'Living in the moment': Obi Toppin embracing move to Pacers after disappointing Knicks stop

INDIANAPOLIS -- Obi Toppin says he'll miss the fans the most but they're at the top of a long list.

Playing for the Knicks meant playing for the team Toppin grew up rooting for. It meant listing Madison Square Garden as his workplace, but it also meant that he was close to all the hallowed blacktops he first made his name on -- Rucker, Dyckman, Orchard Beach and the West Fourth Street Cage -- places where his father, Obadiah Sr., was also a legend. It meant family, immediate and extended, and friends could always come watch him at the world's most famous arena.

"The fans in New York were amazing," Toppin said. "That’s my hometown. I probably knew half the people in that arena. My grandfather was a season ticket holder. Just having an opportunity to play on that floor every single day and just drive up the street to go back to the house was insane."

So deep inside, there's a part of all of this that stings and always will. He was granted what should have been a glorious return home when the Knicks took him eighth overall in the 2020 draft. However, he just happened to get stuck behind an All-Star power forward in Julius Randle and after three years in which he never averaged 20 minutes per game, he was traded to the Pacers in July for two second-round picks.

But if he had to leave home, he couldn't have asked for a better situation. Indianapolis is the closest NBA city to Dayton, Ohio, the town he calls his second home and a place that considers him a native son after he won every college basketball player of the year award in 2020 at the University of Dayton. He joins a Pacers squad that desperately needed a power forward and happens to have an All-Star point guard in Tyrese Haliburton who wants nothing more but to operate in a state of permanent fast break, which happens to play to Toppin's strengths exactly. The 6-9, 220-pounder started all four of the Pacers' preseason games and there's every reason to believe he'll be in the starting lineup at 7 p.m. Wednesday when they begin their season at Gainbridge Fieldhouse against the Washington Wizards, putting him on track to play far more minutes and post more production than he ever has as a pro. He and the Pacers did not come to an agreement on the extension to his rookie scale contract but he's still due $6.8 million this season and this gives both sides a season to get a sense of his value on the open market.

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He's already found a comfort level with his teammates and the coaching staff that reminds him of his time in Dayton. He started receiving calls and texts almost immediately when the trade was made in July and has been told on a constant basis since how happy the Pacers are to have him.

"It’s really the culture here," Toppin said. "They really care about one another. Everybody cares about each other."

And when it comes to any disappointment Toppin might ever have about his time with the Knicks or anything else that comes his way in his NBA career, it's relatively easy for him to put those feelings to the side because of the perspective he's earned from what it took to get himself here. Seven years ago, he graduated from Ossining (N.Y.) High School without a single Division I scholarship offer, so 18-year-old Obi Toppin would have been overjoyed to know he'd one day be in the NBA long enough to be traded from his childhood favorite team. And in his younger years he encountered struggles that made anything that would befall him on a basketball court seem easy by comparison.

"People say it is pressure being in the NBA," Toppin said. "Pressure is the things that I grew up on. Not being able to sleep in a bed. Sleeping in the car for a couple months. Being in the street and not knowing if I’m going to have a meal the next day. Those things were pressure and hard times. This, I’m in the NBA. People here got money. My family is good. My kids are good. I can’t complain. Obviously there’s days where I’m like, 'Ah, (expletive). Everybody has those days. You just gotta think of the bigger picture. I’m here. I’m having fun, my family is good. That’s all I can ask for."

Following a legend

With a father who was still very much active in the game when he was born, Obi was essentially born into basketball and the culture of the New York city playgrounds.

Obadiah Sr., a Brooklyn native, was 20 when Obi was born in Brooklyn in 1998 and had established himself as a streetball legend in New York's famous courts, earning himself the nickname "Dunker's Delight" because of his explosiveness and the creativity of his slams. He gave junior college basketball a try, first at Eastern Oklahoma State and then at now-defunct Globe Tech in Manhattan, where he finished fifth in the nation among junior college players with 23.5 points per game in 2002-03. He followed that up with a professional career in various minor leagues, earning an All-Star nod in the ABA with the Harlem Strong Dogs in 2004-05, a stint with a professional team in the Dominican Republic and a barnstorming show basketball team in Florida called the Court Kingz.

