Journey To Jadwin - Myles Stephens
6/4/2020
Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year. Three All-Ivy League selections. Most Outstanding Player at the 2016-17 Ivy Tournament. A brotherhood that will last a lifetime.
Myles Stephens’ time at Princeton is the stuff of legend. Throughout his Journey To Jadwin, Stephens had several role models who inspired him and helped shape him into the man he is today.
With a father who played college basketball at Georgia Southern, Stephens comes from a basketball family.
We had a basketball hoop outside my house and I’m an only child, so whenever I was playing basketball outside it was him and I. It was always shooting around outside, playing one-on-one with my dad. He was definitely my biggest role model.Myles Stephens
Stephens began playing basketball at the local YMCA. One of his earliest memories came when he was seven or eight playing on lowered hoops.
“I was wearing one of those baggy green t-shirts that don’t really fit and they lowered the hoops,” said Stephens. “I was much taller than everyone else, on a fast break, I guess you would call it a fast break."
I tried to dunk the ball and don’t think I made it but no one else was close to being able to do that.Myles Stephens
"I was so much taller than everyone else, but I always remember that moment because people were like ‘you tried to dunk it’ and you were at this rec league at the YMCA on a Sunday morning. I didn’t understand the big deal.”
Stephens had two early role models; Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant.
Growing up 45 minutes from Philadelphia, Stephens and his family were regulars at 76ers home games which gave him much exposure to “The Answer.”
I liked AI’s influence and culture into the game. He was the guy wearing baggy shorts, a headband, braids and seeing that image on TV as a little kid you were like I want to be like that. As a young kid you have a role model and he looks cool, I want to do what he does.Myles Stephens
It was Kobe’s drive and determination that attracted Stephens.
“You just have to admire his work ethic,” explained Stephens. “That’s what everyone says about Kobe, his Mamba Mentality and his will to not quit and keep going. That’s something that he’s instilled in all sports fans and people that don’t even like sports.”
Along with the pros, Stephens has had other influential figures who have helped mold him both on and off the court. One of them is Tony Paris, a skills trainer he has worked with for the past seven years.
“He’s grown my confidence to let me know I can play at the professional level, this is how you be a pro, this is what you have to do, this is how you have to think,” explained Stephens. “He’s trained a lot of professional basketball players who I see as mentors in the game and he’s instilled their work ethic in me and it’s shown me what I have to do to play at the highest level.”
Stephens also worked with a strength trainer, Deuce “DJ” Johnson. Their bond goes well beyond basketball.
“I call him my big brother,” said Stephens “He was at my house hours before I went to Germany for the first time this season just to say goodbye and wish me good luck. He’s my guy.”
As Stephens entered high school he began to realize that he had the potential to play basketball at a high level.
“I’d still workout outside in the summer and play, shoot around, that’s when I beat him (my dad) for the first time; puffing my chest out and he’s telling me he let me win and I said no way,” explained Stephens.
It’s one of those moments you’re going to remember, the time you beat your dad for the first time after all those years of getting bullied.Myles Stephens
"You’re like ‘dang, I can’t beat my dad’ then all of a sudden you get it one day an you’re bragging for the rest of your life.”
While he may have missed that dunk at the YMCA all those years ago, Stephens would dunk for the first time during his sophomore year of high school.
“It was the first game of the tournament,” proclaimed Stephens. “We played against a school called Solebury, first game of the season."
Along with his first in-game dunk, Stephens would experience tremendous team success his sophomore year.
“My sophomore year at Pennington we also had a really good team with a bunch of college basketball players,” said Stephens.
We won the Prep East State Championship…We actually beat the Princeton Day School, who had Davon Reed. He was drafted in the NBA, played for Miami and is now in the G-League.Myles Stephens
He’s made a really nice career playing professionally, he was a top-100 recruit in the country at that time. It was really nice to get a win over him, he’s a local guy so we look up to him.”
Stephens’ sophomore year also saw Princeton come on his radar for the first time as Brett MacConnell attended one of his games and the interest grew.
He would then transfer to Saint Andrew’s High School in Delaware; it was a transformative experience that helped prepare him for what was ahead.
“I figured out how to do things on my own, it was a boarding school,” explained Stephens. “Grinding basketball-wise, lifting on my own; I didn’t have my dad or trainer telling me what do. That was my senior year.”
He was also active on the AAU circuit, playing both with and against several current pros.
