West Virginia’s Javon Small handles the ball during a college basketball game last season in Morgantown, W.Va. (Photo Provided by BlueGoldNews.com)

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — It may have looked easy for former WVU star Javon Small when he did his thing at the NBA Combine, hitting an amazing 47 straights 3s in a shooting drills, but he will be the first to tell you it hasn’t been easy in his chase to attain a place in the National Basketball Association since he canned his first 3-point shot while still learning his A-B-Cs.

He wasn’t one of those 6-foot, 6-inch or taller point guards of the Magic Johnson school. He wasn’t as precise or fancy a passer as John Stockton. He wasn’t as sharp a 3-point shooter as Seth Curry.

He had a bit of what all of them had with a heavy dose of desire that gave him a work ethic that drove the dream he was trying to make come true.

Over the next couple of days, he finds out where he stands as his college days are over and he is a part of the NBA Draft. ESPN and most experts are placing him as a potential pick near the end of the second round.

And no, it certainly hasn’t been easy.

“I’m just trying to prove I can play at the next level after college,” he said at the NBA Combine. “I just want to prove I am a defensive guard who can score the ball and get my teammates involved.”

His career started not at a basketball power but instead at East Carolina.

He took it to the Power 5 after transferring to Oklahoma State and then simply powered his way into the NBA’s mindset with a defining senior season at WVU, but even there it wasn’t easy.

In truth, he was up against it the whole way. There was a new coach in Darian DeVries, a team built with nearly all new players in one of the nation’s toughest conferences, the Big 12.

He was part of a system, the driving force in the offense but one who had a buffer in the coach’s son, Tucker DeVries, who kept defenses from being built around simply stopping him.

Eight games into the season, DeVries, the younger one, ended his season with what was termed an upper body problem, never to play again. It was an injury that some questioned when it was disclosed that he would not be back and would use the year for a redshirt.

Then, when it was learned his father was leaving after one year to take the Indiana job and Tucker would join him to play out the redshirt season in Bloomington, not Morgantown, the questions turned quite accusatory that there was tampering involved, although there never was any formal accusations or charges.

Either way, things for Small would change. He had just gone through a stretch of five games against top-notched opponents such as Gonzaga, Arizona, Louisville and Georgetown (along with Iona) in which he had scored 23, 31, 26, 14 and 26 points, an average of 24 points a game.

It didn’t take long after that, without Tucker DeVries to occupy the defenses, that Big 12 teams began gathering their defenses with the objective of stopping Small.

Points became tougher and tougher to come by and while he continued to score well, he had to force things and was being worn down.

Where once it appeared that he might be a contender for the Big 12 Player of the Year, he had to settle for just All-Big 12, averaging 18.6 points a game, 5.6 assists, 4.1 rebounds and 1.5 steals as WVU was snubbed by the NCAA Tournament, costing him a chance to show his stuff on the game’s biggest stage.

Still, he had the NBA’s attention by this time and figured to go in the draft, although there were questions.

Turned out he was 6-1, not the 6-3 he was listed at, and while WVU was again influencing the league as it hadn’t since the days that Jerry West was playing and building champions while Red Thorn was creating a Hall of Fame career as an executive and Rod Hundley was creating a Hall of Fame career as broadcaster, the league hadn’t been producing star players.

Joe Mazzulla had come on to coach the Boston Celtics to an NBA title and Mike Gansey had built the Cleveland Cavaliers into a powerhouse as general manager while Deuce McBride was helping revitalize the New York Knicks and Jevon Carter was putting together a solid career off the bench at Chicago.

The NBA Draft, though, is a different animal than the other professional drafts.

While the NFL drafts 257 players on a yearly basis and Major League Baseball drafts 615, only 59 players go in the NBA Draft of two rounds.

And, they come not just from the collegiate scene, but the league has gone international and with a record-tying 125 players in the league, approximately 25% of its personnel have been coming from overseas.

The ESPN mock draft lists 13 of the 59 players being international.

Small is slated in that draft to go to the Milwaukee Bucks with the 47th pick, which will be made on the second day.

Make no doubt that Small proved himself last year. He faced players expected to be drafted in the ESPN draft last year and held his own against all of them.

Here is the matchups and where opposing players are placed in the ESPN draft:

No. 3, VJ Edgecombe of Baylor, scored only 7 points in an overtime win over the Mountaineers on 3of-12 shooting, 0-for-5 from 3, with 8 rebounds and 6 assists while Small scored 22 points on 7-of-16 shooting, 2-of-10 from 3, with 2 rebounds and 6 assists.

No. 10, Carter Bryant, in two games against WVU, scored 0 points in 11 minutes with 0-for-3 shooting and 7 points on 3-of-3 shooting in 13 minutes of the second game while Small scored 14 points with 8 assists in the first game, a WVU upset victory, and 17 points with 5 assists in the second game.

No. 13, Egor Demin, of BYU, scored 16 points with 3 rebounds and 2 assists in the first game and 15 points with 3 rebounds and three assists in a sweep of two games while Small was scoring 9 points with 3 rebounds and 9 assists in Game 1 and 15 points with 0 rebounds and 2 assists in Game 2.

No. 17 Thomas Sorber, of Georgetown, scored 13 points with 4 rebounds and 3 assists and No. 49 Micah Peavy in that same team scored 4 points with 5 rebounds and 2 assists while Small lit it up for 26 points, 5 rebounds and 3 assists.

No. 48, Ryan Nembhard, a key on what was then the nation’s third-ranked team in Gonzaga, went 1-for-10 shooting while scoring 7 points and had 4 rebounds but did create 12 assists but Small led the WVU upset with a season-high 31 points, hitting 9 of 18 shots and 9-of-11 free throws while grabbing 7 rebounds and dishing out 2 assists.

The NBA Draft starts at 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday night, with ABC and ESPN airing the first night and just ESPN on the second night.