Obi got to experience much of that up close and personal. Obadiah brought him to games at Rucker and Dyckman and other parks to watch but sometimes to participate. When the family moved to Florida, Obi got to be part of the Court Kingz experience. There's YouTube evidence of Obi helping Obadiah with his dunk routine, throwing an alley-oop off the backboard for him to slam down.

Chasing that dream wasn't easy on the family, though, especially when Obi was younger. Obadiah and Obi's mother Roni were very young themselves when Obi was born. Roni became a teacher but wasn't established at the time. They lived in project housing in Brooklyn and for a short while, Obi said, the Toppins didn't have any housing at all and had to live in a car.

"It was only for a little bit when I was a baby," Obi said. "I don't remember it, it's stories that my parents told me. But it's being in Bushwick projects. You don't know when you're going to have a next meal or if everyone in the family is going to eat. Those types of things are pressure."

But basketball always served to relieve pressure, both for Obadiah and for Obi. Naturally, Toppin wanted to be a high flyer just like his father.

"Obviously everybody knew who my dad was," Obi said. "My dad was a legend in the city parks. Growing up I wanted to be better than what he was doing. He was obviously a great player made it to a very high level, went overseas. We’re so competitive our family. We’re always trying to beat each other in everything. He'd bring me on the court with him against grown men when I was really young and just doing things like that helped me throughout this process."

In Florida, though the family went through hard times and Obadiah and Toppin's mother Roni separated, reconciled, separated again and eventually chose to live in different states, though they maintain a relationship and Obadiah is still very much in Obi's life. In 2012, Obadiah and his twin brother Octavius were arrested in Virginia and charged with murder in the killing of Raymond Torres in Palm City, Fla. Obadiah pled guilty to accessory after the fact and received probation. Octavius was charged with second degree murder but went to trial and was found not guilty. Obadiah avoided incarceration, but times were still hard on the family and Roni eventually decided to move Obi and his younger brother Jacob back to New York, this time to Ossining, a suburb in Westchester County about 50 minutes north of Madison Square Garden. Obadiah still lives in Florida though the family still stays in contact. (Jacob went on to star at Kentucky and is himself on a two-way contract with the Knicks this year.)

That move happened before Obi's junior year after he had played high school ball at Heritage High School in Palm Bay, Fla., and Melbourne Central Catholic in Melbourne. At that point, he didn't have much at all in the way of recruiting interest, but Roni pushed him to develop his game the same way his father did. In the summers she took him down to the city so he could play in the same parks his father did and allow the playground game to force him to learn how to deal with pressure.

"Coming back that was the biggest thing for me," Toppin said. "Because in New York, it's the Mecca of basketball. Having the opportunity to play in Dychman, Rucker Park, all those parks helped me a lot. The competition is there. The physicality, people talking mess in the stands, going crazy. If you don’t bring your A game they’re gonna talk about it and you don’t want that so you’re going to bring your A game every time. It builds character. If you can play in one of those games and people talk to you and you can mentally get through that, I feel like you can play anywhere."

Toppin played as much playground ball as he could, sometimes playing four or five games a day at multiple parks, and the experience made him mentally tougher and even more skilled but it didn't make him taller or bigger. He expected to be a late bloomer and that Obadiah and Roni's genetics would eventually kick in, but as a junior at Ossining he was a 6-2, 150-pound guard. He came off the bench, and the son of Dunker's Delight couldn't actually dunk.

As a senior, Toppin grew to about 6-3, and was finally big enough to throw down dunks. He put enough weight on that he could play inside at the suburban public high school level, but he also had developed a point-guard quality handle and sharp outside shot. He had an excellent senior season, averaging 20.6 points and 7.8 rebounds in 2015-16, helping Ossining to its first league title in a decade.

