How Woj helped a Bill Walton lookalike go from homeless to hooping for NBA scouts

NEW YORK -- Eighteen months ago, Joe Grahovac was homeless and sleeping in the passenger seat of his silver Toyota Tacoma. He spent his days working odd jobs and playing pickup basketball at a 24 Hour Fitness in Irvine, Calif.

This weekend, he took a charter flight from Olean, N.Y. to New York City with his teammates at St. Bonaventure University and slept in The Westin New York Grand Central. He spent Saturday afternoon playing basketball in front of scouts from more than 20 NBA teams, as well as former Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau.

“You know what, it’s pretty unreal,” the 6-foot-10, 24-year-old Grahovac, who bears more than a passing resemblance to a young Bill Walton, told NJ Advance Media at the St. Bonaventure Pro Day at the NBA Players Association training facility in midtown Manhattan.

“Sometimes, I still feel like I’m learning a lot, so just take every day as a learning process, just take baby steps. Or some days take great strides, just keep working every day. That’s all I’m doing.”

Grahovac, a Santa Ana native who spent one season at Fullerton (CA) College - a junior college - is playing only his second year of organized basketball and has one man to thank for the situation he found himself in on Saturday.

Former NBA Insider Adrian Wojnarowski, known throughout the basketball world as “Woj,” recruited him from Fullerton to St. Bonaventure, where he now works as the Men’s Basketball General Manager.

Last November, after seeing some video an agent had sent him on Grahovac, Wojnarowski flew to California to watch the big man’s season-opener when Fullerton played at MiraCosta. The big fella went for 22 points, 7 rebounds, 3 blocks, 2 assists and a steal against future Division 1 big men.

Wojnarowski looked around the gym to see if any other Division 1 college scouts were in the building.

“And I’m kind of looking around the gym going, ‘Where is everybody?’” Wojnarowski, who organized the St. Bonaventure Pro Day to showcase all of the team’s players, told NJ Advance Media. “Like, ‘Why aren’t all the California schools here?’”

Wojnarowski chatted with Grahovac after the game and the young man couldn’t understand why the ex-NBA Insider was there in the first place.

“You flew out here?” Grahovac asked Wojnarowski. “What did you fly out here for? What else are you doing here?”

“Nothing,” Wojnarowski explained. “I came here to see you.”

Wojnarowski also developed a relationship with Fullerton coach Perry Webster, who, as it turned out, was best friends with the nephew of Jim Satalin, the legendary Bonnies coach and player.

“So he was familiar with the place,” Wojnarowski said of Webster.

Grahovac had arrived at Fullerton only after a tumultuous period where he was homeless for about a month and sleeping in his truck due to what he called “family problems.”

“I was sleeping [in the truck] with a blanket on,” he said, adding that the police would sometimes find him and chase him away.

Another time, “I had a homeless guy asking me for water,” he added. “He knocked on my window, scared the living s**t out of me. I gave him some water and he left.”

Grahovac would go to the bathroom at a local gas station, shower at the gym and find food where could. A friend would often “hook him up with some breakfast.”

From there, Grahovac went to his job at a hay feed store where he helped deliver bales of hay to “equestrian neighborhoods” off a flatbed truck.

He didn’t last long in that job because of one major obstacle.

“I was allergic to the hay, but we dug it out,” he said.

On his days off, he hung out by a local Barnes & Noble and watched movies because they had free WiFi.

By around 4 or 5 p.m., he would hit the 24 Hour Fitness in Irvine, Calif. to play hoops with his buddies and his cousins. He showered at the gym “every day.”

“We stayed there until we got hungry,” he said.

Grahovac wants it known that he remains close with his mother Michelle and that his time being homeless wasn’t that long.

“It was a month and it’s not like my mom hates me or nothing,” he said. “People try to make me sound like I was homeless my whole life, that’s not the case. It was only a month, but it was definitely a life-changing experience for me. It definitely helped me realize a lot about myself, taught me how to be a man.”

In the summer of 2021, Grahovac earned an invitation to play in the prestigious Drew League, a pro-am league in Los Angeles, as reported by Seth Davis in his terrific piece on Grahovac.

Eventually, his social media videos made their way to Fullerton assistant coach Marshall Johnson and then to Webster, the head coach.

It wasn’t long before Wojnarowski was on his trail and recruiting him to St. Bonaventure.

“As I got to know Joe very early on, he had a steep climb academically, he had to do get a lot of work done to be to be able to get his Associate’s Degree and be eligible,” Wojnarowski said. “And it was clear to me he was incredibly determined, and that he had an infrastructure and support team who had a plan for him.

“At Fullerton, I thought he could get it done. It was obvious he was a good enough player, and I’m not sure how other schools saw it but just taking the time to get to know him, you just saw that this was an incredibly motivated guy, and he had people around him who really had his best interests at heart and and I think that the more I got to know Joe, the more I believed we were the right place for where he was in life, who he is as a person, that he would thrive in our environment. St. Bonaventure, small school, mid-major league, I thought it would resonate with him and it did.”

St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt calls Grahovac “a breath of fresh air.”

“If you coach him, he has no ego,” Schmidt said. “Basketball-wise, he’s unselfish. Those are the type of kids that you want to have success. And he’s still learning, but he’s got really good skills.”

Grahovac admits when he started, he didn’t know the fundamental rules of basketball, like how many fouls he could have before fouling out.

Asked how playing in front of NBA scouts from more than 20 teams could potentially change Grahovac’s life Schmidt chuckled and said, “He was living in a car.”

“I think it’s a blessing that somebody noticed him in 24 Hour Fitness,” he added. “And give Fullerton College credit, too, for taking a chance. From there to playing in a Pro Day, he’s got a bright future ahead of him.”

What did the NBA folks think of Grahovac?

“He’s a floor-spacing big that can shoot the ball,” one NBA executive said after Grahovac hit a 3-pointer during the scrimmage. “[In a] gym full of scouts, somebody’s gonna like it.”

Wojnarowski said Grahovac, who lives with teammates in a student townhouse at St. Bonaventure, has gained weight since coming to school and is now up to about 215 pounds from 198 at the end of last year. He has a 7-foot-1 wingspan and a 9-1 standing reach. Sometimes the staff has to tell him to get out of the gym and go home.

Wojnarowski said the NBA scouts will learn more about Grahovac and his teammates when they face Atlantic 10 powers like Dayton and VCU, and non-conference foes like North Carolina.

“He’s so determined to be great, to just maximize the opportunity,” Wojnarowski said. “He appreciates the coaching. He appreciates the support staff.”

During a recent fan fest on campus, each St. Bonaventure player came out to his own song. Grahovac entered the court to Billy Squier’s “The Stroke,” prompting Wojnarowski to jokingly ask, “Joe, how old are you?”

As for the Bill Walton comparisons, inspired by his full head of red hair, Grahovac says he appreciates them but he’s not into The Grateful Dead the way Walton was.

“I tried it, it’s not my thing,” he said. “I’m sorry to the Bill Walton fans.”

He prefers Rage Against the Machine and “old school hip-hop, like Nas.”

“All that lyrical stuff, I love that stuff,” he said.

As his day in front of the NBA scouts wound down, Grahovac was asked if he ever could have imagined playing in such an environment a year ago.

“No, not at all,” he said. “When I was at JUCO last year I didn’t think I was going to get anything out of this, to be honest. I was just playing and trusting the process. And that’s what I’m still doing to this day, keeping my head down and keep working.”

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