When Woj Met Joe: A Basketball Story

Big Joe is Joe Grahovac, a 23-year-old, 6-foot-10 freshman forward at Fullerton College. Webster had been fielding countless calls about Grahovac ever since he dominated play at a juco showcase in September. The only thing that intrigued  recruiters more than Grahovac’s alluring skill set was his unique origin story. Never played in high school? Found him at 24 Hour Fitness? Who is this guy? Throw in the bushy red afro and thick beard to match and you have a player whose look, game and quirks are redolent of the OG Redhead himself, Bill Walton. SoCal beach vibe included.

Seriously, though, who is this guy? That’s what Woj, as he is so famously known, wondered as a friend showed him video from that juco showcase while Woj was standing in the lobby of the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. Big Joe ripping a rebound and leading the break. Big Joe driving the lane and dishing to a cutting teammate. Big Joe pulling up for a feathery three-pointer. Big Joe bouncing off the floor and flushing a lob dunk. Woj has acted on such tips all of his professional life. Now he wanted the scoop. He got Webster’s phone number and sent him that text message.

When Webster called back, he explained the details of Grahovac’s background and said his plan was for Grahovac to earn his Associate Degree in one year instead of the usual two. Most coaches backed off after hearing that, but not Woj. He arranged a trip to California so he could see Big Joe for himself.

Woj was courtside on Nov. 1 when Grahovac made his collegiate debut. He had 22 points on 10 of 15 shooting to go along with 7 rebounds, 3 blocks, 2 assists and 1 steal in a 72-59 win over MiraCosta College. Woj, who thought he had seen just about everything, could hardly believe his eyes. When he left ESPN in September to work for his alma mater, Woj never imagined that he could recruit a player of Grahovac’s caliber, much less convince him to leave southern California for frigid, small-town Olean, N.Y. Yet, that’s exactly where Grahovac is headed. On Thursday, as part of a carefully orchestrated, media savvy rollout, Grahovac announced his commitment to St. Bonaventure. He said he intends to make it official on April 16, the first day of the spring signing period.

In a world where every morsel of information gets exhumed and consumed — a world Woj helped create — Big Joe’s story is a throwback to a bygone era where hidden gems can still be unearthed. Grahovac may be quirky, but he is extremely talented, and he is amazed as anyone at how quickly all of this has transpired. He doesn’t quite know what the future holds, but for the first time in forever, he feels like he has one.

“To be honest, it’s still not real yet,” he says. “Once I’m over there in New York and I’m in my room with my bags in my hands, then it will be. But for now it’s just unreal. I honestly don’t believe it yet.”

Midway through the first half of Fullerton’s second game of the season, Grahovac picked up his second foul. When one of the coaches let him know, Big Joe replied, “How many do I get?”

A few weeks later, Grahovac was holding the ball at the top of the key while being harassed by a defender. The referee whistled him for a five-second violation. During the next time out, Webster started to run the huddle. “Whoa whoa whoa,” Grahovac interrupted. “What did they just call on me?”

There is much that Grahovac does not know, but don’t mistake a dearth of knowledge for a lack of intelligence. Or wisdom, for that matter. Grahovac may look like a cartoon character, but he has the soul of a poet. The reason he doesn’t know more about basketball is because his family didn’t have cable TV while he was growing up in Santa Ana, California. Grahovac learned about the game mostly by watching Magic Johnson highlights on YouTube. That’s why he wanted to play point guard even though he was always one of the tallest guys on the court.

Grahovac started off playing on just-for-fun rec teams. His tried out for his middle school team, but he withered under the coach’s strict instructions and quit before the season started. He tried again when he was a 5-foot-7 freshman at Tustin High School. This time, he lasted all of two games. “I didn’t like coaches trying to hold me accountable,” he says. “I was more interested in chilling and playing video games.”

Grahovac’s parents separated before he was born, and though he saw his father on weekends, he was raised mostly by his mother, who was reluctant to push through discomfort. Joe was so shaken by the experience with the team that his mother set up a meeting with the vice principal and asked if he could transfer across town to Foothill High School midway through the school year. “She was concerned because my mood had changed,” Grahovac says. “I was a very anxious kid. I was always stressing about basketball.”

Grahovac sprouted to 6-foot-7 by the start of his senior year. The basketball coach at Foothill had been nagging him for a while to come out, so he finally did. He quit after one game, not even bothering to tell the coach or responding to his texts. “I was like, I’m done. Seriously, I’m done,” he says.

