The stage never fazed Thomas Bryant.
Way back as an eighth grader called up from the JV for the postseason, he scored a rapid-fire 12 points to help Bishop Kearney (Rochester, N.Y.) to a sectional championship.
The lights of Blue Cross Arena in downtown Rochester that day weren’t exactly the NBA. But it was in those days that the expectations first were placed on Bryant. This gangly, energetic, smiling kid from upstate New York could really make it to the league.
More than a decade later, Bryant had the night that delivered on his basketball promise. With a chance for his Indiana Pacers to eliminate the New York Knicks and go to the NBA Finals, Bryant drilled a trifecta of 3-pointers and finished with 11 points, two rebounds and a block in 12 high-impact minutes.
Pacers fans on X began calling it “The Thomas Bryant Game.”
Rochester, NY native Thomas Bryant throwing haymakers at the NY Knicks.
As a young varsity player at Bishop Kearney, he LOVED to shoot from 3. Had like five triples in Blue Cross Arena as an 8th grader or frosh. pic.twitter.com/xBX6aH2p5A
— Jeff DiVeronica (@RocDevo) June 1, 2025
Bryant’s basketball career hasn’t always been as straightforward as it seemed in those nascent days.
After winning a state title in 2013 as a sophomore at Bishop Kearney, he transferred to Huntington Prep in West Virginia. There, he played a national schedule but was mostly planted in the paint, limiting his development as a 3-point shooter that had seemed so obvious a strength in his early high school days.
Bryant spent a couple seasons at Indiana, foreshadowing a return home to the Pacers later in his basketball life.
Expected by some to be a first-round pick in 2017, Bryant fell to No. 42 overall by the Jazz, who quickly moved him on to the Lakers.
Bryant didn’t break through in L.A., but he did for the Wizards, for whom he started 108 games across four seasons.
Bryant then bounced around back to the Lakers, where he was on the court for LeBron’s fadeaway to pass Kareem in all-time points. Then it was on to Denver (and an NBA championship ring), Miami, and now Indiana.
In his NBA career, Bryant has averaged 17.7 minutes per game with 8.9 points and 5.1 rebounds per contest.
THE INDIANA PACERS, INSANE SEQUENCE ‼️
Thomas Bryant block.
Pascal Siakam circus and-1.
8-0 run to start the 3Q of Game 6 🔥
🎥 @NBA pic.twitter.com/NqufiKjrgn— The Playoffs EN (@ThePlayoffsEN) June 1, 2025
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He has led a surge of Rochester’s finest to the NBA in a way the city had never seen before. Pistons energetic center Isaiah Stewart hails from Rochester. So too does Nuggets crafty backup guard Jalen Pickett. In the past couple years, Bryant’s contemporaries Anthony Lamb and Jeenathan Williams have also seen time in the league.
The NBA grind can make it tough to recognize where you come from. But Bryant has come back to Bishop Kearney to host youth basketball camps on the same floor where he first captured the imagination of a gym full of basketball fans.
When one of Rochester’s own moves on to a higher level, the whole upstate New York area becomes supporters of the homegrown talent. And Bryant has certainly made his hometown proud.
IMAGN/USA Today: Jamie Germano, Democrat & Chronicle
Knicks fans might bristle at the idea that a kid from New York helped knock them off, but don’t fret: Rochester is a heck of a long way from NYC.
But without the place affectionately known as the ‘585’ for its area code, Bryant may not have become the player capable of doing what he did on Saturday night.
The Pacers needed someone not afraid of the moment, not worried about the fact that he had fallen out of the rotation, not spooked by the stars lined up across from him.
Indiana, with a chance to go to the NBA Finals, needed Bryant and all that has molded him into the basketball player he is today.
And in the biggest basketball game of his life, Bryant showed what so many in Rochester have known for more than a decade: He’s made for this.
