and developed as a player, his father would work with him on their court in the backyard of the family’s home.

“It was almost like watching the maestro working on mini-me,” Kim says. “My daddy never played dirty, but he would tell him it’s not a foul until the whistle blows. He’d put his body on him, and he wouldn’t let my brother anywhere near the paint.”

Unseld Jr. attended high school at Loyola Blakefield in Towson, where he developed into a solid, if not dominant player. The knock on him, as described in a 1993 story in The Sun, was that he was too unselfish.

“In a sport where one-on-one ability draws most of the attention and headlines, Loyola High’s Wes Unseld Jr. is a throwback—a basketball player who thinks team first,” it reads.

Unseld Jr., a team captain of whom his coach said, “I’ve never coached anyone who has been as much of a gentleman,” was a lowpost player who stood just 6-feet-3-inches and weighed 190 pounds, much smaller than his father. Thus, offers from big time colleges did not come flowing. Not that he cared.

“I was a very good student in high school, and I knew at an early age that I wasn’t playing in the NBA, so it was like, ‘Okay, I can still have an opportunity to play at a higher level,’” he says. “But the bigger priority was to go where you could get the best education.”

He didn’t have to go far. Unseld enrolled at Johns Hopkins, where he became a key player for the Blue Jays. A two-time captain, he helped lead JHU to 57 wins and the 1997 ECAC Championship. When he graduated in 1997, he ranked 15th in program history in scoring, and he still ranks 11th in career field goal percentage (.551) and 15th in blocks (60).

“He was smooth,” recalls his teammate and friend Evan Ellis, who’s now the Portland Trail Blazers’ orthopedic surgeon. “We called him The Classy Vet. He just moved well. I remember the first time we were playing pickup, they fed me the ball in the post, and all of a sudden he had taken it from me. I looked at him and thought, ‘Wait a minute.’ That had never happened to me before.”

At that point, coaching wasn’t on Unseld Jr.’s radar. He planned to apply to graduate schools, with an eye toward working on Wall Street. But his father convinced him to take an internship with the franchise, which had switched its name to the Wizards. A few months in, grad school didn’t stand a chance.

The nexus of the Unseld family’s universe was, and still is, Unselds’ School, a private K through 8th grade school in West Baltimore. Connie got the idea to open it after seeing the way children were educated on kibbutzes during a trip to Israel the late Washington owner Abe Pollin took her and Wes Sr. on following the Bullets’ 1978 NBA Finals’ win.

Both Connie, a kindergarten teacher, and Wes Sr., who had a degree in education, took hands-on roles at the school once it opened in 1978. Wes Sr. was much more active after his career as a player, coach, and basketball executive ended. Always a diligent worker, he cooked lunch in the cafeteria, drove a bus—whatever was necessary. Wes Jr. was the school’s first fifth-grade graduate.

“My sister and I would always laugh, [the school] was like our third sibling,” he says. “We were there all the time. Every day after school we would go there. I would go back in the library and do homework. We’d be in there cleaning up, mopping floors, taking trash out. It was a family business.”

The school took an emotional hit in 2020, when Wes Sr. died of complications from pneumonia. Unseld Jr. has been using the backing of the NBA to help with renovations. He returned to the school, one of the few fully accredited, non church-affiliated, Black-owned schools in Maryland, in April when the Wizards and Heart of America teamed up to help renovate it as part of the NBA’s 75th anniversary celebration.

“He’s very encouraging to all students who graduate,” says Connie, who remains the school’s director. (Kim is its principal.) “It’s so cool that he graduated from Unselds’ School and the most outstanding alumni is Wes Unseld. They relate to him. That’s Coach Unseld, they say, he went to my school.”

One day, when they hear about his career path, those kids will learn a valuable lesson: Regardless of his last name, Unseld Jr. had to pay his dues in the NBA. He started out scouting personnel and college games before then-Wizards assistant coach Mike Brown (now head coach of the Sacramento Kings), Unseld Jr.’s neighbor in Crofton at the time, recommended that he start scouting pro games.

