For North County High School graduate and pro hoopster Trevelin Queen, there have been several surreal moments for him the past several months surrounding his NBA debut, and it was all made better by what it took to get to this point.
Queen, a native of Glen Burnie, Md., is currently with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, a G League affiliate of the Houston Rockets. The 6-foot-6, 190-pound guard has played in 16 games for the Vipers this year, averaging 23.5 points, 6.3 rebounds and 4.3 assists per contest entering play Feb. 1.
As such, Queen, who turns 25 in late February, has earned some time with the Rockets. He made his NBA regular-season debut against the Detroit Pistons Dec. 18, and he scored his first NBA points against the Chicago Bulls Dec. 20. He got the first big minutes of his career Dec. 27, when he played more than 28 minutes against the Charlotte Hornets and scored 17 points.
“It was just surreal. Just finally putting that NBA jersey on and finally getting NBA points is like, ‘All right, now I finally made it. I can put the jersey on,'” Queen said on Glenn Clark Radio Jan. 26. “Once you get the first official bucket and the first official minute it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I really made it.’ It was just a roller coaster of emotions, just being in the game and then like, ‘Oh shit, there’s DeMar DeRozan. Oh shit, there’s this guy and that guy.’ It’s like, ‘I was just playing with these dudes on 2K and now I’m guarding them one-on-one.'”
There were plenty of bumps along the road to get to that point. Queen spent time at three schools, starting with two junior colleges (College of Marin in 2016-17 and New Mexico Military Institute in 2017-18) before settling down at New Mexico State for two seasons. He averaged 13.2 points, 5.2 rebounds and 2.4 assists for the Aggies as a senior in 2019-20, but he did miss time due to a torn meniscus.
Queen went undrafted but played 15 games for the Vipers in 2020-21 to get on the NBA radar. He spent training camp before this season with the Los Angeles Lakers, rubbing shoulders with plenty of big-name stars. Queen played in four preseason games with the Lakers, and his brief time in Los Angeles left him in disbelief.
“That was probably the most surreal moment like, ‘That’s really LeBron James. That’s really Russell Westbrook. I dreamed of this day happening. Now I’m guarding these dudes one-on-one in practice. They’re guarding me. I’m really hooping with LeBron James.’ That was probably the most surreal,” Queen said.
Queen then signed a two-way contract with the Rockets in December, with his call-up to the NBA squad coming shortly after that. His debut was the culmination of a dream that felt far away back when he was at the College of Marin in Kentfield, Calif. He faced difficult living conditions, ranging from a cramped retirement community to a 1982 Oldsmobile Delta in East Oakland, and had little money for proper meals.
Queen’s lowest moment came when his grandmother passed away during that period, which almost caused him to give up on his NBA dream.
“I lost my grandmother and to me, she was my best friend,” Queen said. “We couldn’t afford to fly me up to the funeral or anything like that, so that really took a toll on me for awhile as I was homeless in Oakland, so you know how that can go. … You’re just trying to make it day by day and she’s gone and I couldn’t even go see her. It was really hard for me at that point. That was my lowest of my lowest.”
Having made it to the NBA, what does Queen think about the journey to get to that point? He thinks back to his father working to make him a better basketball player and his mother making sure he had new shoes, socks and school clothes and that she got him to all of his games.
“My goal was to put my family in a better position … that was one of my goals in life,” Queen said. “That’s what always kept me motivated — my family and everything else around me. Once you get stuck in a situation, if it’s all about you then you never have any motivation to get out. My goal in life was just to take care of my family. That drove me to go through what I went through and just accomplish my dreams.”
For more from Queen, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Christian Inoferio/Rio Grande Valley Vipers