As a schoolboy at Wake Forest High in North Carolina, Will Perry could not have fathomed that he would go on to become a professional basketball player - let alone one of the best in an NBA-backed league in Africa.
A jack-of-all-trades athlete in high school, Perry - currently a 6-foot guard for Senegal's ASC Ville de Dakar (ASCVD) in the Basketball Africa League (BAL) - initially fared best at baseball, before realising in his late teens that basketball was his calling.
"If you asked me: 'What's your sport?' I would not have said basketball until I was maybe 17 years old [or] 16," Perry told ESPN, adding that his career took off after he developed physically.
He added: "I was always one of the better players in the area, but nobody would have guessed. If you would have asked my high school coach or my youth coach, they would have been like: 'Nah, he's going to have some success in basketball at the school level, but professional is almost impossible, for sure.'"
Wake Forest has produced many great athletes, with Perry's friend Dexter Lawrence II - a nose tackle for the New York Giants - being one. Not until late in his time at NCAA Division II college Lenoir-Rhyne did Perry realise he, too, could become a professional athlete.
After blossoming under the tutelage of Ryan Odom - now the head coach of the Virginia Cavaliers - Perry opened up a world of possibilities.
The J. Cole Connection
Now, as he prepares to take part in his fourth BAL season, representing his third club, he has become almost as ubiquitous in African basketball as his favourite rapper, J. Cole, in the world of hip-hop.
The only BAL season in which Perry did not participate was the inaugural event in a Kigali bio-bubble in 2021. That year, he tuned in to watch his favourite rapper, J. Cole, playing for Rwanda's Patriots BBC.
Sitting in Spain's third-tier LEB Plata after stints in Portugal, Bulgaria and Luxembourg, he felt his career needed a change of environment in order to avoid stagnation. Perry was impressed and intrigued by what he saw in the BAL.
"Every African guy that I played with was like: 'Africa's coming. Just wait.'... I wouldn't say anyone in particular [that swayed me] but I was in Spain playing during COVID [in a stint at CD Estela in 2020-21]," Perry said.
"I had a teammate named Stephen Ugochukwu and he was telling me about the Basketball Africa League. He told me J. Cole was playing in the league and that was my favourite rapper. I was like: 'Alright - well, let's watch it.'
"Me and him sat in Spain and watched the Basketball Africa League's first edition from start to finish. I was like: 'Man; this is awesome!'
"Not only is J. Cole playing and that's really cool, but the level of play was good. It was exciting and it was cool. I can give a lot of credit to [Ugochukwu], but it was mainly just watching the first edition and then the following year, deciding: 'Let me do it.'"
Later in 2021, Perry joined Mozambique's Ferroviário da Beira - a team in his own image: the plucky underdogs with hopes of playing on the biggest stage at the 2022 BAL.
He continued: "I was an under-rated guy. I was a late bloomer. Just making it to the pro level, I was so happy just to be able to say the rest of my life that I played professional basketball - but then, as I started climbing in the ranks, I thought: 'Alright, well now I'm really trying to make money in this thing. Let me get to the top level in Europe'.
"Unfortunately, it just didn't work out. I just couldn't bust into the top layer in Europe... I decided, 'Let me change something. Let me try to change.'"
An undreamed-of career
Perry took a risk joining a team that had not participated in the first season of the BAL, but to date, his first season with Beira is his favourite memory in Africa.
He explained: "My favourite memory is the first time I played in the Road to BAL with Ferroviário da Beira and the first time we qualified for the BAL. Qualifying for the BAL is awesome. If you play in the Road to BAL and that game that you need to win to get there, you win it, it's a great feeling.
"We played against the Cape Town Tigers [in December 2021] in South Africa and we beat them by [two points] and that's my best memory - that game that took us to the 2022 BAL... That's my best memory [on the continent] by far."
Perry did not stop there, though, improving his scoring average year-on-year in the BAL. He has not only consistently scored between 14 and 19 points per game in his first three BAL seasons, but his second in 2023 saw him tie Terrell Stoglin's then-scoring record of 41 points in a game. Jo Lual-Acuil would go on to score 42 in 2024.
Last season saw Perry suit up for a different team - Nigeria's Rivers Hoopers - and pick up his first top-three finish as the team from Port Harcourt beat the Cape Town Tigers in the third-place playoff in Kigali.
"One good thing about the Rivers Hoopers team I played for and why I think we had a lot of success is: our games fit together perfectly. Sometimes, basketball is not just about getting the best, most talented players. It's about who can fit together in the right way," said Perry.
Perry has also won the BAL's Sportsmanship Award twice in a row (2023 and 2024), signalling his "ethical behavior, fair play, and integrity". Despite only being 6-foot tall, his professional attitude shines through in his ability to consistently pick up rebounds even in a physical league against much bigger opponents.
At ASCVD, he will have former Los Angeles Lakers draft pick Ater Majok alongside him leading in the paint, with Abdoulaye Harouna sharing the load with scoring. Perry made the decision to join the hosts of the Sahara Conference (April 26 - May 4) with both his head and heart.
He said: "They gave me a good offer to be honest; I'm not going to lie. Obviously, the economics are something that I had to put into play and I really wanted to play for the home team if that makes sense. I think it's cool to play when the fans are all behind you."
ASCVD will come up against Angola's Petro de Luanda, Tunisia's US Monastir and fellow first-timers Cape Verde's Kriol Star. The top two teams in each of the three conferences, together with the two best third-placed teams, will advance to the playoffs.
In between his spells in Mozambique, Nigeria and Senegal, Perry has played in the domestic leagues of Burundi and Rwanda - even featuring for J. Cole's former side, Patriots - and at a short tournament in South Africa, Wits University's Ashraf Lodewyk Memorial Basketball Tournament.
His career has taken him to places he could not have imagined as a teen, and potentially set him up for a future career that could be more in line with what he always believed he would do.
Next up: Agent Will Perry?
Before he ended up turning professional, Perry believed that he would become a financial adviser or basketball coach, and now, he relishes giving financial advice to his fellow professionals in Africa.
Former Cape Town Tigers small forward Lebo Mofokeng, for one, confirmed to ESPN that Perry advised him on finding an agent. Mofokeng currently coaches at Eshot, an academy in Tianjin, China.
Perry has laid the groundwork to potentially run an agency in the future, but has let his father take the reins while he continues his on-court career.
"I did start an agency - me and my dad - and it's going kind of well. It's not something that I wanted to do full-time. It's actually illegal to be a player and an agent, so I had to call my dad and ask him if he could be the head of it... It's something I'm definitely interested in after basketball," he said.
"I think there's a huge market for helping players off the court and for just being a mentor and guiding guys. A lot of times, that's all a really talented guy needs - just somebody to point him in the right direction and keep him on the right path."
Perry is leaving all doors open for the future, also considering coaching and management. For now, he is setting his sights on finally bringing home an elusive BAL championship title.