Ethan Taylor was stranded in the desert.<\/p>\n
All he had wanted to do was to keep playing basketball in college. To feel the roar of the crowd wash over him for four more years.<\/p>\n
How did he find himself here?<\/p>\n
Eight days. Little food. Three MREs \u2014 \u201cMeals Ready to Eat,\u201d the military\u2019s prepackaged field rations. The sky above him was the only form of shelter. All he carried was teamwork, leadership, and an infallible will. All doctrines of his service academy training.<\/p>\n
If he made it out, he\u2019d be one step closer to joining one of America\u2019s most fabled teams:<\/p>\n
The United States Air Force.<\/p>\n
Ok, this wasn\u2019t exactly the desert you see on postcards or in the wide, cinematic frames of old Westerns, but close \u2014 the Pi\u00f1on Canyon Maneuver Site. A remote patch of Southeastern Colorado where the Air Force Academy strips cadets down to their limits during Combat Survival Training.<\/p>\n
Taylor passed that test. He returned, captained Air Force basketball for two seasons, earned All-Mountain West honors as a senior, and joined the 700 to 900 cadets who graduate from the Academy each year.<\/p>\n
But deserts come in many forms. His next one offers a neon oasis, with more food but no less stakes.<\/p>\n
Las Vegas is the home of the NBA Summer League. Now, Taylor is once again a part of one of America\u2019s most storied (And most recently, its most valuable) franchises, the Los Angeles Lakers.<\/p>\n
Even fewer make it back employed from here. Around 450 players earn Summer League invites, all chasing one of the NBA\u2019s existing 450 roster spots, most already occupied.<\/p>\n
No one from the Air Force Academy has ever claimed one.<\/p>\n
Taylor\u2019s trying to be the first.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an awesome opportunity that I don\u2019t take lightly,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cThere have been a lot of great players at Air Force. People, just based on the name of the school and the situation that we\u2019re in, tend to look down on us as basketball players. That\u2019s something I want to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born January 6, 2002, in Houston, Texas, Taylor was always predisposed to adversity and competition. The first desert he had to emerge from wasn\u2019t Colorado or Vegas but his own household and the shadow of his older brother, Elliott.<\/p>\n
Competition was fostered in the Taylor household, and younger Ethan never got any reprieve on the basketball court from his big brother. He tried to assert dominance anyway, and it created a work ethic. Somewhere in those backyard battles, the foundation for his drive took hold.<\/p>\n
By the time Taylor reached middle school, the edge was apparent. The will to make basketball more than a hobby was already stitched into him.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven when he was younger, he\u2019s like, \u2018You\u2019re not the boss of me, Elliott,\u2019\u201d Ethan\u2019s mom, Jacqueline Taylor, remembered. \u201cOur family is very competitive, so he started playing basketball against his brother and his brother\u2019s friends. I noticed even when he got into middle school, he was the first person at the gym, he went to school early, and he was the last to leave. That\u2019s when I realized it was just more than a game for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taylor played his high school basketball at Memorial in Houston, where the seeds of his connection to the Air Force program had already been planted. His coach, David Lay, had worked camps hosted by Air Force men\u2019s basketball coach Joe Scott in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n
Scott wasn\u2019t the one who initially recruited Taylor \u2014 he returned to the Academy just ahead of Taylor\u2019s freshman season \u2014 but the program still came calling.<\/p>\n
The Houston native didn\u2019t grow up with a grand sense of duty or a personal call to service.<\/p>\n
He just wanted to keep playing basketball.<\/p>\n
But the opportunity was bigger than that \u2014 a chance to extend his career, to build a future after basketball \u2013 Taylor majored in Engineering \u2013 to grow into something more. That mattered to him and to his family.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mom was huge in that decision,\u201d Taylor says. \u201cShe loved that it was going to make me a better man. That\u2019s what the academy does, it makes you a real honorable person, and it gets you mentally ready for anything that you can face in life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Memorial never had a Division I recruit. So Taylor blazed a new trail from that previously deserted landscape. He met the criteria of the Air Force\u2019s recruiting strategy. The service academies don\u2019t accept transfers, nor commonly grant 5th and 6th years of eligibility. It takes a specific player profile to thrive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the (recruiting) game plan,\u201d Scott said. \u201cFind a guy like Ethan who loves basketball, a family that knows education is unbelievably important. Then, when it comes to the academy and\u00a0 service, there\u2019s a certain understanding of \u2018wow, that\u2019s important in life, too.\u2019 If you can find those three things in that order, then you get a good basketball player.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turns out Scott got his best player from this method.<\/p>\n
From the first day, his imprint was obvious. The combo guard started as a freshman and immediately started rewriting record books. Against Nevada in 2022, he became the first in program history to record a triple-double. He was named the Mountain West Freshman of the Week four times.<\/p>\n
In year two, his fingerprints deepened. Taylor was again the playmaking nexus of the Falcons\u2019 offense, leading the team in assists for a second straight season.<\/p>\n
