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EW YORK — John Carey didn’t have an umbrella. He was standing in the pouring rain, in the middle of a New York City housing project one day in July, and his shorts were soaked. His white T-shirt was drenched. He wiped away the rain droplets from his forehead, but he didn’t seek shelter. He never did.

There were rainy days when he and his only child, Jalen, would have liked to stop running, dribbling and shooting. Yet the idea was to remain outside, unfazed. One of the three courts on which Jalen developed his game was lopsided. He spent enough time there to know the lights turned on at 7:30 p.m., and one has been broken for years.

It had been an intentionally difficult childhood for Jalen: There were mornings he wanted more sleep. There were cold days when it snowed, but Jalen and his father shoveled the court to shoot before school anyway. There were nights after training when Jalen wanted to take the elevator to his father’s 13th-floor apartment. Instead, he forced himself to trudge up the stairs, solely to challenge himself.

Jalen Carey and his dad don’t dwell on how many hours they spent at the three basketball courts in the middle of the King Towers in Harlem. The foundation for his son’s success was laid right here, on rainy days like this one.

“We already wet,” he said, and he kept walking around the Harlem courts to prove his point.

This is the life Jalen chose to live, against his own best interests. The lifestyle molded him. The courts evolved into a home — a place where young Jalen had fewer distractions, a clearer focus and could dream bolder. It turned him from a little kid who could barely reach the 10-foot baskets to one of the best players in the area, then to an ESPN top 40 recruit, Syracuse target and, in time, the future of the No. 16 Orange backcourt.

Syracuse 43-year head coach Jim Boeheim described Jalen as one of the best offensive guards he’s had in 20 years, citing his quickness, anticipation and feel for the game. Assistant coach Gerry McNamara has been “blown away” with Jalen’s development in the pick-and-roll game. Fellow assistant Allen Griffin called Jalen, a 6-foot-3 combo guard, “one of the fastest guards, foul line to foul line, in the country.”

As Jalen embarks on his career at SU, he remembers Harlem. It’s the area that provided him little and, at times, impeded him. It’s the area that challenged him and forced him to grow out of discomfort. It’s why he’s here.

“I carry my neighborhood with me wherever I go,” Jalen said. “The city built me. Everything is earned where I’m from. There’s no easy way, nothing given.”

Jalen and John were always on “The Block,” a term around the Syracuse program that references Jalen’s neighborhood. His father said that they lived across the street from Jalen’s mother, Tawana Alston, and a few blocks from the wife of the late Pearl Washington. Jalen continues a line of Syracuse stars from New York City. Most notable: associate head coach Adrian Autry, whose game was born on the same courts as Jalen. He grew up just two buildings away during the 1980s.

He authored his dreams the old-fashioned way: practice. To create proper form in his son’s shot, John made him shoot exclusively on 10-foot hoops, no mini baskets. At 5 or 6, Jalen shot dozens of airballs to start workouts, since he couldn’t reach the basket. John let him use a smaller ball from right beneath the rim. When shots scraped the rim, John encouraged Jalen to aim higher.

On most mornings, he and his father walked to the bottom of their apartment building, stepped outside, took a few dribbles, and found themselves on a basketball court. Other fathers took their sons to the gym, John said, but he wanted Jalen to develop toughness outside.

Together, Jalen and John worked on his shot, changing the shape of his form to increase its consistency. They developed his footwork, which expanded his agility, court vision and allowed him to put his lower body, and legs, in every rise off the ground into his shot. They focused on his ball handling, so that he could dribble equally with both hands. And they emphasized the mental aspects of the game, figuring out how to put him in the best state of mind. John wanted him to manage and feed on pressure.

“We never had a gym to really work out in,” Jalen said. “He had me working out in the beaming hot sun, doing a lot of running. It was just awful, awful times. That’s why I’m here now, because my dad pushed me so hard.”

The workouts intensified when Jalen was 11. They’d do three-a-days: shots in the morning; running and pullups on the playground during the afternoon; more running, dribbling and shooting at night. In the summers, John took two weeks off work for “vacation.” He and Jalen played in the park from sunrise to about 5 or 6 p.m., he said. When Jalen and his father were training in the snow, passersby gave funny looks.

One day after the next, Jalen and his father built up his shot and endurance, because he had to, and because there wasn’t much of alternative. “This is the A-way out,” John said. “There is no B.” Once understood, moves had to be learned, tweaked, developed and mastered. By starting close to the basket, Jalen created natural rise in his jump shot and a perfectly timed high release. He had to shoot with his legs to reach.

