STANFORD, Calif. – The arena in Frisco, Texas is just 30 minutes’ drive from Ryan Agarwal’s hometown near Dallas. But for a middle school-age agarwal, entering was like entering another world.
In 2015, Agarwal was a basketball-obsessed sixth grader. When the Dallas Mavericks made Satnam Singh the first Indian-born player to be selected for an NBA draft that year, Agarwal knew he had to see him at a competition. On a trip two years later with his cousin and father to watch Singh play an NBA G League game, Ryan Agarwal realized he wanted to play like Singh himself.
Agarwal’s parents had emigrated from India and he was born in the Dallas suburbs. He said he’s never seen anyone play basketball like he did, so never considered taking the game seriously. He said watching Singh made him believe he could play at a high level.
“It was just exciting for him to connect with someone he sees like him,” said Ashok Agarwal, Ryan’s father.
Ryan Agarwal (left) and his cousin Aman Singhal (right) with Satnam Singh (centre) after a G-League game in 2017.Credit…Courtesy of Ryan Agarwal
Six years later, Ryan Agarwal is much further from home — 1,700 miles away at Stanford University, where he’s a freshman shooting guard trying to bolster the Cardinal’s faltering offense. He is still chasing Singh and hopes to pick up where Singh left off representing India on the American basketball landscape while playing the sport in college.
“I just have to remember that I help represent such a large community and so few people have the ability to do what I’m trying to do,” Agarwal said recently on the sidelines of a Stanford practice.
Agarwal said he doesn’t shy away from a certain amount of pressure that comes when people judge an entire culture by his game. High school talent evaluator Rivals.com rated him a four-star recruit among the top 150 players in his class. When it came time for Agarwal to announce where he would play in college, he decided to share the spotlight not just with the coaches and relatives who helped him get there, but with India as well. In a video with dramatic music set to a montage of him on train tracks, Agarwal expressed his intention to “set an example for a whole legacy and prove that we can too”.
“The engagement video he did was his thought process, his message he wanted to say,” said his mother, Ranjini Agarwalla. “It wasn’t anything we even talked about. We were shocked when he brought that up and said, ‘This is what I want to do.'”
That Agarwal was even recruited out of high school was remarkable. According to NCAA statistics, only 2 percent of Division I physical education students identified as Asian in the 2021-22 school year. Agarwal’s parents said growing up it wasn’t always clear how to approach the tough world of recruitment and elite sport.
“It was all a learning experience for us,” said Ashok Agarwal.
Now families are turning to them for advice, Ranjini Agarwalla said, in part about how to encourage their kids to play sports and get them noticed by college coaches.
“I’m blessed with the parents that I have because they put me in every possible sport just to try and see what I love, which honestly not many Indian parents do,” said Ryan Agarwal. “I think that’s the biggest thing for me. Without the support of my parents, who knows where I would be.”
So far this season, Agarwal has been a substitute in nearly two-thirds of his games for Stanford, averaging about 8 minutes when he plays. Rivals.com once ranked Agarwal as a top-20 shooting guard, but Stanford coach Jerod Haase said he considers Agarwal a more complete player because of his 6-foot-6 height and passing ability.
“He’s going to be really good,” said Haase.
How good remains to be seen. For now, Agarwal’s efforts are focused on helping Stanford (11-15) gain a foothold in a competitive Pac-12 conference.
The only player of Indian descent to accumulate NBA minutes is Canadian-born Sim Bhullar, who was undrafted but played in three games for the Sacramento Kings in the 2014-15 season. Bhullar is now playing in Taiwan.
Singh, dubbed “a player in a billion” in a Netflix documentary, failed to make the NBA. He failed to make it to the G League, only played two seasons with the Texas Legends and never appeared in an NBA game.
Since the NBA opened an academy in India in 2017, 20 graduates have received scholarships to prep schools or junior colleges in the United States or signed professional contracts, according to Mark Pozin, a spokesman for the league.
Zach Reynolds, a spokesman for Stanford, said that when he tried to find out how many players of Indian descent played Division I men’s basketball, three came to mind for him and other sports information directors across the country: Agarwal, center Amaan Sandhu of Monmouth and the Walk-On Penn State player Ishaan Jagiasi.
For Stanford’s first home game of the season, 1,500 Palo Alto, California, elementary and middle school students gathered in the stands of the Maples Pavilion. Haase said Agarwal is proud to set an example for children who are just starting to imagine their future, just as Agarwal was when he saw Singh in Frisco in 2017.
“There are probably a lot of these kids who haven’t realized that those goals are achievable,” Haase said. “Even if he just comes to a game and sees someone like Ryan, I think he’s very proud to be the beacon of ‘Hey, work hard, have fun, and some great things can happen.'”
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