Then came Pi\u00f1on Canyon. The desert didn\u2019t care who he was; it only cared who he\u2019d become. He emerged hardened, more self-assured, and a different person.<\/p>\n
Players are allowed to transfer out of service academies before their junior year without a service commitment. Many do. They take the opportunity to continue their athletic careers in college, boost their stock, and leave before the real commitment sets in.<\/p>\n
Quitting wasn\u2019t in the vernacular of the man who went into the desert, and it certainly wasn\u2019t in the man who left it.<\/p>\n
\u201cOther people have quit,\u201d Jacquelina said. \u201cSome of the guys that he knows have quit. They didn\u2019t endure. He knows that life isn\u2019t easy. You\u2019re not going to always be able to leave. You have to figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Off the floor, he evolved in discipline, toughness, mental acuity, and resilience, which the Academy demands. On the floor, his role expanded.<\/p>\n
Two years of playing distributor set the stage. Scott handed the reins to a man now ready to take them. Named him a Captain. Leader. Aggressor on the offensive side.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t blink.<\/p>\n
That next season, Taylor led the Mountain West in three-pointers per game. Piled up six 20-point outings. Averaged 13.5 points on the season, while carrying one of the country\u2019s heaviest minute loads \u2014 36.9 a night in a 40-minute game. His recognition followed being named the Co-Bob Beckel Team MVP.<\/p>\n
His leadership continued to grow. Never the most vocal, his presence and play set the pace for the Falcons. Leadership at the Air Force isn\u2019t just a buzzword. It\u2019s an ecosystem, designed to produce men and women capable of navigating chaos with clarity. Taylor absorbed it and embedded those lessons into his game and into himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cService academies are pretty much leadership factories,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cThey teach you those skills that you need to be able to adapt to any situation. That\u2019s something that\u2019s helping me in basketball and life.\u201d<\/p>\n
By his senior year, the Falcon kept soaring, the accolades coming with him. Third-team All-Mountain West, conference leader in three-pointers, team-high 13.9 points per game, co-captain once again \u2014 a title that carries more weight in Colorado Springs than most places \u2013 Taylor\u2019s trajectory never wavered.<\/p>\n
Every season, every minute spent in that academy blue and grey uniform, he climbed a little higher, a little further from the version of himself who first walked through the doors at the Academy.<\/p>\n
His teams didn\u2019t always match his upward movement. A combined 38-86 record in his four years in Colorado potentially paints a negative picture of his impact. It would be easy to let that record reflect his time there in broad strokes. But his resilience and willingness to stay were his endearing legacy to his coaching staff. More than any win or loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe played at one school for four years,\u201d Scott said. \u201cHe stuck with something, he grew, he developed, he\u2019s such a different person, basketball-wise, life-wise, maturity-wise, mental strength-wise. He did it by sticking with something, even going through some brutal last few years, especially for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now Taylor\u2019s next challenge stretches in front of him. Two previous Air Force players have made attempts at the NBA. AJ Kuhle played for the Spurs summer league team in 2006, and Antoine Hood made it to the Denver Nuggets training camp that same year.<\/p>\n
Neither made it out of those deserts.<\/p>\n
Taylor wants to make it further. Currently on a waiver that says if he gets a contract by August, he\u2019ll be in reserves for 6-8 years, he has the space provided to pursue his dream. Not only to play professionally but for the esteemed Los Angeles Lakers at that.<\/p>\n
He hit two of three from downtown and tallied an assist in 14 minutes of game time in the Lakers\u2019 opening game of the California Classic against the Golden State Warriors, and will be heading out to Vegas on July 10th.<\/p>\n
As Kuhle and Hood know, the Las Vegas desert is unforgiving for summer league invitees. The hot nights pierced with cold decisions on young men\u2019s futures. A perilously low number survives to join a team.<\/p>\n
But Ethan Taylor understands deserts.<\/p>\n
He understands scarcity, endurance, and impossibility dressed up as opportunity. He\u2019s been here before, betting his will is harder than the landscape.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always tell myself, \u2018You\u2019ve been through worse,\u2019\u201d Taylor said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just a game, I love it. It\u2019s my heart, but at the end of the day, I\u2019ve done harder things. I\u2019ve done tougher stuff. I\u2019ve been in worse situations.\u201d<\/p>\n
This time, the sand is replaced with hardwood, and the barren, foodless landscape is replaced with sprawling, glitzy hotels. The stakes are slightly different.<\/p>\n
But survival? Advancement? Earning a seat at the table of one of the most famous teams in the country?<\/p>\n
Those odds stay the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ethan Taylor was stranded in the desert. All he had wanted to do was to keep playing basketball…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,8604,1260,1317,1337,1338,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-44222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-lakers","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-basketball","13":"tag-ncaabasketball","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}