Ahmed Nur was never so excited about being so wrong.
He was at center court at the Rock Hill Sports & Events Center in South Carolina, wearing a giddy grin as droves of the top high school basketball players in the country showered him with thunderous applause for being named NBPA Top 100 Camp MVP. For a brief second, he exhaled to take it all in.
"I was excited because it's one of the top camps of the summer," said Nur, a forward who checks in at No. 21 overall in the SCNext 100 for 2027. "We all come into events and want to be the best. At the moment, I didn't think it could get any better than that."
That's when he was reminded that claiming the accolade didn't just elevate his national standing and potentially earn him more collegiate offers. It also came with a once-in-a-lifetime late July trip to Andalucia, Spain, for "The Sanctuary," an offseason performance retreat for NBA players such as Dallas Mavericks guard Klay Thompson, New Orleans Pelicans guard Jeremiah Fears and Portland Trail Blazers guard Shaedon Sharpe, among many others.
"We created The Sanctuary for the NBA guys to really have community with each other in every way," said NBPA head of Elite Youth & Basketball Shaun Livingston. "We felt like it would be cool to integrate the Top 100 MVP. It's the type of access and experience that no one can get. It's just really an NBA-style fraternity and community where guys are building with each other."
Among other things, Nur was anxious to use his uber-exclusive access to test a popular theory that quietly circulates amongst his peers at different events throughout the summer: With abundant spacing and a seemingly free-flowing offense, some high school stars tend to think playing in the NBA isn't as difficult as most believe.
"You just look at the game, and you think, 'I could do that,'" Nur told ESPN. "So being out there in a setting like this, I knew I'd get to see what the reality was."
Nur experienced what the offseason preparation for NBA players was like, from training, recovery, down time and much more. With the whirlwind of rare experiences and unique moments over the six-day span, Livingston's advice to Nur was simple: "Be curious."
"You don't want to waste the opportunity sitting back, so you can't be too cool for school," Livingston said. "You want to be a student in this environment, and our guys always do a great job with the high school kid that comes. Ask whatever you want, shadow whoever you want, but be curious. Be a sponge."
Nur took Livingston's advice, turning long workouts into long talks and pickup games into intense study sessions.
"It's like nothing else I've ever experienced," Nur said. "The speed alone is crazy. It's definitely harder than you could imagine. Just playing pickup with guys like Jay Huff and Leonard Miller and Jeremiah Fears and those guys was just a great learning curve for me. It took me a second to adjust, but it was fun just learning."
Los Angeles Lakers forward Jarred Vanderbilt spent extensive one-on-one time with Nur in workouts and came away impressed with his size and instincts.
"He's a great young prospect," Vanderbilt said. "I think it has been great for him just to be around pros. Just to see what it takes to get to this level, the type of work that you've got to put in, how hard you've got to go in the workouts and just how to be a professional. I think he's been a sponge, and we've been able to give him little bits in games and just teach him the ropes of how to be a professional."
Nur's key lessons to take back to his proverbial drawing board after his experience with the NBA crew at The Sanctuary: The physicality is far superior to his level and their decisiveness is acute.
"It's really sharpened my mental and that's the biggest thing," Nur said. "Just watching how they think and taking care of their bodies and things like that. I feel like those are the things that will elevate me going forward. This was a life-changing experience for me for basketball."