When Isaiah Hartenstein was 13, a teacher asked him and his classmates to come up with a game plan: What did they want to do when they grew up?

Hartenstein didn’t think twice, “NBA player.”

“No, you have to pick a real job,” his teacher told him, “where you can make real money.”

It would have been one thing for a kid in a small German town to aspire to play professional soccer. But the NBA? There are only seven German players in the league now, and all told, there have been just 25.

“He didn’t grow up the same way, same culture of basketball as they do in this country,” said Nicolas Batum, the Clippers’ French forward. “There, it’s soccer. But we got the dreams to come over in the U.S. and play in the NBA. It is more difficult for us to do that, but hey, we – he – find a way.”

Hartenstein plowed ahead with fervor Clippers fans might recognize from their 7-foot backup center with the impressive float game, the needlepoint passes, the room and desire to grow – and to prove to skeptics, like that teacher, he can be a dependable floor-stretching big!

FROM THE JUMP

Hartenstein got his first whiff of basketball when he was a baby, going to games at Oregon’s McArthur Court, the cacophonous tin shoebox of an arena in Eugene where his dad, Florian Hartenstein, was a bruising center and crowd favorite and the Ducks almost always gave opponents – no matter how high their billing – a hell of a time.

Born in Mainz, a German city on the Rhine River, Flo landed in Oregon as a high school exchange student eager to experience America. “My dad was American,” he said, “but he left when I was 2 years old so I had no relations at all to him, and I wanted to just experience high school and see how it is.”

Unaware even of the existence of college hoops, he’d played semi-professional ball in Germany and, when he excelled for the Thurston High School team in Springfield, college coaches noticed.

“My (high school) coach says, ‘There’s a bunch of guys coming to watch you,’” Flo said. “I’m like, ‘For what?’”

Well, so that one of those college programs – the one down the street, it turned out – could utilize his “power and strength in terms of a low-post game and physicality,” said Ernie Kent, the Ducks’ coach during Hartenstein’s college tenure.

Flo Hartenstein goes to the basket for the University of Oregon. (Photo courtesy of the University of Oregon)

But Kent remembers the 6-foot-9 Flo less for being an effective screener and rebounder than as one of the few family men he coached during his 24-year career.

“No. 1, it’s tough to be married and be a student-athlete, but to be raising kids and being a student-athlete?” Kent said by phone. “Parenting, academics, weightlifting, and you got another classroom I’m teaching you in – that’s hard.

“I have a lot of respect for anybody who can do that and do good, and he did it. Look at his family, his family has prospered from his leadership as a dad – and their mom’s, too.”

Isaiah – who was born in 1998, a couple of months after his dad’s freshman season – doesn’t remember much about those games at MacCourt beyond the olfactory callbacks that surface when he thinks about the place.

“I still remember the smell of it,” Isaiah said. “When I go to arenas now, it’s not the same. It had a different smell when you came in. It was great.”

(That checks out. Jenny Mowe, a center on the Oregon women’s team during Flo’s tenure: “I can remember a game when I finally got to meet Isaiah. He was a big boy and (his mom) Theresa had him on her hip out in the hall of MacCourt, and it just smelled like popcorn and everything else, and she’s talking to me and Isaiah is just drooling, full ‘Turner and Hooch’ salivation. And she’s like, ‘Oh, he just smells the hot dogs, he’s fine.’”)

Kent also has a memory of young Isaiah partaking in the Ducks’ postgame pizza – an early taste of Flo’s dishes to come many years later.

In 2001, his knees aching, Flo hadn’t envisaged basketball after college. But a couple of ibuprofen and a good tryout later, and it was on. For 11 seasons, he played professionally in Germany – Isaiah nearby for lots of it, knowing he’d found his jam.

He’d stretch before games with his dad’s teams and then scream at the refs from his courtside seat. He got to go behind the curtain into locker rooms, where he’d make mental notes of all the do’s and don’ts that accompany the X’s and O’s of the job.

At 6 or 7 years old, he wasn’t just a “Space Jam” devotee who dominated on the Fisher-Price hoops in front of a full house of stuffed animal fans. The kid was making front office decisions with his Playmobil figures: “‘Well, this coach lost too many games …’”

A lefty, Isaiah tried other sports, but none of them took – certainly not soccer, the game that taught him something, too: He’s allergic to bee stings.

Isaiah Hartenstein: A baller since birth, basically. This boy was determined to play in the NBA — and he wasn’t going to let anyone tell him different. Many thanks to @Bigflo54 for the (adorable!) footage. pic.twitter.com/13Jh6REFDG

— Mirjam Swanson (@MirjamSwanson) March 7, 2022

‘I WANT TO MAKE IT’

When he was 14, Isaiah told Flo what he’d spelled out for his teacher.

“He really says, ‘Dad, I want to make it in the NBA,’” Flo said. “Back then, it was hard to get from Europe to the NBA, so I said, ‘You have to basically work more than everybody else.’ And he said, ‘OK.’”

Are you kidding? If Isaiah had his way, he never would have left the gym. He even insisted – in what became a tradition that lasted through his teens – that he and Flo spend each New Year’s Eve on the court, working.

And when Isaiah was home, basketball was there too, because when Flo retired from playing professionally, he dedicated his energy to coaching and building up the Artland Dragons club around Isaiah in Quakenbrück, the tiny town where they lived.

Flo populated those squads with eager players from Africa, from Lithuania and Latvia, teammates who became like brothers because they lived with the Hartensteins – moving in too with Isaiah’s mom, Theresa, and older sister, Jasmine – while they were part of the program.