"He could score at all three levels," Ossining coach Mike Casey said. "He was pretty good about when he did miss the perimeter shot to follow up and get that rebound. He was probably 6-3, but his wingspan was probably 6-7 back then. He was long and agile and able to get to the rim and for us was able to get the ball inside. With our trapping defense at the time we had him on the point on the press and he was able to create a lot of havoc, there were a lot of variables to his game back then."

Still, the size wasn't enough and he hadn't made much of a splash on the grassroots circuit, so his recruiting attention was negligible. St. Thomas Aquinas, a Division II school in Sparkill, N.Y. just north of New Jersey on the west bank of the Hudson River, offered a scholarship but wanted Toppin to pay his own way first semester. Toppin decided to go to Monroe Junior College in New Rochelle, N.Y. However, Vic Monaros, an old friend of Obadiah and Obi's Godfather, convinced Obi and Roni to abandon that plan and worked with some contacts to get Obi a post-grad year at Mt. Zion Prep in Baltimore. That was where the late bloomer finally started to bloom.

'Man, that's Obi right there'

Casey said the next time he saw Toppin after he graduated Ossining and went to Baltimore, Toppin had grown to 6-7. He was listed at 6-9 on recruiting sites and the prep school circuit was drawing the kind of attention he never had at Ossining. He averaged 17.0 points per game and 8.0 rebounds and major schools started giving him attention. He got an offer from Georgia that started a domino effect. Illinois, Mississippi State and Rhode Island all made offers as well and Georgetown showed some interest.

"Just getting in front of the right people helped me tremendously," Toppin said. "Coaches started coming to see me and as soon as I got that offer from Georgia they started going down the line."

But the connection that got him to Dayton was the same one who helped him get to Mt. Zion. One of the people Monaros called originally was Ricardo Greer, a New York City native who starred at Pitt and had a 15-year career overseas before he returned to the U.S. to get into coaching. Greer was the director of player development at Central Florida at the time and he managed to aid the process. He and Toppin developed a relationship, and as he followed his season at Mt. Zion, he realized he was a legitimate prospect.

In March of 2017, a chain of events that started in Bloomington of all places led Greer and Toppin to Dayton. Indiana fired Tom Crean and hired Archie Miller away from Dayton, and the Flyers chose Anthony Grant as his replacement. Grant had been a head coach at Alabama and VCU, but was part of Billy Donovan's staff with the Oklahoma City Thunder at the time and needed new assistants and to rebuild the roster. He chose Greer and Greer's first piece of advice was to recruit Toppin.

"I told coach Grant we have a kid that we need to look at," Greer said. "He said, 'OK,' and it was Obi. Obi was raw and he played hard and was super athletic and just had so much of a high ceiling."

It wasn't a totally easy sell, though because even though Toppin was at or close to 6-9, he also weighed all of 180 pounds.

"Obi was just always athletic but skinny, he wasn’t very physical and he had to be really taught how to play the game," Greer said. "When he came on a visit the rest of the staff had never seen Obi. I had one of our guys cut some film from his last tournament in Monteverde and they see this kid running up and down catching alley oops and stuff and they’re like, 'This the same kid?' I’m like, 'Yeah, that’s him.'"

Grant's hiring was announced March 30, 2017, Toppin was one of his first offers on April 19. He took a visit the following week and committed in mid-May, saying the family atmosphere was a big part of what sold him.

Toppin ended up being forced to take an academic redshirt that year, and while that would have been disappointing for most, he still had a scholarship to a school that was beyond his reach just over a year prior. He could practice, go to the weight room and go through his own workouts on gamedays. He had an easier time than most keeping his mind on the tasks at hand.

"It's tough on any kid to be told you’re here but you can’t play your first year," Grant said. "He was able to take that year and he did as well as anybody I’ve seen in my career in terms of really taking advantage of the redshirt year in the weight room, in the classroom and on the court. Just the work that he put in when nobody was watching."

Toppin admitted he had frustrations, but he could see the payoff in real time.

"That year was probably the year that changed my life," Toppin said. "When I got to Dayton I was like 180 soaking wet. Then by the end of that year I was like 220. I was waking up, 6, 7 in the morning every day drinking a shake that you could turn upside down and it’s not even coming out the cup kind of thing. To build my weight I was doing extra stuff in the weight room, I'm doing extra stuff on the court. There were times when I was like, I don’t know if this is for me. I’m going crazy in my head. That whole year helped me tremendously and I felt like I was prepared for the next two years because of that year."

