Josh Green pumped to represent Australia on the hardwood in Hoop Summit game

Long before his 6-foot-6 frame and enviable 10.25-foot wingspan ran through this week’s Hoop Summit practices, Josh Green had a pathway to pro sports already lined up.

It just didn’t necessarily involve basketball.

The Arizona signee, who will represent Australia on the World Team in the prestigious global all-star game on Friday in Portland, grew up a fan of the Australian Football League’s Sydney Swans.

He tried out for the Swans’ academy as a kid, played in the Greater Western Sydney Giants academy, and told an Australian website that he once aimed to put his name in the AFL draft, thinking he could do well in the game.

Green’s long, athletic and strong frame was well-suited to Aussie rules football — a sport with shades of rugby, soccer and basketball — as was his passion.

“I love it,” Green said. “I’ve still got my footy ball at home. You know, I still miss it to this day.”

But part of that love was rooted in opportunity. As a kid growing up in northwest Sydney, Green realized Aussie rules was more popular locally than basketball and could be a “better situation” for a professional.

“I was definitely thinking about it,” Green said.

But Green also kept his options open. Born to an American father who played and coached basketball Down Under, and to an Australia mother who played semi-pro basketball, Green was encouraged to play all manner of sports.

So he did, even surfing a bit off the beaches of New South Wales.

“It was hard for me to decide (a favorite) as a kid,” Green said.

But as he grew into a teenager, Green narrowed it down: It was footy, or basketball.

His family’s 2014 move to Phoenix sealed the decision. Green’s father, Delmas, was offered a job in Phoenix at just the same time that Green’s older brother, Jay, was receiving recruiting attention from U.S. colleges.

“The timing was kind of right,” Green’s mother, Cahla, said last month in Atlanta, before her son participated in the McDonald’s All-American Game. “Jay was starting to look at colleges and we wanted to take the family together and not have him be on the other side of the world. So we all just moved over together.”

Practically speaking, it worked. Jay chose UNLV, where he’s now a sophomore guard, while Josh wound up choosing Arizona, so both will be within an easy drive of the family’s American home base.

Cahla said it also helped that Josh was able to learn while watching Jay jump through academic transition and gain college eligibility as an international student.

But none of that meant the move was easy.

“It was a lot different,” Josh Green said. “The (school calendar), the stuff you learn in school, school uniform, and everything like that. Just a big culture shock.”

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The world of change came not only academically, but also culturally, environmentally and athletically.

“Moving from beaches, grass and trees to the middle of the desert was just tough, but the kids had to adjust to it,” Cahla said. “It’s a very different way of schooling and it’s a very different style of basketball as well. In Australia, it’s a huge fundamental game.”

It helped that Josh struck up a close friendship with a red-headed fellow basketball phenom named Nico Mannion.

The two first played against each other as middle-schoolers in tournaments at Avondale, and developed a relationship well before Mannion said he talked him into joining West Coast Elite during high school summers.

“We’re both pretty closed off personality-wise when we don’t know someone,” said Mannion, a fellow UA signee. “But, yeah, we kind of had a bond. We warmed up to each other pretty quick. We’d see each other at tournaments and we’d be texting, FaceTime or whatever. We were cool. By the time we got to West Coast Elite, we were friends.”

They stayed in frequent touch the rest of the year even as their high school paths separated: While Mannion attended all three years at Phoenix Pinnacle, reclassifying last summer to skip his junior season, Green went to Glendale Mountain Ridge High School as a freshman, then played with Deandre Ayton at Phoenix Hillcrest Prep as a sophomore before spending the past two seasons at Florida’s IMG Academy.

During the spring and summer, Green and Mannion shared backcourts and hotel rooms while turning into five-star prospects with the West Coast Elite club.

The club’s director, Ryan Silver, remembers the moment it probably happened. In 2015, West Coast Elite’s 15-and-under team was beating a team sponsored by the Pacers’ Thaddeus Young when Green posterized a big man.

“We beat a lot of good teams that year, and beat them handily,” Silver said. “When we were playing Team Thad, Nico passed it to Josh, and he came down the lane and dunked on their big guy. It was a ridiculous dunk.

“If kids are dunking at 15, that tells you something. Physically, he’s very special.”

As they will together at Arizona, Green and Mannion will get a chance to perform together on a much higher stage in Friday’s Hoop Summit game, which features the top U.S. high school players against a collection of international teenage talents.

Mannion, who was born in Italy and played for the Italian national team briefly last summer, was also named to the World Team, whose players typically have their countries’ name and flag across the front of their jerseys.

Green can’t wait to put his on.

“I love playing when I’m able to put Australia on the front of my jersey and represent Australia,” Green said. “It’s good. It’s always good to do that.”

He may be representing Australia for a long while, too. Green is hoping to play for Australia’s World Cup team later this summer and, before long, he could be joining friend and fellow Aussie basketball phenom Ben Simmons on Olympic teams.

And in the NBA, of course.

Because, after all, basketball has been working out pretty well for Josh Green.

“When I made that move (from Australia), it was definite that I had to stick with basketball,” Green said. “But I’m 100 percent fine with the decision I made and I couldn’t ask for better situation than the one I’m in right now.”