“Thinking back, I feel bad for my parents,” Isaiah said. “One time we had seven kids in one house, which is a lot. But it was fun. We all went to practice together, we pushed each other, and then at home, we played video games.

“For me, it was a blast. For my mom, it was bunch of boys, a lot of cooking, a lot of laundry.”

None of that is lost on Isaiah, who now is 23 and in his fourth season in the NBA – the first, he’ll tell you, when the job feels like that basketball-obsessed boy imagined it would.

“When you’re younger, you take it for granted,” Isaiah said. “But when you grow up, you see other people, how they grew up and what family circumstances they had, it’s been a blessing. And having a dad who played professionally, it doesn’t really get better.”

Lately, Flo has been staying in L.A., on hiatus from coaching and loving his new role as Isaiah’s personal chef (and his big-, able-bodied defender in offseason training). Flo works closely with the Clippers to monitor his son’s caloric and nutritional intake with a range of hearty, healthy meals, including that cream pasta with broccoli, mushrooms, chicken or salmon – ohhh, Isaiah is a fan.

Isaiah Hartenstein, then with the Houston Rockets, poses with his father, Florian Hartenstein at the Isaiah Hartenstein Basketball-Camp in the summer of 2019 in Quakenbrueck, Germany (Photo by Sebastian Neddermann, courtesy of Flo Hartenstein)

But back in the day, years before he played with Nikola Jokic, Denver’s flashy-passing star center, Isaiah was less enthused about Flo’s goal to make sure his son’s teammates got fed.

At points, Flo forbade his son – then 15 or 16 and a budding star on the German youth circuit and impressing against older players and at FIBA age-group tournaments – from shooting.

“I told him, ‘If you don’t, I’ll take you out,’” Flo said. “There was times where it’s like, ‘Yeah, but I have a free lane.’ ‘I don’t care. Your role now is to only pass the ball. You’re not allowed to score, even if you’re wide open.’

“He thought I was totally nuts. But he learned how to see the court, understand the system, and then also he would give trust to his teammates and they would trust him, that he’s gonna pass me the ball.”

And Isaiah could trust that Flo – who, at times, did his coaching on the court, playing alongside Isaiah and friends on the Dragons’ amateur men’s team – would protect them from adults who didn’t appreciate being beaten by teens: “A little elbow here or there,” Flo said, “to let the other guys know.”

Isaiah Hartenstein: Those NBA dreams were a family affair — and a team effort. His dad, @Bigflo54, a former pro, he inspired, coached, kept it really real and, sometimes, set up his son for the slam. pic.twitter.com/oAKyEwgeh9

— Mirjam Swanson (@MirjamSwanson) March 7, 2022

Flo’s message was similar when it came to opportunistic agents when they began circling, ready to pounce with unfulfillable promises.

And with Isaiah’s NBA dream within reach, Flo steered his son away from the college theater that he’d so enjoyed (including an inquiry from Kent, then Washington State’s coach) and directly to Euroleague power Zalgiris Kaunas, trading dorm food and March Madness for an immersive season-long course in professional basketball.

THE BIG LEAGUES

Isaiah was projected as a late first-round pick in the 2017 NBA Draft, but after he was flagged with a knee issue that remained a mystery to the Hartensteins even after three MRIs, Houston selected him 43rd overall, and he’s banged around since.

He won a G League title with the Rio Grande Vipers in 2019, earning Finals MVP after averaging 28 points and 15.7 rebounds – and canning eight 3-pointers in a Game 2 victory. But he didn’t fit Houston’s small-ball scheme, and the Rockets did him a solid and traded him to Denver, where he played 30 games last season before being traded again, to Cleveland.

There, he averaged 8.3 points and 6.0 rebounds but, fluent in basketball business from a young age, he realized what Jarrett Allen’s big contract offer and the team’s designs on drafting Evan Mobley meant: too many big men in the kitchen.

So Isaiah declined his $1.8 million player option and put himself out there.

He said he considered Golden State and Portland, but the Clippers won him over. He liked what he heard from the front office and Coach Tyronn Lue. And then there was his instant connection during five-on-five runs with sharpshooter Luke Kennard. “Funny thing,” Isaiah said. “They put me with Luke the first day, and I think we won like 12 games straight.”

And because Serge Ibaka – since traded to Milwaukee – was recovering from back surgery and not due on the court again for a few more weeks, there was a window for Isaiah to show his stuff, and to do it with a good team.

“That’s the main goal, to play for a team that you can respect and feel appreciated,” Flo said. “And it’s the first time he feels appreciated for what he can do.”

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Isaiah is averaging 7.8 points, 4.5 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 1.2 blocked shots through 52 games, but those numbers don’t sufficiently account for his impact, his penchant for keeping the ball alive, for keeping it moving, for how hard he plays.

The advanced metrics tell a somewhat fuller tale – take, for example, his Estimated Plus-Minus, which grades him at plus-2.9, in line with players such as Sacramento’s Domantas Sabonis and Phoenix’s Devin Booker: “I’m not a big stat guy,” Isaiah said, “but if you look at what helps teams win defensively, offensively, I’m always at the top league-wide, so that’s the biggest thing I take pride in.”

Isaiah, who’s earning $1.7 million on a one-year contract, again will be a free agent this offseason. There are no guarantees, but Isaiah has always been clear about his desires.

“It’s a tricky situation, but I want to be here,” said Isaiah, who on Feb. 22 signed on with CAA, the agency that also represents fellow Clippers Paul George, Reggie Jackson and Kennard. “If it’s close money-wise, like, I’m definitely staying. If it’s a big difference, then I’ll have to think about it. But my plan is to play here.”

Completing the assignment, in other words: A real job, making real money, as an NBA player.