When he got to Dayton, Toppin was being pushed around by guards. By Christmas he was throwing down dunks in practice and holding his own against upperclassmen forwards and the Flyers were starting to see what he could become.

"This boy is running up and down and he’s dunking it and I’m like, ‘Man, that’s Obi right there,'" Greer said. "You know? You’re so preoccupied with the team and the guys that are playing. Coach just had a smile on his face and we're like, 'Yeah, this guy might have a chance.'"

Toppin started his first game because of injuries to upperclassmen and he posted 18 points and 10 rebounds against North Florida, then scored 19 points on 8 of 10 shooting against Coppin State. Grant figured out he had a weapon, especially in transition and ball screen actions.

"It's like I found a $50 bill in my pocket I didn't know I had," Grant said. "I think the obvious things are his ability to run. He’s athletic. I think once we got going one of his biggest gifts is to be able to understand how to get in and out of ball screens. He’s as good as I’ve been around. Combine that with his speed and athleticism, the way that we play, we were able to take advantage of that. He had a knack round the bucket of being able to finish in traffic and so around bodies he used his athleticism and his touch around the basket."

That year he averaged 14.4 points and 5.6 rebounds and was named Atlantic-10 Freshman of the Year. He tested the NBA waters that summer but decided to come back, and it was almost immediately evident that he'd made another major leap. He scored more than 20 points in each of his first five games, making 70% of his shots in four of those five. At the Maui Invitational, he dropped 25 points in a win over Anthony Edwards' Georgia team and 24 points in a win over Virginia Tech before scoring 18 in an overtime loss to then No. 4 Kansas in the championship game.

"I remember (point guard) Jalen Crutcher, we’re walking off the court and going back to the locker room and he looks at me and shakes his head and says, 'Coach, Obi’s the best player in the country,'" Grant said. "I had to pause for a second like, 'Wow, he might be right.' That was the first time I actually thought about it like, let’s see. Coach (Bill) Self, who I’d worked with in USA Basketball, made a similar comment to me. He said, “Hey, you guys are really good. You have the best player in the country.’"

By season's end, just about everyone agreed as Toppin averaged 20.0 points and 7.5 rebounds per game and made a remarkable 63.3% of his shots including nearly 70% of his 2-pointers and 39.0% of his 3s. He won the Wooden Award, the Naismith Award and the AP Player of the Year award, leading Dayton to a 29-2 record and perfect 18-0 mark in the Atlantic-10 before the world shut down due to the COVID pandemic. Eight months later after the NBA finally finished its 2019-20 campaign in the Disney World bubble, the Knicks picked him eighth overall. Watching the remotely conducted draft on a couch next to Roni and Obadiah, he broke down in tears when the pick was announced. While he was being interviewed after the pick, ESPN's Malika Andrews asked him what it meant for him to return home.

"Me repping my city, it's amazing," Toppin said through tears. "A lot of people pray to be in this position. I'm not going to take it for granted, I promise you that."

He never did, but now that his time with the Knicks is over, he also won't take for granted his fresh start.

'A fresh start'

When Toppin was drafted, it wasn't obvious that he'd be stuck behind Julius Randle long term. Randle had left the Pelicans and signed a three-year, $63 million deal with the Knicks in the summer of 2019, but he was down to two years left when Toppin was drafted and that seemed like a good way to get Toppin settled in the league before making him New York's starting power forward.

But then Randle had the best season of his career, averaging 24.1 points and 10.2 rebounds while shooting 41.1% from 3-point range to lead the Knicks to a 41-31 record and a playoff berth in 2020-21 after they'd been 21-45 the year before. That summer the Knicks signed Randle to a four-year, $117 million max extension and suddenly the franchise's biggest long-term investment was sitting in front of Toppin on the depth chart.

