It was never too late for basketball. Not for Pat Spencer.

During their senior year at Loyola in 2019, Spencer and Rich Easterly were the night owl roommates of their house, staying up until 1 a.m. or later watching the Western Conference playoffs. Spencer — at the time the consensus best player in college lacrosse — bobbled a basketball in his hands as he watched, riveted, clearly picturing something beyond the images of All-Stars that flickered across the TV screen.

“He’d be like, ‘I’ll be there someday,’” Easterly recalled. “And I would say, ‘C‘mon Pat, you really think you can play with those guys?’ And he said, ‘I know I can. I’m not there right now, but I definitely can.’”

Spencer was wrapping up one of the best-ever careers in college lacrosse, but at the moment when most college sports stars sense the ending, he was plotting the course for something even more unlikely: a six-year trek to the elite levels of a completely different sport.

It defies belief, but here Spencer is — in the Western Conference playoffs with the Golden State Warriors. From a hoops path that spans from Northwestern to Hamburg, Germany, to D.C. to Santa Cruz, the Davidsonville native has played 53 minutes in the NBA playoffs so far and scored 32 points.

There might be no one enjoying it more than his old Greyhounds lacrosse teammates.

After Spencer scored four points in Game 1 against the Minnesota Timberwolves, including a hook shot over a seemingly nonplussed Julius Randle, the Loyola group chat lit up in an exchange of stunned social media reactions to the mustachioed interloper casual NBA fans had never heard of before.

Is that an accountant playing for the Warriors? Is that a substitute gym teacher? Why are the Timberwolves getting scored on by a finance bro?

Some of them are still adjusting to the surreal nature of their lacrosse teammate on the NBA’s biggest stage, too. But they’re not surprised when he does well.

“It still blows my mind every time I see him out there,” said Nick Cunningham, a former Loyola midfielder. “I love the piece where people underestimate him.”

The crowd favorite, though, is the video from a fan who pulled up to ask for an autograph while Spencer was driving his 2012 Honda CRV, complete with a fading Boys’ Latin lacrosse sticker slapped on the back. It’s vintage Spencer, the team agrees — a utilitarian spendthrift who hasn’t changed a lick from his Loyola days: “It’s probably got 200,000 miles but still works,” said former Greyhound midfielder Romar Dennis. “That’s probably why he still drives it.”

Easterly can even picture those dreaded drives to practice, when he had to avoid stepping on Rice Krispie Treats or accidentally putting his hand in McDonald’s pancake syrup (“That car smelled,” he said). At the college house, Spencer would bake DiGiorno frozen pizzas and dip them in Domino sugar.

He hopes Spencer‘s sugar-fiend college diet has at least evolved.

“It’s crazy, he eats like Buddy the Elf,” Easterly said. “You’d think he’d weigh 400 pounds. His car was filled with crazy junk food, then he’d go out and score a million goals.”

Added Easterly: “It’s just one of those things with Pat.”

Spencer had so many tics that his lacrosse teammates got to know over his four-year lacrosse career that set the NCAA record for most assists (231).

On the field, he was a blur compared to the competition. His step dodge in lacrosse, they can see now, was a natural segue to the crossover and spin moves he has in the NBA. In basketball, as in lacrosse, Spencer can use both hands with near-equal dexterity. Cunningham remembered a play against Rutgers when Spencer ripped through the crease, leapt three feet in the air and let a shot fly — “kind of like he does in basketball when he goes for a dunk.”

The tell they all learned to really watch for was the competitive fire in his eye. Even in a low-stakes practice when a defender got lucky and knocked the ball from his stick, he could expect Spencer to come back with a vengeance.

“He’d immediately scoop up the ground ball, truck-stick the defender, spin around and flick it in for a goal and look like smoke was coming out of his nostrils,” Dennis said. “If he saw a guy on the schedule who was getting hype, or was an all-conference defender or whatever, he’d take it as a slight. He would go so hard all the time, and he’d destroy the best defenders in the country.”

But as dominant as Spencer was on a lacrosse field, every Greyhound got to learn that basketball was his truest, deepest passion. He would play pickup games or get shots up after lacrosse practice.

Cunningham transferred to Loyola from Siena, where he played basketball. Not long after introducing himself, Spencer asked him, “When are we hoopin’?”

