In high school, Jason Preston was the kind of player scouts rarely noticed. Standing 6 feet tall and weighing 140 pounds, he averaged only two points as a senior at Boone High in Orlando. “I might be the worst high school basketball coach in this country. Sometimes I even play in my head – maybe I should have played him more. But God has a plan for all of us. And that was Jason’s plan,” Boone’s David Martinson once joked back in 2020, still wondering if he should’ve given Preston more minutes.

Basketball wasn’t even the plan after graduation. Preston enrolled at the University of Central Florida to study journalism, aiming to write about the sport instead of playing it. But then came the invite that changed everything: a friend’s AAU team needed an extra player. That weekend, Preston’s

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