Defense-oriented coach Tom Thibodeau didn't want to play them together because he preferred the rim protection that big men such as Mitchell Robinson provided, so Toppin was relegated to getting minutes with the second unit when Randle needed a breather, which wasn't all that often. Toppin averaged 11.0 minutes per game as a rookie, 17.1 in his second year and 15.7 last season, starting just 15 of his 201 appearances. His frustrations reportedly boiled over after a playoff loss to the Heat in May when Toppin and Thibodeau got into a verbal altercation so heated that coaches and teammates had to step in to cool him off.

When Toppin was traded, New York reporters asked him about the altercation. Toppin dodged the question about Thibodeau, said he enjoyed his time but was focused on moving on.

"I'm not really worried about the past anymore, thinking about that," Toppin said in July. "All I'm worried about is a fresh start, a new start in Indiana. I can't wait to get out there."

He met the team in Las Vegas for NBA Summer League, so before he even got to Indiana he got the sense that the Pacers had a plan. Tyrese Haliburton told him they should get in the gym together in Indianapolis between Summer League and Haliburton's return to Las Vegas for practice with Team USA for FIBA World Cup to build some chemistry. Pacers coach Rick Carlisle took him out to dinner.

"I went to dinner with coach already," Toppin said at the time. "We talked. I went to dinner with some of the players and we’ve talked. Doing things like that obviously helps with the brotherhood, the team it helps with team chemistry. Doing things like that I feel like is huge. I went to dinner with coach and we didn’t talk about basketball one time. Just doing something like that, just showing me he really cared, I haven’t done that with a lot of coaches at all. Definitely Dayton. I had great coaches over there. It was that same thing, that family environment."

It was obvious to Toppin even before training camp started that the Pacers had a clear sense of what they wanted from him. They believed in his value as a rim-runner, a finisher, a screen-and-roll weapon and an outside shooter and had way of utilizing and maximizing all those skills.

"I feel like they’re putting me in the best possible positions to be successful," Toppin said. "They’re putting me in positions where they know I’m really good at and they are not going to put me in positions where they know I need help in, whether it’s offensively or defensively."

Haliburton in particular thinks Toppin can be a force in transition. If anything he wants Toppin to trust his speed a little more because sometimes he leaks out to get a head start rather than going for a defensive rebound.

"Even if he doesn't leak out and he's neck-and-neck with somebody, I trust him to win that footrace more times than not," Haliburton said. "That's just the biggest thing is him understanding how great of an athlete he is. If he's side-by-side with somebody he's usually going to win that race and if he's not, he's 6-9 and we can figure that out up top. I think that's been the most underrated part of it is people don't understand how fast he gets from defense to offense."

That's not to say they don't want Toppin to make some strides. Toppin has never been a particularly strong defender, but Carlisle thinks he can be closer to adequate.

"He's working on it," Carlisle said. "If he's going to be a full-time 4-man, now you're switching on to smaller guys pretty frequently. You've got to be able to get down, stay in front, use your length to disrupt but not allow blow-bys. In a couple of the games early you saw there were times when he'd move his feet and then there'd be a pump fake and he'd be up in the air and the guy would step through. He's working on being more grounded and being able to contain better."

And Carlisle thinks a 6-9 human with a 7-2 wingspan, muscle all over and a towering vertical should be able to grab more than Toppin's career 7.2 rebounds per 36 minutes.

"We think he can improve his rebounding," Carlisle said. "If he can improve in those two areas, that's going to make a massive difference in his game."

If he does improve in those two areas, he could become the player he never got to be in a Knicks uniform and accomplish the dreams he hoped would manifest in Madison Square Garden. And there will be some bittersweetness there, but he'll still be perfectly happy to do it in his new second home.

"I’m really big on living in the moment," Toppin said. "Anything that happened in the past is in the past. You can’t go back. There’s no time machine to go back to that time. Today, whatever is going on today and moving forward, tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. Every second that I'm here, I’m trying to do everything I can on the court, everything I can with my family. Those two things are my biggest priority in life. My family is good I’m on the court working every single day to get better. That’s all I need right now."

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Pacers Obi Toppin living in the moment after trade from Knicks