When he arrived in Charlotte to play for the Hornets, the next to last NBA team he played for, Shelvin Mack spotted Kemba Walker and Jeremy Lamb. It was almost a revelation. They were the two stars of the Connecticut team that in 2011 destroyed Butler University’s dream of winning the NCAA title in its second consecutive final. Which for a “mid-major” school is like performing a miracle twice in a row. “I am very proud to have gone to Butler, for all the things we have been able to do, what we achieved. We have created a way for a lot of other schools that did not have the same drive, the same passion to prove themselves, not to tell all the time where you went to college, but it is to get the most out of every opportunity. We were a proud bunch of guys at Butler and we did things that I still cherish today, ” says the new Olimpia point guard.

In 2010, in his second year, Butler – a school based in Indianapolis – reached the NCAA Final, but that team had in Gordon Hayward (today with the Boston Celtics) one of the big stars of the entire college basketball landscape. Mack was his Robin a little bit. However, he scored in double digit six times out of six games during the team’s NCAA Tournament run. Butler faced Duke in a memorable contest with the championship at stake. Hayward had the ball in his hands for a desperate half-court shot at the buzzer that he executed extremely well with time and space. It was the potential game winnver. It wasn’t. “I don’t think so much about that shot,” says Mack. “We have never discussed it too much within the team. We know what it was: two centimeters to the right and we would have won.”

But the following year, with Hayward already starring in the NBA, at Utah, it was Mack who led the Bulldogs back in the same position. The epilogue was similar. Butler stopped to execute offensively in the second half, went down and lost to UConn. “It was one of the worst game ever in the NCAA Tournament. Last year in Charlotte there was Ronald Nored, one of my teammate at the time, as an assistant coach and I played with Kemba Walker and Jeremy Lamb who were at Connecticut. I let them know that they were lucky, but we could play 2 on 2 any time and beat them,” he jokes. In fact, in that game he had 13 points and nine rebounds. He would have been the MVP of the competition, if only Butler had won the game. Mack scored 30 points against Pittsburgh in the NCAA’s second round, 27 against Florida, punching the ticket for the Final Four, and 24 against VCU to return to the ultimate game. Butler in those years was coached by Brad Stevens, now the very famous Boston Celtics’ coach. “Brad Stevens is one of the best coaches in the world – says Mack – and a guy I look up to, when I look for advice, any kind of advice. He made me understand how to behave and how to break down my game, but also how to be a better person off the court, with him we could talk about life, school, everything”.

Mack is from Lexington, Kentucky, one of the college basketball hotbeds. “I fell in love with basketball in Lexington, Kentucky, the Big Blue Nation where everything is UK, University of Kentucky. Rick Pitino was the coach at the time. They won two titles in 1996 and 1998, and that was the period when I really started to appreciate the game,” he recalls. If you are from Lexington and play basketball, there is only one thing you dream, almost every night: to wear the Wildcats blue night jersey. But the level is very high, the selection process difficult to survive. Mack was not recruited. It is a wound still open. “In the beginning, not being recruited by Kentucky was disappointing, but Butler was the best choice for me. I had the chance to play right away. And then things went even beyond expectations for me and my career. Coming from Kentucky, it was obviously a disappointment, but going to Butler was the best choice anyway.”

The two NCAA finals, with the exposure that he had, earned him a trip to the NBA that lasted eight seasons. In 2011, he was chosen by Washington with the number 34 of the NBA draft. He then played in Atlanta, Utah, Charlotte, Memphis. With the Jazz, he had his best season statistically, averaging in double figure and starting. “The NBA experience was great, I had the opportunity to understand my role, do different things for each different team, be a team player, not trying to get it done myself. But I was not going to have better opportunities, I understood what my role would have been, while now, from a personal and basketball standpoint, I felt I needed a new challenge, to expand my game and show the progress made working hard in the summer,” he explains. He is only 29 years old and now has a great opportunity to explore. “I want to control the things I can control and win as much as possible. The important aspect is that we are here to win. It is not a matter of individual goals but of team goals. Whatever my role, if we win, the rest will take care of itself.”