“When I was younger, in middle school and elementary school, I played for a team called the Essential Jersey Future Stars,” said Stephens. “A couple of the guys who I’m still friends with now, my best friends, played with that team and that’s how I met him. Up until middle school and maybe my freshman year of high school I played for the New Jersey Roadrunners up in Newark, New Jersey. There were really good players on that team, Kyrie Irving is from that program and there have been a couple of guys that have been to the NBA and played professionally. After that, I went to We Are One in Delaware, when I moved to Saint Andrew’s. That’s when we won the Under Armor National Championship. I played with some really, really good athletes like Derrick Jones Jr., who was in the dunk contest this past year. He was my roommate on the road a lot of the time and I still keep in touch with him.”
Stephens would parlay his high school and AAU careers into an opportunity at Princeton.
“I chose Princeton because it’s the best of both worlds,” proclaimed Stephens. “You get the best education in the country and get to play division I basketball. You know it’s going to be a challenge, but one thing I always say is the ball stops bouncing one day. You have to have something to fall back on, so having the opportunity to go to a school like Princeton is thinking about the 40-year plan instead of the four-year plan.”
The opportunity to remain close to home was also attractive to Stephens.
“I was right down the street, it takes me 15 minutes to get to school,” proclaimed Stephens. “I had been away at boarding school, so to be able to come and play in front of my family more often, that’s something that interested me as well.”
Stephens would go on to have one of the most storied careers in Princeton men’s basketball history. Along with etching himself into the record book, he amassed a life time worth of memories. Along with his Ivy Defensive Player of the Year and Ivy Tournament Most Outstanding Player awards in 2017, he scored 1,346 points, pulled down 561 rebounds and blocked 80 shots.
Number one, winning the Ivy League championship and playing in March Madness my sophomore year.Myles Stephens
“That was the greatest team I’ve ever played on; the guys we had on that team, the seniors, we had Spencer Weisz, Pete Miller, Hans Brase, Steve Cook, all those guys. They led us to a championship. That was the peak of my time at Princeton basketball-wise just because that was such a good team and we were so well-coached.”
Prior to that season, Stephens and the team travelled to Italy.
“We’re on campus for a week, training, practicing, flying to Italy,” explained Stephens. “Fly into Rome, spend three days there exploring, going on tours, trying new food."
Being there with your brothers, your teammates, was one of the coolest things ever.Myles Stephens
“That’s something you’ll always share, especially because we won the championship that year as well,” proclaimed Stephens. "That bonding experience definitely helped us to become closer off the court.”
Stephens produced another unforgettable moment in Princeton men’s basketball his junior year, when he led the Tigers with an incredible 30 points and nine rebounds in an 103-92 overtime triumph over USC, who were ranked inside the top-10 in the national preseason poll.
Graduation day for Stephens was different than graduation day for most Princeton students.
“The day of graduation I had to go down to DC and had a pre-draft workout with the Washington Wizards,” said Stephens.
I graduated, I think I took a couple pictures, a handful, then took the train to DC and had a workout with them the next day.Myles Stephens
"A week later I worked out with the Knicks, that was the beginning of my summer.”
From there, Stephens would be drafted by the Long Island Nets of the NBA G-League then play for Oldenburg in the German Pro B League.
Recently, he signed with the Vilpas Vikings of the Korisliiga, the top tier of professional basketball in Finland.
Stephens attributes his time at Princeton as integral to his success at the professional level.
“We always had a really good schedule at Princeton, we played teams in the top-25, we played Duke my senior year, we played Arizona State, we played USC,” proclaimed Stephens. “We made it to the tournament and played Notre Dame."
Along with his own success, he also gains satisfaction in knowing that Princeton has given his peers similar opportunities.
“The opportunity it’s given me,” said Stephens. “The opportunity to play basketball, the ability to go the number one school in the country, the ability to be part of a larger community."
Everyone is so independent, smart. Some of my friends are working at Amazon, some are working at Facebook, some are studying in different countries, everyone’s doing their own thing and everyone’s really successful.Myles Stephens
Above all, Stephens is appreciative of the relationships he’s built at Princeton and hopes to pass on the lessons he learned to the younger members of the team.
“I could sit down and have a 1-on-1 conversation with anybody that I’ve played with in my four years,” said Stephens. “Especially the older guys I’ve played with like Steve, Amir, all those guys. All those guys that have been older and showed us the ropes, shown me the ropes. You look up to someone older than you, right?"
I’ve always talked to them and leaned on them for advice. That’s something I want to be able to do for the younger guys because that’s something that’s helped me as I’ve kept in contact with them and how they’re navigating things outside of Princeton.Myles Stephens
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