PHILADELPHIA — In the first moments of New York’s 2023 Class AA state championship game, VJ Edgecombe received an up-the-court pass after a defensive stop, then elevated off two feet to throw down a dunk for his Long Island Lutheran team.

“I remember that play starting the game, like, ‘Whooo, no one’s beating us today,’ ” Long Island Lutheran coach John Buck recently said.

That was one flash of the explosive athleticism that has catapulted Edgecombe’s name to the top of draft boards. He’s projected to be selected with one of the 2025 NBA draft’s top five picks, perhaps by the 76ers with the No. 3 selection.

As Edgecombe’s high school coach for two seasons, Buck got an up-close view of the dynamic guard’s rise from a relatively unknown Bahamian teenager to elite pro prospect. Ditto for Scott Drew, who coached Edgecombe at Baylor this past season and witnessed “a 'SportsCenter' dunk every two days.”

But in the lead-up to the June 25-26 draft, both coaches also described Edgecombe as a stat-stuffer on both ends of the floor — the 6-foot-4, 193-pounder averaged 15 points, 5.6 rebounds, 3.2 assists, and 2.1 steals for Baylor — and a teammate who was joyful and no-nonsense.

“Yes, he produces highlights,” Drew recently said by phone. “But he produces winning plays. He’s an everyday, lunch-pail kind of guy.”

Buck believes that mentality is rooted in Edgecombe’s childhood in Bimini, a town with a population of less than 2,500. There, he gained a perspective, as Buck described, of “simple living.” And while learning basketball on those Bahamian courts, Edgecombe often competed with and against older players, which forced his own game to mature.

“You don’t just dribble around forever,” Buck said. “You pass. You cut. You play defense. You rebound. All those things were kind of instilled in him.”

Edgecombe moved to the United States as a teenager, initially living in Florida and playing for Victory International Prep in West Palm Beach. He then transferred to Long Island Lutheran, moving up to the National Interscholastic Basketball Conference (now the EYBL Scholastic Conference) featuring several national powerhouses.

Edgecombe once told Buck that a pivotal early moment at his new school came when the coach highlighted his new guard’s practice effort in front of the team and said, “If I’m going into a battle, I’m taking VJ with me.”

In one of his first games for Long Island Lutheran, Edgecombe flew in for a transition block against Indiana recruit Bryson Tucker, a rare feat for a guard. Later that season, Edgecombe dunked on future Sixers rookie standout Justin Edwards, one of the nation’s highest-rated recruits at the time.

“It was like, ‘Wow, that’s not something we see every year,’ ” Buck said.

But Edgecombe still needed to develop his body. He added about 10 pounds. He worked on his outside shot, eventually burying seven 3-pointers in a game against Virginia’s Oak Hill Academy. He starred while playing two games as a senior in his native Bahamas, countering a zone defense deployed by California’s Mater Dei by hanging in the middle of the floor to find teammates and finish at the rim.

“Obviously, that was special to him,” Buck said. “ … That was, like, an, ‘I’m not going to lose in the Bahamas’ kind of performance from VJ”

Edgecombe steadily gained traction as a recruit, becoming a McDonalds All-American. Drew, who has coached five first-round draft picks since 2021, learned of Edgecombe from a colleague who called him “the perfect Baylor kid.” While waiting for a hotel room block to become available at an international tournament, Edgecombe had been spotted among the piles of luggage reading his Bible on a Sunday.

Yet that supreme athleticism also translated to the college level. Drew compared Edgecombe to a young Russell Westbrook because “he gets a rebound, and he’s down the court in a second.”

“Just about every third game,” Drew said, “he would have a spurt where he would have three or four plays where it might be a tie game, and then you’re up eight. … When he gets a steal, gets a dunk and the crowd gets going and his teammates all fed off of that.”

Edgecombe’s disruptive defense, Drew said, also can be attributed to his ability to quickly pick up concepts. After playing more off the ball on offense in high school, Drew called Edgecombe “tremendous” at handling and distributing in ball-screen actions at Baylor. And after reverting his shot release point from too far above his head to the front of his face, Edgecombe’s shaky early-season shooting numbers returned to form down the stretch.

While watching Edgecombe’s college season unfold, Buck saw the same player making the required leaps to succeed in college. That will be necessary again at the NBA level. Buck hopes Edgecombe is drafted into a “winning culture,” noting that “he doesn’t like when guys aren’t going hard. He doesn’t like when guys are playing selfishly.”

That would be an ideal environment for the player Buck and Drew helped develop, who has leveraged his elite physical gifts and mentality into the results that make him a projected top-five draft pick.

“You’re not sitting there hoping that one day he’s going to make winning plays, or one day he’s going to play hard,” Buck said. “That’s who he is, and that’s what he does. I think teams really need to take a hard look at that when comparing him, maybe, with other guys that might project different ways.

“I think VJ is just a winning player that has all these natural gifts, as well.”

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