“I started doing it, and I’m sure I was awful, but he was very encouraging,” says Unseld Jr., who now lives in Montgomery County with his wife, Evelyn, and their two young kids. “We watched film together. It piqued my interest. All of a sudden I was drawn into this. I fell in love with the competitive piece. Not being able to play anymore, you don’t lose that competitive spirit.”

He became an assistant coach with the Wizards in 2005, and followed that with stops in Golden State, Orlando, and Denver, where he helped develop the Nuggets’ defense and the overall game of their superstar, Nikola Jokic.

“Oh my god, I talk to Wes about anything,” the two-time MVP told The Denver Post. “He does deserve some credit. Not just defensively…He had some impact on my basketball career and my basketball growth. He’s such a great guy, he’s never gonna take credit.”

Over the past few years, Unseld Jr. interviewed for four head coaching vacancies. After each failed interview, he essentially self-scouted, asking executives how he could improve and plotting ways to better prepare. When the Wizards opportunity came up last year, he was ready. So was the rest of the NBA world. Reportedly, Jokic and Denver head coach Michael Malone called Washington executives to lobby on Unseld Jr.’s behalf.

“Extremely bright. Great communicator. No ego. Hard worker.” That’s how Malone described Unseld Jr. to The Washington Post. “Shaking hands, kissing babies, trying to get ahead, that’s one thing he’s not,” he said. “Unfortunately, I feel that’s part of the reason it took so long for him to get a head job, because he wasn’t doing those things. He was more worried about the task at hand.”

Unseld Jr. was at his mother’s house in Westminster when he got the call. Immediately, both of their minds imagined how Wes Sr., who had died 13 months earlier, would have taken the news.

“He would probably chuckle at it,” Unseld Jr. says. “He got wrapped into coaching begrudgingly. He didn’t necessarily want to coach. I think it frustrated him at times. I always knew it’s not as easy as it looks. Being around a lot of coaches, picking their brains, there’s no handbook for it. Every season’s going to be different.”

Nothing demonstrated that more than last year, Unseld Jr.’s first. After getting that victory in Toronto, the Wizards won nine of their next 12. They were the talk of the league.

Then, reality set in. Injuries, COVID-19, and reported locker room squabbling led to a slide that resulted in a major mid-season trade. Fans in Washington and Baltimore, a basketball-loving city where for many the Wizards remain the next best thing to a hometown team, were resigned to another season of mediocrity. That 1978 title, the one anchored by Wes Sr., is the franchise’s one and only. Still, there’s no doubt that the son knows what the father always preached: Nothing comes easy. That’s why many believe his even-keeled, analytical approach seems well fit for this challenging, semi-rebuilding coaching job.

“Wes is very consistent and dependable—that’s the feel that you get from him,” says Cleveland Cavaliers head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, a lifelong friend. “You always know if you [look] over your shoulder where Wes is going to be. I think that helps build a lot of trust. Because our game can be so emotional, a head coach having the poise that he does translates to his players. Now his players don’t get rattled because they know Wes is over there under control. He gets people to buy in because he is so dependable.”

Twelve-hour days in the office are the norm for him in the so-called off-season. He’s mapping out plans for players and staff, preparing for the NBA Draft and summer league, and starting to think about training camp and a preseason trip to Tokyo later this month.

There’s not much time for vacations, although he is looking forward to a coming dinner date with his mother in Little Italy. The plan is to eat at Sabatino’s, a restaurant the family has loved since Wes Sr. first came to the city. While it won’t be a home-cooked meal, it will be the next best thing: a great meal in his hometown.

Forty years ago, Muggsy Bogues, with his best friend Reggie Williams and the rest of the Dunbar High Poets, played the Camden High Panthers and the No. 1 player in the country, Billy Thompson. Dunbar was Baltimore renown, but in the pre-cable, pre-internet era, not nationally visible, and when the 5-foot-3 point guard took the floor, the packed New Jersey house heckled the diminutive playmaker. Even the opposing players got into it.

