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Galloway, from St. Joe's to NBA's Big Apple

NEW YORK - The play hit the highlight reels, Marv Albert providing the soundtrack: Galloway, off the pump fake, fires and HITS, that's a two-pointer. . . . Reggie Jackson went FLYING.

Langston Galloway during his days at St. Joe's.
Langston Galloway during his days at St. Joe's.Read more(Ron Cortes/Staff file photo)

NEW YORK - The play hit the highlight reels, Marv Albert providing the soundtrack: Galloway, off the pump fake, fires and HITS, that's a two-pointer. . . . Reggie Jackson went FLYING.

The TV analyst added more: "The little pirouette step-back . . ."

This play offered just a clue of how St. Joseph's graduate Langston Galloway has defied a lot of big odds to find footing in the NBA. After Galloway's routine head fake got Pistons guard Reggie Jackson high into the air, the play was already a success. Most players would have let Jackson drop into them then walk to the foul line.

Instead, the second-year Knicks guard spun out from his defender, also away from the hoop. After a full 360-degree turn, Galloway stepped back, re-eyeing the rim. As Galloway shot, Jackson was off to the side, both hands touching the court, trying not to fall down.

There was an audacity about the move, a hint of brashness.

"I think that brashness is a big deal," said St. Joe's coach Phil Martelli, talking about how it has come to pass that an undrafted 6-foot-2 guard is at the next level.

Galloway did not arrive in the NBA with all the traditional point guard skills. The pick-and-roll game is not his forte, nor the drive and dish. He isn't the fastest guy in a given game. Martelli talked of Galloway's "elite" shooting skills and "beyond elite" locker room character and basketball IQ and a "burn beyond anything that could be squelched."

Put Xs and Os on a board, Martelli said, and Galloway is your perfect X. "He won't be two steps off, or if they're into angles or degrees, he'll be there."

Still, a lot of guys have those traits, outstanding Xs in college who don't make the NBA. Of the 60 players drafted in 2014 - all judged to be better than Galloway - his 9.8 scoring average since signing in January in 2015 is higher than all but six. Four of those six were lottery picks, including the first, second and seventh choices. Five of six were first-round choices. Lakers guard Jordan Clarkson was a second-rounder. And then there's Galloway.

"The whole thing, the fact that he's an NBA player, and a contributing NBA player, on a franchise that is iconic," Martelli said, "I think it's like a fairy tale."

Only the beginning

The day before Derek Fisher was fired as Knicks coach - less than 24 hours before - Fisher was asked what proved to him Galloway could play in the NBA.

"We focus a lot on the things that are fun to watch on TV and I guess easier to write about or talk about, but Langston's made of the other stuff - that actually helps you win games," Fisher said before Sunday's game.

"There's a mental toughness, a confidence, a stick-to-it-iveness that sometimes guys just just don't have."

The fact that Fisher was fired the next day proves the footing will keep shifting under Galloway. Fisher essentially used Galloway this season as a third guard at either the point or shooting guard. He also routinely used Galloway at the end of games. Does interim coach Kurt Rambis feel the same about him? What about the next guy? The triangle offense plays to Galloway's strengths. Do the Knicks keep it past his contract, which runs out after the season?

Fisher kept talking about how Galloway finds a way to be the same way every day, which, the coach added, is a hard thing to do, and "intriguing" to Fisher, who saw a confidence Galloway had in himself as soon as he came up from the D League last season, a willingness to take the big shot.

"For a guy that didn't have any experience, to show that kind of confidence in himself, that was good to see," Fisher said. "That struck us as the type of guy we wanted to have around."

Obviously having no idea his coach would be let go the next day, Galloway, asked at his locker postgame if he ever allows himself to think he's now part of the league, said he does not, that he still has a lot to prove, that this is all only the beginning.

"He can't exhale yet," said his uncle, Geoff Arnold, a St. Joe's Hawks assistant coach. "He can breathe it in, but I want him to be able to breathe out."

Galloway imagines the NBA as like an ocean, or at least an aquarium. "Every day, I think, it's eat fish or be eaten."

'Make some shots'

Let's add some traits to the mix.

"He's a little bit longer than they expect, his arm span," Arnold said, believing that helps Galloway at the defensive end.

That came into play Sunday at the Garden after Galloway was put back in the game with 2 1/2 minutes left, Knicks down five to Denver. He reached in when a Nuggets player seemed to have a grasp of a rebound, freeing the ball loose for a Knicks teammate to grab. This wasn't a storybook game, though. (Again, Fisher fired the next day). Galloway had a great look at a three-pointer at the other end, next possession, the shot didn't fall. "Would have been a big shot," Galloway said in the locker room after the Nuggets held on.

He's not wide-eyed anymore at seeing Spike Lee or Turtle from Entourage or when Floyd Mayweather Jr. sitting courtside told him, "Yo, make some shots, Galloway."

This whole thing was his plan.

"It was his plan, no one else's," Arnold said.

"The European offers he had were really outrageously high for a rookie in today's world," Martelli said. "He looked me in the eye and said, 'I'm going to play in the league, and if I have to go in the D League I will."

