FORT WORTH, Texas _ He doesn't look like he belongs on the floor, but sleep on the balding white dude and you'll find yourself co-starring on the wrong end of a viral video.
Alex Caruso is the guy you didn't realize is a Texan who played at Texas A&M and is now a staple of the Los Angeles Lakers' bench mob.
He's the guy who doesn't get picked in a pickup game because of racial stereotypes, and then goes out and embarrasses everyone on the court.
"If you were not ready he was going to dunk right on you. Those videos you see now? We got used to those all the time," said Caruso's former A&M teammate, Tonny Trocha-Morelos, in a recent phone interview. "You have to respect the way he played, not the way he looked.
"I could see him playing in the NBA, but not next to LeBron James and Anthony Davis."
LeBron James was drafted out of high school in 2003, first overall, and is considered to be one of the best to ever play the game. Anthony Davis was drafted out of blue-blood Kentucky in 2012, first overall, and has posting MVP-type numbers for years. Alex Caruso? His name wasn't one of the 60 called on draft night in 2016.
If you're considering unlikely success stories in these NBA Finals, you probably don't need to look much further than Caruso. The kid from College Station who grew up as a ball boy for the Aggies, played his college ball at A&M and went undrafted is now part of the 2020 version of the Showtime Lakers who sit one win away from an NBA championship.
"My wife bought me a couple of tickets to see him play for the Lakers in Los Angeles around my birthday," said Caruso's A&M Consolidated High School coach, Rick German, in a phone interview. "When Alex comes off the bench to go into the game, the ovation he got is bigger than for anybody but LeBron and Davis. People were screaming and hollering. It was such a great moment.
"You put in a long time and you do your job, and it's like a prospector that finds that big chunk of gold," German continued. "You've been looking for 30 years, but you get one chunk. He was one of those young men."