Grahovac graduated with a 2.6 grade-point average. “I purposely calculated the stuff I didn’t have to do so I could barely pass,” he says. He had no intention to attend college. So what did he imagine his future to be? “Honestly, I thought I was going to be homeless,” he says. “I really did. I thought, I have nothing. I have no motivations in life. Maybe I’ll make YouTube videos about video games or just live by the beach and hang out. I threw it all out the window.”

He went to work as a sander for his father, who is a construction painter, at $10 an hour. Then he took a job delivering bales of hay, but he had to quit becuase he was allergic to the hay. He moved on to a warehouse where he lugged bags of protein powder. Most of his workmates there were ex-inmates who were participating a felony release program. When Grahovac wasn’t working, he was playing basketball at a local 24 Hour Fitness club. He had grown another couple of inches to 6-foot-10 but retained his guard skills, so he dominated the competition with ease. It was all fun, no pressure, just the way he liked it.

As Grahovac bounced around, the tension got worse at home, where Grahovac was living with his mother, her boyfriend, an aunt and a cousin. Grahovac left the house and stayed in his truck for a month-and-a-half. He would drive to work during the day, play ball at night and then fold his long, lanky frame into the passenger seat and sleep under a blanket. “I didn’t do anything except figure out where to get water and food,” he says. “I think that’s what really changed my mindset on life. I realized the only place where I was really valued was on the basketball court. I would go to 24 Hour every day, shower at the gym and hang out with the people there. People kept telling me, you’ve got to play basketball. I thought, you know what? Let me give it a try.”

The opportunity presented itself one day when Grahovac was invited into a private, more competitive run. That led to an invitation into to play in the Drew League, a pro-am league in Los Angeles, during the summer of 2021. When the fall came around, Grahovac played in any adult league he could find, not so much with a destination in mind but because it challenged and fulfilled him. “There was something about playing hard and competing that I loved,” he says.

In the spring of 2023, Grahovac was invited to enroll at Future College Prep, an independent post-graduate basketball program based in southern California. The directors waived the five-figure tuition fee in return for Grahovac’s willingness to help out with maintenance duties in the gym. Later that fall, he was invited to enroll in Vanguard University, a Christian NAIA school in Costa Mesa, but he didn’t like the environment there so he left after a few weeks. He spent the rest of the winter working out with local trainers and playing with friends. He thought he might still have a path to a professional career, but it wasn’t going to be through college.

There were several moments along the way where Grahovac’s basketball plays, especially from the Drew League, gained traction on social media. He was aware of it and liked it, but didn’t think it would lead anywhere. A friend sent a video to Marshall Johnson, an assistant at Fullerton College. Johnson was sitting at an In-N-Out with Webster and showed it to his boss. They both wondered the same thing. Who is this guy? Webster encouraged Johnson to invite Grahovac for a visit, but it took two weeks for Johnson to convince Grahovac to come.

Finally, Big Joe relented. He toured the campus with Webster and then sat behind the bench for a home playoff game. “I was like, oh, this guy is intense,” Grahovac says. “I saw how serious they take basketball. I realized, this is what I’m missing in my game.” Two weeks later, he came back for a visit and to play in an open gym. It took about five minutes for the coaches to realize he was legit.

Webster was careful not to pry too much into Grahovac’s private life. He simply explained that college basketball players can get paid real money now, and someone like him could have a future in the game. Given that Grahovac was already 22 years old, Webster said he should do everything he could to earn his Associate Degree in one year. “I can change your life in 12 months,” Webster promised.

There was only one condition. “You have to be at every workout,” Webster told him. “You have to be at every practice. Every weight training. You have to show up on time, every time. That’s how it works for everyone around here.”

They shook hands and agreed to give it a shot. Since then, Grahovac hasn’t been late once.

Webster knew that when he took his team to the So-Cal Fall Juco Jamboree in Cerritos in September that Big Joe would no longer be a Big Secret. In the days that followed, they were both besieged by phone calls, texts and Direct Messages from Division I recruiters. “It was honestly overwhelming,” Grahovac says.

A few weeks later, Grahovac noticed that an account with the handle @wojespn started following him on Instagram. “There was a little blue check so that meant he has some type of status,” Grahovac says. “So I click his account, boom, a million followers. (Actually, it’s 2.2 million.) I sent it to my trainer and I’m like, do you know this guy? He’s like, Bro, that’s Woj. That’s the most connected basketball man in the world.”

Once they met, it was Woj’s authenticity, not his celebrity, that won Grahovac over. “He’s a really down to earth guy and he works hard,” Grahovac says. Adds Webster, “Joe’s somebody who cares about relationships. He wants you to be real. Woj was honest and transparent from the start. We appreciated that.”