“When we took the court, they were laughing at me, saying, ‘Why is this little kid playing against us?’” Bogues recalls. “They called me the water boy. Coach [Bob] Wade pulled me in and said, ‘Little man, you okay?’ I just looked at him and said, ‘Coach, we’re about to have a party.’”

At one point, Bogues made steals on three straight possessions, sparking the Poets to a 29-point halftime lead and a blowout win. Afterward, he received a standing ovation and in the newspaper the next day, Camden’s coach called Bogues, who scored 15 points and whose quickness and aggressiveness had set the tempo at both ends of the floor, “phenomenal.”

“Kevin Walls [Camden’s other star] thought it was going to be an easy day for him. But that would just be the journey,” Bogues says. “People had their perception, but for me, it was always about not believing what was coming out of folks’ mouth and not taking it to heart. The dramatic experience that I went through early, getting shot when I was a kid, changed my mindset more than anything. My dad being incarcerated, too. Words were the least of my worries. I’d learned to be in control of how I felt about myself. No one else.”

That 1981-82 Dunbar team went undefeated and repeated the feat the next season. Incredibly, Bogues, Williams, and Reggie Lewis were all later drafted in the first round of the 1987 NBA Draft. Teammate David Wingate, a year ahead of those three, was already playing with Philadelphia, making it four from Dunbar’s ’81-’82 squad to reach “The League.”

In his new memoir, Muggsy: My Life from a Kid in the Projects to the Godfather of Small Ball, Bogues recounts how Wade forced his charges to hold bricks in their hands during calisthenics and defense drills, and that his nickname originated from pickup games in tough East Baltimore. It was bestowed for his ability to snatch the ball from opponents, a “mugging.” He didn’t appreciate it at first, given its connotation, but as a fan of the coincidentally named East Side Kids reruns on TV, he learned to embrace it.

“Their leader [played by the similarly small but scrappy Leo Gorcey] was named ‘Muggs.’ I liked that. A nickname means you’re someone in neighborhood and I wanted to be the leader of my guys, too.”

In his book, Bogues recalls the fun Charlotte squads of the mid-’90s. He also recalls starring in Space Jam with Michael Jordan, the current owner of Hornets, where the popular Bogues serves as a team ambassador. At 57, he says the memoir “is about relationships.”

Among those relationships are the bonds with his rec center mentors, his teammates at every step, including Lewis, the former Celtic star who died at 27 of a congenital heart disorder, and a close older brother, who struggled with addiction, as did his father. There is his first basketball rival, his older sister Sherron, who starred at Dunbar ahead of him, and his mother, both now deceased like his father—the book includes an entire chapter titled “Grief”—and his wife, Kim. The couple divorced and then, 10 years after separating, remarried in 2015.

They met during a Dunbar alumni game when Bogues was home on break from Wake Forest. Kim attended with a girlfriend who was dating one of his former teammates, but to this day, they have very different memories of their meeting. His wife claims she’d never heard of him and he still doesn’t believe her. She didn’t care that he was short, Bogues adds with a chuckle; she tells people she walked out on their first date because “my head was too big.”

“Kamala Harris’ nephew-in-law gets photographed at the inauguration wearing Dior Air Jordans that retailed for $2,000, but are reselling for $10,000 on the secondary market,” says Roberto “Berto” Fontanez. He pulls one from the shelf at his storefront, 9/10 Sneaker Boutique, in South Baltimore. “If you can find them,” he adds, pausing and smiling. “They’re limited edition. Demand increases. That’s my business model.”

