Olivier-Maxence Prosper is the last one in the gym. That has become a cliche in basketball, as if staying late after practice is the only way to improve. But Prosper isn’t worried about any of that. He focuses only on himself. “Control what I can control” is his motto. So he stands there, shooting free throws, breathing deeply and focusing on the same goal he has chased in a journey throughout North America: improvement.
A day later, Prosper is in the starting lineup for the Mavericks’ Las Vegas Summer League team, tasked with guarding Jarace Walker, a lottery pick of the Indiana Pacers and a Summer League standout. The 21-year-old Prosper, a rookie first-round pick himself, plays with a maturity beyond his years, always staying within the confines of his game while excelling at the little things: sprinting back in transition, keeping his hands up on defense, diving for loose balls, boxing out, cutting hard, and talking to his teammates. A lot.
Prosper plays a team-high 29 minutes, scoring 18 points and grabbing five rebounds while holding Walker to 13 points on 6-of-21 shooting and a team-worst minus-19, by far his most disappointing performance of Summer League. And Prosper’s best.
This was Prosper’s goal throughout Summer League: to improve. In fact, it has been his goal since the beginning of the pre-draft process, when he shot up draft boards en route to becoming the newest member of the Mavericks. It’s a match made in heaven: Dallas is desperate for his skill set, while he is desperate to find some long-awaited stability.
Prosper, widely known as O-Max, grew up on the North Shore of Montreal, where a passion for basketball was instilled in him and his sister, Cassandre, from a young age. Their parents, Guylaine and Gaetan, both played collegiately at Montreal’s Concordia University, and Guylaine also played briefly for the Canadian senior women’s basketball team in 1997. (Cassandre is a budding star at Notre Dame and for the Canadian women’s senior national team.)
O-Max stood out as a member of Brookwood Elite, dominating the Montreal Basketball League and the Adidas AAU circuit. “He played hard, man,” fellow Montreal native and Pacers guard Bennedict Mathurin says about his friend. “O-Max is known to have a motor, and he’s known to play hard every single day.”
But Prosper also understood that in order to achieve his lofty basketball dreams, he would have to be challenged. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t find that challenge in Montreal; his high school didn’t even have a basketball team. So at age 16, he set off.
“Montreal is great. They have great basketball players. But the exposure and opportunities for high school players was not where it needed to be for me to go toward my goals and dreams,” Prosper says. “I needed to go somewhere where I would be challenged, against better players, in an environment where I learn more, better coaches, all that stuff.”
Prosper moved to Chicago and enrolled at Lake Forest Academy, one of the top prep schools in the country. Living alone was hard, and going to an English-speaking school was a challenge for a native French speaker. “It was definitely a transition,” Prosper says. “And it helped me mature very quickly.”
That wouldn’t be the only time Prosper had to pick up and leave, evolving and adapting to a new situation. In a span of five years, he went from Montreal to Lake Forest to the NBA Academy in Mexico City to Clemson to Marquette and finally to the Mavs.
“That shaped me to whatever situation I go in, I feel like I can adjust and adapt pretty quickly to whatever I’m asked to do,” Prosper says.
Sacramento selected Prosper with the 24th pick in the draft, but befitting of his background, he wasn’t with the Kings for long, off to Dallas in a draft-night trade. The Mavericks were impressed with his growth throughout college, but what won them over was what they saw in the pre-draft process: Prosper’s maturity in interviews, his effort in workouts, his curious mind in drills, and his ability to play his role in games.
“The two words that come to mind are ‘maturity’ and ‘adaptability,’ which is so important in the league,” Gaetan Prosper, sitting courtside in Las Vegas, says about his son. “In the NBA, you have to be able to adapt, and you have to be mature in how you approach every day.”
“I think that he’s open to change, and he’s adaptable to different environments,” Guylaine adds. “That helped him overcome the challenges he was facing and not give up.”