“Sometimes we’d wake up at 5 or 6 before school,” John said. “Somebody could have come shot us and nobody would know. Somebody could have robbed us and nobody would know. You think we cared?”

For years, Jalen worked hard and trained on his own. He woke up extra early before school to get his routine in, and he hopped off the bus in the afternoon to head straight for the courts. As Jalen matured, John pressed him to train harder. He reminded him of what his future could hold. But Jalen formed a perception that maybe everything was going to be OK.

Early in high school, Jalen’s status as a star in his class became clear. He was developing into one of the top players in his grade, piquing interest from Syracuse, Connecticut, Kansas and Miami. Jalen said he may have been complacent, occasionally carefree. He’d laugh and joke at practice, make light of something funny or look away from the action on occasion. At times, minute details were of little concern.

“He was lazy at one point,” said Jimmy Salmon, Jalen’s high school coach.

Even John felt a sense of satisfaction. He felt sorry for Jalen. He said there was a point, about three years ago, when he regretted not pushing Jalen hard enough. In turn, John knew Jalen wasn’t giving their sessions the same effort. “I babied him,” John said. “And he didn’t have his lights on.”

Eventually, John confronted his son. Three years ago, he drove his gray 2004 Infiniti from a game in Neptune, New Jersey. Jalen’s team had just lost by five. He missed two crucial shots late in the game, and it irritated both of them so much on the ride home that Jalen sat in the back seat, away from his dad.

As they approached their apartment building, John pulled over. It was getting late. He yanked his son out of the car and sat him on a fire hydrant on the corner of 116th Street and Lenox Avenue.

“This is the A-way,” John recalls telling Jalen. “There is no B. So you can either quit, or you can push forward. You’re going to always be my son, and I’m going to love you to death, regardless. But as your coach, you’re not giving maximum effort. I don’t see no hunger. Is this going to be your time? Or are you going home?”

Jalen, then a sophomore in high school, straightened his back and stood up. He looked at his father.

“Dad, I want to be great,” he said.

John could see it in the steely look he gave, and Jalen knew it too. John wanted to spark Jalen’s fire.

Jalen doesn’t hide the fact that he has ichthyosis, a skin disease he inherited at birth. It’s characterized by dry, scaling skin. It had always been that way. But that thought didn’t overwhelm him. He said the disease humbles him, and it helped him discover his identity. Salmon said it gives Jalen the confidence to accept himself for himself.

“Instead of asking ‘Why me?’ with his disease, he asked, ‘Why not me?’” Salmon said. “I think he developed a lot of self-confidence through that.”

Salmon is the lead reason Syracuse found Jalen. One night two Novembers ago, the coach was watching Syracuse on TV. The attributes of the SU guards caught his attention: long limbs, active on the baseline. After the game, Salmon called Autry.

“I don’t know why you haven’t been here,” he told him. “You gotta recruit this kid.”

Autry attended one of Jalen’s games two weeks after that and later offered him a scholarship.

At Peach Jam in 2017, Syracuse’s coaches stood four-deep to ensure Jalen knew he was a priority. He graduated from Immaculate Conception (New Jersey) High School as a 2,000-point scorer. In October 2017, before his senior season, Jalen committed to Syracuse over two dozen offers from schools including Villanova, Kansas, Indiana, Notre Dame and Connecticut.

Jalen’s hometown ties with Autry sealed the deal.

“Coming from the same neighborhood, we’ve had a lot of good basketball players,” Autry said. “They don’t always make it out. They don’t take advantage of the opportunity sometimes, for whatever reason. Him being here, that says it all”

John also wanted to be close to his best friend’s games, so Syracuse made the most sense. Jalen’s father wanted his son to play Division I basketball for a New York team — especially one that could put him on the fast track to the NBA, his ultimate goal.

Salmon has coached Vince Carter and Kobe Bryant. Asked about Jalen’s NBA prospects, Salmon said, “I think Jalen will play basketball for the next 10-plus years and get a check. His best basketball is in front of him.”

At 19, Jalen can’t help but look in two directions. He hopes to lead Syracuse for two seasons and be selected in the 2020 draft. Once in the league, he’ll look back to the apartment complex in Harlem. Part of his paycheck will go back to low-income children from the housing project in which he grew up.

From the moment he steps on the Carrier Dome floor, Jalen will say a prayer before every game to remind himself of the people he loves and the King Towers complex he came from. The further he advances away, the more he can give back.

“I never told him what he couldn’t do,” John said. “Just what he could do and who he could be.”

Cover photo by Josh Shub-Selzter | Staff Photographer