Gabe Vincent took the hard road to the NBA. The 6-foot-3 point guard was not a blue-chip recruit in college and he also ended up going undrafted back in 2020. The Miami Heat gave him a chance, though, and Vincent will be eternally grateful to them for the same — especially now that he's made it big with the Los Angeles Lakers.

Vincent admits that it was far from an easy journey for him. Not only did he struggle to make his mark on the collegiate and the NBA G League level, but also, injuries got in the way of his goal of becoming an NBA player. Through it all, however, Gabe Vincent stood strong and he never let the trials and the hardships get in the way. This is exactly why he's now reached new heights with the Lakers:

“There was doubt,” Vincent said on a recent episode of JJ Redick's The Old Man & The Three podcast. “There was doubt when I got injured in college, there was doubt and I got injured in the G League. There's doubt, I think, along the way of any pursuit of a difficult task or a difficult goal, like there's going to be ups and downs and so forth. I think everyone will say something similar to what I'm about to say. 

“When you're doing something like that is you just try to stack as many good days as you can and as few bad days as you can. And you kind of just fall back on your routines, the stuff that you set your habits, and some days you won't be motivated to do it. Some days you'll be down on yourself. 

“But when you wake up, it's like, this is what I do on a Tuesday. So I'm going to get up and go through my routine of workouts and do this and that, and if it pans out, it pans out. If it doesn't, we did with everything we could.”

That's perfectly said from a man who has clearly gone through so much in his journey. Thanks to all his hard work, however, Gabe Vincent was able to finally break out and show the basketball world what he is capable of last season. He's been rewarded handsomely by the Lakers to the tune of $33 million for three years — money that Vincent himself probably doubted he could ever get his hands on.