In his second season at Marquette, Prosper led the Golden Eagles to the Big East regular-season and tournament titles, averaging 12.5 points, 4.7 rebounds, and almost an assist and a steal per game as one of the best and most versatile defenders in college basketball. He then threw his name into the NBA Draft. He wanted to test the waters but wasn’t certain if he would garner enough interest due to his limited offensive game. After all, Prosper never averaged more than 12.5 points in his three college seasons, and he always had more turnovers than assists. Plus, while he shot the ball better in his junior season, hitting 62 percent of his twos and 34 percent of his threes, teams didn’t know if it was sustainable.
But during the pre-draft process, Prosper’s stock skyrocketed more than any other prospect’s. After dropping 21 points and seven rebounds in 22 minutes in a draft combine game and having an impressive pro day shortly afterward, he worked out for 17 teams, including one team twice. In his workouts, he consistently outperformed and outworked higher-ranked prospects in the class.
“Nobody’s gonna want it more than I want it,” Prosper says of his mindset. “No matter how tired I was, how many workouts I had done, I always told myself, the closer you are to your goals and dreams, the harder it is.
“I’m tired. I’m waking up early, going to bed late, traveling, all that stuff. I’m gonna make sure I outwork the guy that I’m working out against … That’s how I was able to impress those teams.”
On May 16, the night of the draft lottery, ESPN had him 56th in its mock draft. On June 1, after the combine and after he decided to keep his name in the draft, he was up to 28th. By the time he was surprisingly invited to the green room in Brooklyn two days before the June 22 draft, he was 20th.
Mavs assistant coach Jared Dudley was one of many who came away from Prosper’s pre-draft workout impressed. “He went hard,” Dudley says. “I mean, listen, we had 1,000 workouts. I just remember his physicality. I remember that a lot of people—I would say out of our workouts 50 to 60 percent were out of shape—he was in elite shape. So that’s already going to separate yourself.
“And then his size. I think he’s just built. He has the frame to be a big-time elite defender in this league.”
At 6-foot-8 and 230 pounds with a 7-foot-1 wingspan, Prosper has the measurables to do that. He has the athleticism, too, with the ability to slide his feet defending guards on the perimeter and the strength to hold his own against bigs in the post. The most impressive part about Prosper’s game is that, despite his youth, he doesn’t appear physically overmatched by anybody. And in addition to his physical tools, his instincts are so good that he consistently reads the play quicker than his opponents and takes offenses out of their rhythm.
Prosper is mature enough to understand that his role this season will be to do the little things while guarding multiple positions, thereby freeing Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving to do their thing on the offensive end. Best of all, he’ll do it at the wing position, where Dallas has been short a defensive presence ever since shipping Dorian Finney-Smith to Brooklyn in the Irving trade. All of that makes Prosper the rare rookie who impacts the game from opening night.
And given Prosper’s track record, there could be plenty of growth from there. After all, this is a player who went from averaging 6.6 points and 3.3 rebounds on 46/32/82 shooting splits in 20.7 minutes as a sophomore to 12.5 points and 4.7 rebounds on 51/34/74 shooting splits in 29.1 minutes as a junior before impressed even more in the pre-draft process. Prosper’s love of the game plays a role in that as much as his work ethic. But so too, he says, does determination.
“Basketball is my passion,” he says. “I love this game so much that I don’t want to do anything else. But when you love something, you’ve got to fight. You’ve got to go for it.”
Prosper is excited that his first NBA opportunity is coming with the Mavericks, a team he felt an immediate connection with during his pre-draft workout. He remembers going to the workout with a bag of dirty laundry he had been lugging around as he traveled from town to town; the Mavericks’ equipment staff offered to clean it for him. “I had a good vibe with the team,” he says. “I feel like this is the place for me.”
After leaving Montreal five years ago in a continent-wide search to challenge himself and improve, he finally has a place where he can settle down. But while Prosper is eager to get started in his new home, he will never forget where he came from. Because on each leg of his journey, he has taken a piece of his hometown with him.
“Just an underdog mindset from Montreal, not known as a basketball city—we never had the clout or fame of social media or anything like that,” he says. “We just grinded in the dark when nobody was watching, every day. And then when we get our opportunity, we take advantage of it.”
Now Prosper’s chance has come. And make no mistake: O-Max is ready to take advantage.