When friends told Arnold that Galloway was crazy to leave money on the table, Arnold told them, "He doesn't have any bills. He doesn't have a house, a car, a wife, a child. His parents are OK. The D League pays $25-35,000. He's never made that much."

His workouts were honed to the game. Martelli remembers seeing Galloway expanding his deep range, incorporating ball skills into his workout, working with an NBA ball - "not a small thing," Martelli said, referring to using the right ball, that attention to detail.

It was a one-year plan, to stay in front of the NBA. If nothing happened, Europe would be there. But the Knicks, hitting tank mode, traded a couple of guards. Right time, right place. But of several summer league opportunities in 2014, Galloway had picked his team carefully. Arnold was on the bus to Duquesne when he got a call from his nephew. Galloway was on a train to D.C. to join the Knicks.

"The first night I had to guard John Wall, the second night I had to guard James Harden," Galloway said.

Usually, there would be a wading-in period. Maybe he'd be the third point guard, see if he could handle it. Maybe a back and forth to the D League. The whole time, he'd be left wondering, was he good enough?

There was none of that. Galloway was on the court. His second game against Houston, he scored 19 points in 31 minutes, making 3 of 4 three-pointers. Later that first month, the Knicks won three straight, and Galloway scored 47 in the three games. It didn't hurt that the Knicks were right there with the Sixers in tank mode. If anything, Galloway was hurting the tanking.

"Just trying to hold my own. That built my confidence," Galloway said, keeping to a nightly mantra of "stay aggressive."

"I always told him the only thing you want is have them know your name," Arnold said. "When he first got there, I asked him, 'What do they call you?' "

Galloway said, "Just Rook."

There was a pickup game, some jumpers the Rook kept hitting against a veteran no longer on the team. They learned his name.

His defense also has earned minutes. Galloway is smart enough not to claim even an ounce of credit for Steph Curry having an off-shooting night recently in New York, 5 of 17, actually Curry's worst of the season, with Galloway often having the defensive assignment, telling himself to stay as close as he could to him, that Curry likes to use the ball and dance with it. Galloway knows Curry could and probably will go off the next time. (And the Warriors still beat the Knicks by 21).

"I think the next night he had 51," Galloway said, correctly remembering Curry's point total against Washington in Golden State's next game.

(His lack of cockiness has been earned. "Dwyane Wade Breaks Langston Galloway's Ankles" also can be found on YouTube.)

Galloway's agency also represents Kawhi Leonard, current gold standard for NBA defenders, and, Arnold said, "Kawhi Leonard told his guys, 'Yo, your kid, he fights. I respect him. He fights.' "

Ups and downs

People who were around Hawk Hill saw all this on the college level, in addition to the 1,991 career points that has Galloway second all-time in St. Joe's history behind Jameer Nelson. People have asked Arnold why Galloway didn't play the point for St. Joe's. "We needed those 1,991," Arnold tells them.

Current Hawks star DeAndre' Bembry, asked what traits stood out about Galloway when Bembry first showed up, talked of intangibles but also said, "If you really don't have a hand in his face, he will make the shot."

Although Galloway isn't a natural at the point - Arnold remembers him shutting down his own shooting a little too much when he occasionally shifted to the point in college - the triangle offense that Knicks team president Phil Jackson brought with him certainly suits Galloway's move-and-shoot abilities.

Is it tricky deciding when to defer to other players?

"Yeah, it's very tricky," Galloway said in the Knicks locker room. "I'm still trying to figure that out. It's an ongoing process, when to be aggressive and when to to let the other playmakers make a play."

This season, there have been ups and downs in his own confidence. Arnold likes to tell his nephew, "Stop seeing ghosts," referring to defenders who aren't there. Another conversation was about a drive and flying layup attempt that ended with Galloway on the ground. "They're not giving a foul to a second-year undrafted dude," Arnold told him.

"Last year, his intermediate game was really good," Arnold said. "He would fly down the court, stop, and hit the jump shot. That's the thing he's needs to get back to."

But of all Galloway's strengths, his uncle said, one of the biggest is that Galloway knows what he can and can't do. "He doesn't try to go outside his box."

Arnold also told Galloway that in addition to playing for his teammates and his franchise, he is an independent contractor, "playing so other people take notice."

His bet on himself earns Galloway $845,059 this season. His first game under his new coach came Tuesday night. Against Washington, the same team he debuted against, Galloway played 29 minutes and made 6 of 11 shots for 14 points. Just like under his old coach, he was in there at the end and hit a three-pointer with 8.5 seconds left to draw the Knicks to within a point. Then Galloway had a game-tying three at the buzzer that didn't fall.

It's not a fairy tale every night, but there are also nights like last spring when Galloway went to a Rangers game and this kid kept looking at him, so he waved to the kid. Afterward, the kid's mother said, "Hey, aren't you Langston Galloway? Can we take a picture with you?"

Galloway presumably would have said yes even if the mother wasn't Mariska Hargitay, star of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

"At first, I noticed it a lot," Galloway said of the celebrities at the Knicks games. "Now, it's pretty cool. They come to see and support us and watch a good show."

If a pump fake and pirouette and step-back happen to be part of it, so be it.

"I was just going to shoot the three," Galloway said of the play. "I just let instinct take over."