Some might ask what might have happened if Spencer, who still has a standing invite to try out for the US national lacrosse team, had kept up with the sport where he scorched the competition. Chris Myers, a former teammate who is one of his close friends to this day, wonders the opposite. He’s certain that Spencer very nearly left the program after his freshman year, but stuck with the sport out of a sense of loyalty to the program and his teammates.

“You look at where Pat could have been if he had played college basketball for those years,” Myers said. “The passion was always there. I think he tried to hide it a bit the first two years, but as a junior and senior, it became clearer there was a plan, and he was putting it into motion.”

The teammates were supportive and had learned to trust in Spencer‘s drive and ambition, but they were also measured in their expectations. Myers thought it was a big deal when Spencer made it onto Northwestern’s roster as a grad student and started for the 8-23 Wildcats. Former goalie Jacob Stover bought Spencer‘s Hamburg uniform, an acknowledgement that he had “achieved” the dream of going pro.

But none of these stepping stones were ever Spencer‘s fully formed vision. And gradually, his teammates began to believe that he would take this path a lot further than anyone expected.

When he played for the Santa Cruz Warriors, Golden State’s G-League affiliate, Dennis came to a road game against the South Bay Lakers in El Segundo, California. Matched up against Scotty Pippen Jr. (who would go on to be a teammate of Pat’s brother Cam on the Memphis Grizzlies), Spencer stood out to all the spectators.

“We’re all biased, but we were like, ‘He looks like the best athlete on the floor right now — what are the odds he can actually pull this off?’” Dennis said, remembering the dawning realization. “It’s the exact same thing we dealt with, just in a different sport.”

In 2024, Spencer signed a two-way NBA contract, which split his time between the G League and the NBA Warriors. This March, Golden State rewarded his effort and competitiveness with a standard league contract, and for the first time, Spencer was a full-fledged member of the most exclusive basketball association in the world.

Even though they started believing Spencer was on the path to NBA success a while ago, the lacrosse teammates are still occasionally blown back by his new life. When Myers visited the Bay Area during the preseason, Spencer texted him to ask if he wanted to go to Draymond Green’s house to watch football. Other times he’ll text after a round of golf with Steph Curry — though his friends make it a point to say Spencer doesn’t disclose such information in a showy way. He doesn’t have a social media account, and when his friends send him clips or jokes featuring him, he’s often viewing them for the first time.

Easterly called Spencer after Game 5 of the Warriors-Rockets series when he was ejected for headbutting Houston center Alperin Şengün (Green admiringly said afterward, “He don’t back down from anyone”). After talking for five minutes about the heated confrontation, they spent another 40 plotting their summers, including upcoming an upcoming golf trip together.

After a Lakers-Warriors game, a group of his college teammates pulled up in a car outside of L.A. Live, an entertainment district near the Lakers’ Crypto.com Arena. Spencer walked out of the arena in full Warriors warm-up gear — drawing sideways looks from passersby — and hopped in the car to go grab a beer with his old friends.

“It was like he was leaving a high school basketball game — it was zero difference to be on that stage than any other stage,” Dennis said. “That’s Pat. The stardom and the level he’s playing at could not have less of an effect on him.”

The irony is that Spencer’s probably done more positive publicity for lacrosse by leaving it. For lovers of the sport, Spencer‘s success is evidence that it has legitimate athletes who can succeed in other arenas. PLL commissioner Paul Rabil, a Johns Hopkins alum who is lacrosse’s loudest pitchman, is hosting an ESPN show that will feature Spencer in one of its episodes in June.

As the basketball world peers in at Spencer, wondering where he came from, his lacrosse teammates are feeling the satisfaction of early investors.

“We knew was destined for greater things outside of collegiate sports,” Easterly said. “Now to watch him play, it’s amazing in the back of our minds to be proven right. We knew this guy was different — now everybody’s seeing it.”

What means the most to Myers is that whenever Spencer goes on the road with the Warriors, tickets are waiting for former Greyhounds — be it Dallas or Denver. In a March road trip to New York, Spencer got a dozen tickets for former teammates and friends at Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center. On the night he had off between games, he hosted a reunion dinner of sorts at Manhattan’s Lil’ Frankie’s.

Old lacrosse pals journeyed to New York from all over the East Coast just to spend time together — and bask in Spencer‘s hardcourt success.

“All of us are working Monday through Friday, and then Pat has all these crazy NBA stories that we want to pick his brain about,” Cunningham said. “But it’s still like picking up where we left off.

“He’s just in a group chat with Steph Curry now.”