Fontanez lifts another shoe, a colorful, $2,800 LeBron James-inspired “What the MVP” high-top from the shelf and explains how the secondary market works for special-edition shoes like Air Jordans and Yeezys—Kanye West’s popular Adidas collaboration. Essentially, it goes like this: Someone gets their hands on still-in-the-box, super-fashionable sneakers, which they’ve purchased after winning a virtual raffle (nobody camps out in line anymore when shoes drop) or acquired through other fortunate circumstances. Then, they bring them to 9/10 for resale. On rare occasion, a relative of one of the city’s NBA stars or an area DI college ballplayer drops by with in-demand shoes to turn around a quick buck.

Buyers and sellers can post or find sneakers on Instagram or eBay. It’s just more fun to come to 9/10. On the television, there’s a steady loop of ’90s videos from artists like Nas and DMX, there’s a legit mini-Michael Jordan museum in the window, and along one wall, there’s a lineup of retro video games, the epic Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam, among them.

With the back-and-forth conversation, braggadocio, and trash talk—“I sold those shoes to that dude and I don’t even work here”—the vibe is more corner barbershop than Dick’s Sporting Goods. In fact, there is a leather barber’s chair here. It’s used, like an old shoe-shining chair, for a fast, professional sneaker clean. (Shoes can also be dropped off for reconditioning.)

Ravens and Orioles have shopped here, but sneakerheads come from everywhere. “China, Brazil, Australia—they’re visiting Baltimore, the Inner Harbor, they follow us on Instagram and stop by,” Fontanez explains.

If it’s not clear, yet, these basketball shoes are not for playing basketball. They’re for a date, a party, prom, or simply a post to Instagram. The only real time a problem arises is when a kid drags in his mother, whom he hasn’t informed, naturally, that this isn’t a regular mall shoe store. Mom gets a look at the prices—most range between $200-400 and others more than $1,000—and freaks out.

The origin story of 9/10, whose name riffs on would-be sellers hyping the condition of shoes they want to sell—“9/10” unofficially means worn a max of five times—begins with Fontanez and his mother. He was born in 1980 in Chicago and well, do the math, Jordan had led the Bulls to six NBA titles and launched a cultural revolution with Nike by the time he graduated high school.

Fontanez’s parents, both Puerto Rico natives, worked two jobs, and along with his siblings, he got one pair of new shoes each year. Except in ninth grade, when his pleading convinced his mother to buy him Nike’s new Diamond Turfs that year, thus setting a life course in motion. At 19, he began working at the sporting goods store Finish Line.

Five years ago, after moving to Baltimore and managing several of their local stores, Fontanez decided he’d had enough of the corporate world. He went out on his own, initially opening in a tiny space in downtown Towson. Then, he relocated to Pigtown and finally, Light Street.

“I was nervous about moving to the city into a bigger space,” Fontanez says. “My partner quit right before we opened in Towson and stayed with Finish Line. I was married with three kids.”

He soon received a sign that eased his anxiety, however. Shortly after opening in Pigtown, someone cleaning out a nearby home asked if he bought memorabilia. Fontanez told him he did not. The guy described the Michael Jordan poster he’d found anyhow. “I had a lot of Jordan memorablia, but I didn’t have the ‘Jordan Wings’ poster, a horizontal poster that is two-feet tall and six-feet wide. Framed originals today go for a $1,000 or more. That’s the one he’d found.

“That poster was in my dentist’s office in Chicago when I was in school, and I’d stared at it for hours over the years,” Fontanez continues. “The guy who randomly brought it in? He didn’t know what it was worth. He asked for $20. I gave a $100 and had to force him to take it. It’s in the window.”

Former Maryland men’s basketball star guard Anthony Cowan Jr.—a 22-year-old who made a Mr. Big Shot reputation while entertaining thousands in loud, pre-socially-distant arenas—has spent the last two months like mostly everyone else: holed up and largely alone in the same off-campus College Park apartment he lived in before life turned upside down in mid-March.

And the report of the scene from his window is a familiar story, “There’s nobody here,” he told us by phone recently.

The usual college-town buzz left two months ago when coronavirus hit the U.S. in full force, closing campuses and upending normalcy in life as millions of Americans knew it. Forget watching or playing basketball, or working out in front of NBA scouts in the way Cowan always imagined, we’re not even getting together in small groups or seeing extended family in person anymore.

