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Thon Maker, for whom expectations are mounting, celebrates after scoring during an NBA summer league game in July, 2016.John Locher

Thon Maker plunked his lanky frame in a court-side seat at Air Canada Centre following the Milwaukee Bucks' shootaround early Friday afternoon in preparation for their game against the Toronto Raptors.

Maker was multitasking – or at least attempting to – taking questions from a reporter while also trying to slip into his street running shoes, but was not having much luck.

As Maker was talking, teammate Michael Beasley swooped in, got on one knee, and started to tie one of Maker's sneakers.

"Oh boy," a slightly flustered Maker said. "I don't know what [he's] doing."

With Beasley providing the sneaky distraction, Maker did not notice his other shoe slipping into the hands of another player. It wound up being flung into the stands, several rows up.

More than halfway into the NBA season and Maker still has to endure the rookie hazing rituals all first-year players are subjected to.

And the Sudanese national, whose complex route to the NBA included stops in Australia, the United States and a two-year stint in the small town of Orangeville, Ont., just northwest of Toronto, said it has all been worth it to realize his dream.

"It's been a learning process the whole year," Maker said. "And I've been sticking with it and I'm going to stick with it. It's fun."

Fun in this case means making the best of limited playing time – just less than five minutes a game this season as Milwaukee coach Jason Kidd has adopted a slow and steady NBA indoctrination for the 19 year old.

"He gets better each time he takes the floor," Kidd said of Maker. "He's getting some minutes – we got to get him on the floor a little bit more before the season's out. He's a hard worker. He puts in a lot of time during practice, after practice, before practice.

"He's hungry to play so we're very lucky to have him."

Maker is considered a project, a 7-foot-1, 216-pound athlete who can run and jump like a deer but was a relative latecomer to basketball after starting off with soccer.

The Bucks are expecting to tap into the immense potential most basketball experts see with Maker. They made him their first pick, 10th over all, in the 2016 NBA draft.

"You can quote me right now," teammate Jabari Parker crowed to the Milwaukee media this past weekend after Maker made his first NBA start against the Miami Heat. "Thon Maker's going to be the best 7-foot player in this league. He's going to. He's that good."

That is pretty high praise in the wake of an 18-minute starting debut, in which Maker went 1-for-3 – he made a three-pointer – and finished with six points in a 109-97 loss.

And the only reason Maker was in the starting lineup in the first place was because Parker was being punished by Kidd for the contravention of a team rule.

Maker's odyssey to the NBA started in South Sudan where he was born. He had to flee to Uganda when he was 5 to escape the strife of a civil war.

From there, Maker, his younger brother, Matur and an aunt were accepted as refugees in Australia, eventually setting in Perth.

Maker started playing basketball at the age of 14, when his skills started attracting attention. He wound up attending high school in Louisiana and then Virginia.

Then, in a move that shocked many, Maker and his brother decided to eschew the higher-profile U.S. basketball system and enrolled at the Athlete Institute in Orangeville in September, 2014, where he played for two years.

Maker said it might have seemed like an unconventional move, but it made sense to him.

"It was great for me," Maker said. "It was a chance to build my body even more. I was way skinnier than this. I used it to build my body while playing at the highest level of high-school ball.

"We played a national schedule against all the best teams in the United States. We played against anybody who wanted to play us so it was really good for me."

Maker said he was not concerned about his profile dipping while playing up in Canada.

"A long time ago, in 2011 when I first came to the U.S., I was working out with Bill Walton," Maker said. "And he [said] 'no matter where you are in this world, the NBA will find you.' And they did."

In April, 2015, Maker played at the Nike Hoop Summit for the world team, which was coached by Roy Rana, the men's coach at Ryerson University in Toronto, currently the fourth-ranked team in U Sports.

Maker grabbed a game-high 10 rebounds while teammate Jamal Murray from Kitchener, Ont., now playing with the Denver Nuggets, drained 30 points as the world team defeated the U.S. Jr. national select team 103-101.

"He's probably more impressive as a young man than he is even as a basketball player," Rana said. "His demeanour, his maturity, just the way he presents himself is phenomenally impressive.

"And then he's just a work horse. He's in the gym 24/7 and just has a real solid sense of who he is as a person. Just a quality, quality young man."

When Friday's shootaround at the ACC was over, Maker got the bum's rush as the team had to catch a bus back to the hotel to rest up before the Toronto game.

Although he only spent a couple of years living in Orangeville, Maker said coming back to Canada is special to him.

"It's kind of like a homecoming," he said. "This is where I give out most of my tickets to family and friends."

The interview over, Maker started scouring the stands for his missing running shoe.

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