Woj reported what he learned to St. Bonaventure head coach Mark Schmidt, who spoke with Grahovac on the phone and came to visit him in Fullerton. From then on, they agreed to talk every Sunday night. “I liked his (New England) accent,” Grahovac says. “He cares about winning. That’s what’s important to me.” (Note: Because Grahovac has not yet signed a letter of intent, neither Schmidt nor Wojnarowski are perimitted to comment on him, per NCAA rules.)

Grahovac had his ups and downs during the season, but he worked his tail off and improved as the weeks went on. “He’s like a sponge,” Webster says. “He wants feedback. He wants to be coached. And he’s very smart. You don’t have to tell him things a bunch of times.”

The bigger question was whether Grahovac could complete his coursework. Webster eased him into the academics over the summer, but Grahovac took a heavy courseload during the fall plus three classes during the winter session. Grahovac hit a physical and emotional low in late December. Battling a winter cold, he complained to Webster over dinner that he had 27 assignments due in the morning. Webster suggested Grahavoc take the night off and proposed he drop one of his classes to ease his burden.

The next morning, Webster sent a text asking if he was okay. Big Joe replied that he had completed all his assignments, and that he would see Webster at practice.

Woj made several more trips to Fullerton, not so much to watch Grahovac play as demonstrate his commitment. He also put together a robust financial package built around Name, Image and Likeness deals. In early February, Grahovac and Webster took a trip to St. Bonaventure with Sandeep Hingorani, the Executive Vice President of BallerTV, which has an NIL deal with Grahovac and is chronicling his journey. It was the first time Grahovac had ever flown on an airplane.

Grahovac had never seen so much snow in his life, but when he got Olean he found he liked the community, the rural setting, the vibe around the program and what he calls “the subtle aggression of New Yorkers.” On the morning of the game, Woj met Grahovac in the lobby of his hotel at 6:45 a.m. so he could attend the Bonnies’ 7 a.m. shootaround. Grahovac was amazed how many fans showed up for the game – on Super Bowl Sunday, no less. Many of them knew his name. As the Bonnies played poorly in a 62-52 loss to George Washington, Woj shrank into his seat, worried that the team’s poor play might blow the visit. But the loss had the opposite impact. “He was like, oh, I can help here,” Webster says.

When they landed back in California, Grahovac told Webster he wanted to commit. Webster told him to sleep on it for a week. Six days later, Grahovac called Schmidt and Woj and told them he wanted to be a Bonnie.

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Grahovac preferrred to keep the news quiet until the season was over so it wouldn’t be a distraction. Knowing full well that nothing is binding until Grahovac is signed, Woj contined to visit as often as NCAA rules allowed. Last weekend, he traveled from Milan, Italy, to watch Fullerton play in the 3C2A State Championship, where they lost in the final to San Francisco City College. Grahovic finished the season averaging a team-high 15.9 points per game on 62.0 percent shooting (39.2 percent from three) to go along with 6.6 rebounds, 2.7 blocks and 2.6 assists.

A few coaches from power conference schools stayed in contact with Webster and made clear that they were interested in Grahovac if he was inclined to change his mind. Grahovac knows he could probably make more money elsewhere, but he also understands the value of being a high priority at a mid-major as opposed to a role player in a power conference. He also appreciates commitment and loyalty, which Woj showed from the very beginning.

Grahovac knows he has much work to do. First, he has to finish his degree at Fullerton, which should happen by the end of April. He will move to St. Bonaventure later this summer and prepare for his first Division I season. “There will be some adjustment. I’m sure you’ll see that at St. Bonaventure at first,” he says. “I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I’ve always known that I could compete with the best players. I’m pretty self-aware. I know I’m missing a lot of physicality like big men who are at Kansas and have been doing this their whole lives. But once I get that, it’s gonna be trouble for those guys, because they can’t guard me on the perimeter.”

Grahovac’s path has not been easy, to say the least. There are still many times when he gets discouraged. “I’ll get depressed when things get tough and I’ll think, man, I don’t know if I want to do this,” he says. Yet, when those old quitter’s instincts try to quick in, Grahovac kicks them back. Because this is not just a basketball story anymore. After living day-to-day for so long, Grahovac is finally playing the long game. This time, it’s for keeps.

“I would love to make the NBA, but I’m not a bust if I don’t,” he says. “The universe works out for those who love the universe back. I’m lucky enough to make some money playing a kid’s game as a grown-up man, which is ridiculous. With my story and the way that I play, I think I can really inspire some people.”