After more than three years away from professional basketball, Jonah Bolden is ready to re-introduce himself.
Bolden was two years into an NBA career when he decided to take a hiatus from the sport at the start of 2020, disappearing from the Australian basketball conscience. He used that time to focus on off-court ventures, his young family, and maturing.
But, recently, he got that itch. The itch to dive back into the pro sports ecosystem, and make the most of the potential his 6'10, athletic frame affords him.
That will be as a member of the Sydney Kings, with the Australian forward signing a one-year deal with the back-to-back defending NBL champions. Raised in Sydney, Bolden will play on a home court - Qudos Bank Arena - that's less than a 10-minute drive from his former high school, Homebush Boys, for a Kings team his father, Bruce, achieved legend status at.
It was in January of 2023, around his 27th birthday, when Bolden started getting back into the swing of things on the court.
"I was getting back on the court, having some fun runs with guys," Bolden told ESPN. "And then being around it a bit more, I got that itch to want to get back out there in that professional environment, using my potential and having fun with it."
Bolden was once a hopeful recruit for the Kings who was simply out of reach.
The 36th pick in the 2017 NBA Draft, Bolden started 10 games for the Philadelphia 76ers in his rookie season, and was even part of the team's playoff rotation. He was waived by the 76ers the following season before being picked up by the Phoenix Suns on a 10-day contract.
"I'm not joking here, initial contact was about three or four years ago," Chris Pongrass, the Kings' CEO, told ESPN. "That got shut down pretty damn quickly, when he was an NBA player.
"This is someone you always keep tabs on. He's a Sydney product whose father is a legend of the game, who is an extremely talented young athlete playing in the NBA. You always want the prospect of them returning. It wasn't until three or four weeks ago when it's really become a possibility."
But, even when the talks between the Kings and Bolden reached an advanced stage, there are still unique processes for a team looking to bring in a player who hasn't played professionally in more than three years.
The Kings were forced to do more due diligence than usual with such a unique circumstance. Bolden conducted multiple workouts. There was a scrimmage on a Friday, before an individual workout on Saturday. Bolden completed a physical and screening with the Kings' medical staff, and was wined and dined by Pongrass and Luc Longley, who serves as a part owner and special advisor to the team.
"There's been a lot of back and forth," Pongrass said of the process of signing Bolden.
"High risk, high reward is as simple as it gets. If we can get him back to close to the player he once was, he's a top three, or four, or five player in this league, without question. It's just a process to get him back there. Our discussions were about what that process is: what it involves, the timing of that. It's not going to be overnight.
"What helps him is he's 27. While he's taken a couple of years off, he's still very young. He never had any major injuries. For a big guy, that's rare. But, it helps him. What the biggest part of our internal discussions had been, were around the performance and medical side. You don't lose being 6'10. You don't lose being that athletic. For him, you don't necessarily lose a shot; it might take a while to get back but, for him, it's about being in game-ready shape. He stayed in phenomenal form, in terms of his body. He did a ton of yoga; his core work is fantastic. He's in great shape, but there's a difference between good shape and playing shape."
Bolden had been watching the Kings' success from afar.
During his hiatus, the Kings won back-to-back NBL Championships, breeding two league MVPs and sending multiple players to the NBA.
"It's something I really respect," Bolden said of the Kings' recent prominence.
"Especially coming from the NBA, where they're the biggest and best organisations, coming back home and seeing the Kings taking it up a notch is something I respect a lot.
"There's Hoops Capital, you have Robyn (Denholm) getting involved. They have a structure and long-term outlook that's appealing as a player. But also, going into me maturing over the years, I've got more respect now for what goes into building a team outside of just the players themselves. That's where I've been able to really respect what the team has done; bringing the Flames in, and being collaborative with both teams under one hood, but both having their own identity. It's really allowing the city as a whole to get behind the teams and respect it in a high, high professional, elite manner."
Since his junior basketball days - both with the NSW Metro state program and the Australian national under-19 team - Bolden has been regarded as an elite athlete who can stretch it out to the three-point line and distribute the ball at a high level.