In literally every other year since what’s now known as March Madness began 80 years ago, Cowan—a savvy, super competitive, and clutch 6-foot, 180-pound guard who led the Big Ten regular season champion Terps in points and assists as a senior captain—might be a national celebrity. Who knows, maybe he would even be a national champion and state hero by now. (Much like the lovable underdog UMBC group did a few years ago.)

But when on the same day in March the Big Ten cancelled its postseason tournaments and the NCAA called off its annual nationally-televised rite of spring, the 68-team men’s basketball tournament, a lot of things changed. Opportunities were dashed, and signals were sent to the country about a new reality.

“It just didn’t seem real,” Cowan said about hearing from Maryland coach Mark Turgeon that the season was just…ending, right there in the Terps’ locker room instead of on a glossy basketball court somewhere. The news broke just before the team was scheduled to travel to Indianapolis for the conference tournament. It was one day after NBA player Rudy Gobert tested positive for the virus, leading the pro basketball league to become the first in the American pro ranks to cancel its season.

“You would have never expected it,” Cowan says. But with time to reflect and a grounded perspective, he looks back on his last season, in which the Terps went 24-7, were in line for a high NCAA tournament seed, and certainly got our attention: “I honestly feel like I went out on top, like I was supposed to. I’m at peace with a lot of stuff. This is a huge part of a lot of people’s lives. There’s so much other stuff going on in the world. It’s just so crazy now.”

Indeed, we’re all enduring pandemic life in some way. The death toll from the contagious COVID-19 continues to climb. Social distancing is part of our shared vocabulary now. Most businesses are still closed. And most people who still have jobs are working at home. At the same time, scientists, policymakers, and politicians continue to debate the best courses of action for saving lives and keeping the nation’s economy afloat.

Sports, often a distraction from our daily struggles, are now part of the mainstream narrative that involves fans, players, coaches, and team staff alike. (See the all-virtual NFL Draft a few weeks ago and the ongoing talks about when baseball or football seasons might start, and the qualifier of whether they will begin with or without a crowd.)

“It’s a weird time,” Cowan says. “I keep telling my friends, it’s like a movie. You see people with the masks on at the stores, and you see all the food gone.”

Cowan, a Prince George’s County native with a communications degree in hand, is one of two Terps who may be picked in the next NBA Draft. When it will happen, we still don’t know. (It’s normally in June, but might be pushed to August given the circumstances.) Forward Jalen Smith, a Mount St. Joseph’s alum, is a possible first-round selection. Both are experiencing a sudden early end to their college careers, followed by an abnormally uncertain and delayed beginning to a pro journey.

For Cowan, normal today means—like most everyone else—keeping his distance, going to the store only when he needs to, and, to stay in shape, running and lifting weights by himself, perhaps boxing, too. But unlike most people, he’s also shooting baskets at a private gym run by a former pro, Joel Barker, in Gaithersburg. He often goes alone, but sometimes takes his younger sister, Alex, who plays guard on the Wagner University women’s team in New York.

And, unlike his Maryland classmates or us mere physical mortals who have been logging into Zoom for class or meetings with co-workers, Cowan is now represented by an agency, New York-based Hazan Sports Management. He’s doing video interviews with pro scouts who want to get to know the versatile guard that they watch on tape as well as they can. Cowan says he’s had at least half a dozen of these mini job interviews, which typically last 30 minutes, and that he’s received positive feedback.

“You can tell they expect you to be kind of nervous, but it’s down my alley to be able to talk about myself and basketball,” says Cowan, who has also recently started a podcast in which he plans to interview current and former college athletes about their lives on and off the court.

As for an analysis of his own game? “I can score, but I can also really distribute,” he says. “I do what the coach needs me to do, whatever the team needs me to do. That’s something I can bring to an organization from day one.”

Hopefully, for so many reasons, we’re closer to that day than we were yesterday.