Inside the halls of Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy, Matt Futch stood nearly eye-to-eye with his curious, 6-foot-3 basketball star in 2021.

Looking back at him was Darryn Peterson, then all of 14, attentively listening to his new head basketball coach.

“Do you only want to be good with the god-given talents that you have,” Futch asked Peterson ahead of his debut high school season at CVCA, “or do you want to be great?”

Peterson replied quietly, nodding, as if he was saving his words for later, stoking flames to the fire that he’s been burning long before he was drafted No. 2 by the Utah Jazz in last month’s NBA draft.

“Me saying that — it was not because of a concern that he was satisfied,” Futch said. “It was really more so to just kind of keep on putting logs into that fire because I believed he had what it took to become one of the greats.”

Futch was one of the first to think that (though he certainly wouldn’t be the last), but there were doubts last season. Fans and media alike questioned his drive and love for basketball following cramping episodes at Kansas that caused him to miss significant time. So on draft night, as he fiddled with his new Jazz cap behind the podium, he made this clear:

“My goal is to play all 82 [games],” he said.

‘He has this alter-ego’

In one of his first practices with CVCA, Peterson had the ball in his hands as the clock wound down, his team trailing by a bucket at the school’s daily end-of-practice scrimmage.

Max Winslow — a junior on the CVCA varsity team — was sure that Peterson was going to run a play, but the then-freshman guard just kept dribbling, walking down his defender.

“Everyone already knew that he was way better than all of us, but we were still kind of discovering what kind of player he was,” Winslow said.

With five seconds remaining, Winslow positioned himself under the basket and watched Peterson. It wasn’t long before Peterson drew a double, sidestepped both defenders and hit a fadeaway 3-pointer as the buzzer sounded. He then stared down both of his defenders as he walked toward the sideline.

There were two things Winslow walked away thinking.

“I was happy because I realized that I didn’t have to run sprints with the losing team,” he said.

The second?

“He had this alter ego on the court,” Winslow added.

Futch played against LeBron James in high school. And what Peterson — seamlessly responding to his coach’s question in the weeks before — did in his first season with CVCA “rivaled” what he witnessed from what many believe to be the greatest player ever.

“I can honestly say now that he was probably more skilled than LeBron at that age in high school,” Futch said. “I can confirm that.”

Peterson, though, is more of a Kobe guy — emphasized by the tattooed portrait of the Lakers legend adorning his right arm.

“Kobe is my guy, and I’m inspired by him,” Peterson said on draft night. “So I just try to think, what would Kobe do right now?”

It’s not hard to draw a line between that fandom and how he plays.

Kam Sanders, who played with Peterson on the Phenom United AAU squad in the summer and spring of 2024, said it was a tale of two worlds when the No. 2 pick was on the floor versus how he was off of it.

“He’s a straight down-to-earth guy,” Sanders said. “We’d play the game a little bit, listen to music and talk a little. But on the court? Killer. I can only describe it with one word. He’s just a killer.”

When Peterson left CVCA to join national programs — Huntington Prep School in Huntington, West Virginia, for his junior season and Prolific Prep in Napa, California, his senior year — that became even more apparent as he faced top prospects like AJ Dybantsa and Cam Boozer.

Peterson even dropped 58 points against Dybantsa on one occasion.

At Prolific Prep, head coach Ryan Bernardi saw Peterson “dominate the mundane and boring.”

Twice a day, Peterson would do intense lifts and drills. Then he’d quietly leave the gym, attend cryotherapy sessions and a stretch lab before repeating it again the next day, Bernardi said.

“It’s not going to be loud with Darryn, and it’s not going to be braggadocious behind the scenes,” Bernardi said. “In his mind he’s a killer, and he will have those games circled. Listen, we had AJ Dybantsa the year before, and Darryn’s work ethic, his impact on the game, his leadership … it blew AJ’s out of the water.”

There were no questions about his love for the game or his drive. At least, not until he joined the Kansas Jayhawks.

‘A lesson or a blessing’

It first happened after KU head coach Bill Self’s annual boot camp weeks before the season.

Peterson found himself at the back of an ambulance, headed to the emergency room, as his entire body convulsed through a cramping episode.

First it was the five-star guard’s legs. Then it was his stomach, back, arms and hands. In the emergency room, the Canton native had to be hooked up to an IV because his cramping became so severe.

And that was just the start of Peterson’s season from hell.

“I made it to the training room and just started begging them to call 911,” he said of his first episode in an interview with ESPN. “I thought I was going to die on the training table that day.”

Peterson’s first cramping episode wouldn’t be his last. That, along with other injuries, caused him to miss 11 games in his lone collegiate season.

Questions arose about his durability and competitiveness, and soon enough the player most thought was the surefire No. 1 pick in the draft heading into the college season was slipping.

That didn’t sit right for those who saw him grow from a talented youngster into an elite prospect.

“He didn’t really know what was going on,” Futch said. “What happened in that cramping episode, selfishly my first opinion was, ‘Hey, how can this Kansas medical staff let this happen?’”

Bernardi added: “For Darryn, it was totally misconstrued by the mainstream media. Every day he tried like heck to show up and give his best. He never shut it down. He never took an indefinite time off. Hey, sure there’d be a day he’d be cramping, and then next day he’d show up and give it everything he had.”

That’s what the Kansas coaching staff saw, too.

KU assistant coach Kurtis Townsend said that the guard was still the “bona fide leader” of the Kansas team despite the drama surrounding his injuries.

Peterson still walked around with a smile on his face, often sharing memories of his high school days or cracking jokes with Townsend and his teammates as they ate at local restaurants.

Peterson even gifted headphones to the entire team, including the student managers, as part of a deal he had with Beats by Dre.

“There’s always a guy — that one guy — on a team that gives us confidence, that’s who he was for us,” Townsend said. “He was still the leader.”

And when he was healthy, Kansas saw the same relentless, killer scorer come out.

“He was the kind of guy that could run off seven straight buckets, and nobody could do anything about it,” Townsend said. “We’d put our best defenders on him [in practice], and he’d still give them buckets.”

At one such practice, an NBA scout in attendance leaned over to Townsend and just said, “This is just unbelievable.”

On the night of the NBA draft, once Peterson fell to No. 2, Townsend sent him a text that read “everything happens for a reason,” knowing that he was disappointed for not going first.

It was similar to what he would tell Peterson during the nine months of his tumultuous season in Lawrence.

“I think all of that was good for him to learn,” Townsend said. “It’s either a lesson or a blessing.”

And there’s no doubt in Townsend’s mind that Peterson will use all the questions he faced in Lawrence to fuel his edge in the NBA.

“I think it’s scary to think about what he’s going to be like three years from now,” Townsend said. “He’s just going to keep getting better and better.”