That athleticism has been on show since Bolden's time at UCLA, the beginning of his professional career in Serbia and Israel, and his short stint in the NBA, and the Sydneysider is confident he'll be able to return to and perform at his physical peak.
"Body wise, I feel great," Bolden said.
"I've been back at it at a League-level maybe the last six or seven weeks. I can definitely see the difference in two years of no wear and tear, and just the ability to eat right. My diet's fully transformed. I've put on much more mass than I did before.
"Athletically, I'm still where I was and still want to get further. It's all a process. I'm gonna have some bad days, as everyone does, and some good days. Personally, I'm striving to get back optimally where I was, if not further, to be ready to go for this season. That's my No. 1 goal. On the court, you can expect something that fits with how the Kings play: long, stretch the floor. Xavier [Cooks] was going downhill on guys and pushing it full court. I see myself in a similar manner, where I'm stretching the floor, hitting shots, getting rebounds and running with the guys, being able to find different guys, using my length of defence - clogging the paint and whatnot - doing different things.
"There's nothing that I would say is not gonna be there from the past but, going forward, I'm going to add to that repertoire and do things that maybe I didn't have the awareness of before. It is a process, but I have the utmost faith in myself, but that's how I've always been, so I have no doubt in the slightest."
Bolden joins a Kings team that, while still without a head coach, has retained a significant chunk of its roster from the 2022-23 NBL title winning campaign. Shaun Bruce, Dejan Vasiljevic, Angus Glover, Kouat Noi, Jaylin Galloway, and Jordan Hunter all return as contracted players, while the Kings added import D.J. Hogg and local wing Makuach Maluach this off-season.
The expectation is that Bolden starts at the centre spot for the Kings, joining forces with Hogg to create a highly-skilled, versatile frontcourt.
"He provides us a lot of flexibility," Pongrass said.
"He's an NBA four, but he's the type of player I like for an NBL five. I look at Jarrell Martin as an undersized NBL five, but he was super athletic and ran guys off the floor at some stage. There's gonna be some matchup challenges if he's going to be the starting five for us but, at the end of the day, I feel like his length, athleticism, what he can do to stretch the floor, we can get around those potential mismatches as they come about.
"I see him as partnering really well with DJ [Hogg] because of the flexibility. If Jonah needs to play some four, and DJ some three, that's their NBA positions, and Jonah next to Jordi [Hunter] is really something I'm intrigued to see as well. I think that's a really good pairing. It provides length and rim protection - all the things you want - but, do I se Jonah being able to be a starting five for our team, for sure, but I also think it gives us a lot of flexibility if we decide to bolster that with another lock or another import, because our players are multi-positional like that."
The Kings' off-season continues with a head coach vacancy still to fill, following the team's decision to not pick up the team option on Chase Buford's contract.
Pongrass confirmed the Kings have narrowed down the list of head coach candidates to a shortlist of three people, all of whom are American.
"We're going through the intricate final stages of making a decision," he said. "We're hopeful we'll have a coach in the near future."
That person will have the opportunity to coach Bolden, who says he's grown throughout his quasi basketball sabbatical; a changed man since his decision to drop out of the Australian Boomers' 2019 FIBA World Cup campaign drew the ire of the country's basketball fans.
"I hope it's a re-introduction, in a sense," Bolden said.
"Not scratching what happened, but it was in the past... I would tell my younger self to handle it differently. We're here now. It's a different head on my shoulders, in the sense of wanting to do right by the right people, and obviously my home country, and the supporters. There was no intention to let anyone down... but it's definitely been one thing on my mind; re-introducing myself, in that sense.
"Maturity sounds kind of general, but talking specifically: the approach for the game, the respect for the game, not getting caught up in the little things as much as I may have before, working more and wanting to be in a collaborative, high-energy, high-passion, high-heart environment. I want to be around guys who are your teammates, but also your friends... Where I'm at now is much more mature. I'm more focused on the task at hand and what's going on in the moment."