PORTLAND — Youth basketball can be more business than game, especially at the highest levels. Top players jump high schools — sometimes moving across the country, sometimes from another country — to find perceived better development opportunities. Top AAU programs are expensive. The best players have NIL money pouring in and people — not always trustworthy people — in their ear telling them how to monetize their social media or make a quick buck another way. It can be disorienting for teenagers making life-altering decisions.
Malachi Moreno is a welcome throwback.
The 6'11" center never left his home, his family and friends in Georgetown, Kentucky, population 37,000. There were offers to move, go anywhere and everywhere, and chase the almighty dollar (and potential future dollars). He chose home. From that comfort zone, Moreno won the state championship with the guys he grew up with, was named 2024-25 Kentucky Mr. Basketball — plus earned an invite to the Nike Hoop Summit this weekend in Portland.
" It was the place that built me and made me who I was," Moreno told NBC Sports about Georgetown. "Being given opportunities like [Nike Hoop Summit], it gives me an opportunity to represent where I'm from, and just to show like you can be from a small town and still accomplish great things."
Family and Friends
The ties that bound Moreno to Kentucky — and will continue to bind him as he is committed to play for Mark Pope and the Kentucky Wildcats next season, just 15 miles down the I-75 — are friends and family.
"I'm glad Malachi stayed home," his mother, Sarah, said. "It allowed him to actually enjoy his senior year, and it allowed him to be a kid for his final year of high school experience. All those high school things that's a lost art, sometimes, when you get into these high elite things."
"He wasn't ready to let go of going to prom, being with his childhood best friends, to try and chase the dream they've all had for so long," Malachi's brother Michael (who played at Eastern Kentucky, 2019-2024) added. "So ultimately, he's proven to himself that things can be done from Kentucky."
"It's a lot of fun just being with kids you grew up with," Moreno said. "You just get to enjoy life and just enjoy high school with them... and not feel pressured to perform every day.
"Like, I can go play a game and the next day go to school and I'll be fine. Nobody's coming up to me talking about, 'You need to work on this, this and this.' They're like, 'Oh, how's your day going? Let's hang out this weekend,' some kind of things like that. Those are things I enjoy really well."
Moreno's foundation is built on a rock of a family.
"They've been with me every step of the journey," Moreno said. "Through the hard times, through the good times, they've always been with me. They've always stuck with me. And every time, say, I have a bad game, they're the first ones to come talk to me and lift me back up. I mean, there's no reason to leave that. They always give me motivation. They give me confidence every single day."
While Moreno —the No. 3 ranked high school center in the nation per 247Sports — had offers from any number of national powers, where to play in college wasn't much of a debate for him.
"Kentucky was always a dream school for me," Moreno said. "You grow up, you live in Kentucky, you grow up watching them. Once I got the opportunity to play for them, it was kind of a first thing, keeping in the back of your mind, 'This is where you want to be.' The more games I went to, the more of the feel I got for just the University of Kentucky, just the fan base, and just being on the floor, it's just somewhere, like, you can't pass up that opportunity."
Nike Hoop Summit opportunity
While Moreno has played with and against many of the other stars at the Nike Hoop Summit at various events such as the McDonald's All-American game, this is the first time he's playing a game wearing the USA across his chest and playing for USA Basketball.
"It's a lot of pride, just being able to represent my country," Moreno said. "My family, we're a military family, I had my grandparents and they were influential in my life. Just being able to wear this across my chest, I feel like I'm kind of representing them and them, and also representing the greatness that came before me. And it's just a it's an honor and a blessing."
Playing for USA Basketball, and particularly for head coach Frank Bennett, has been the kind of challenge Moreno savors.
"Just the level of intensity we have in the practices, and just the intensity of the coach, the attention to detail, everything's very sharp, everything's very poised," Moreno said. "And I think that's a really good opportunity for everybody, just playing against guys and we know, but also keeping that competitive edge, it makes a lot of fun."
Confidence took time
Moreno is a throwback in more ways than just staying near home at Kentucky, his game is more old-school center — the kind of drop big, rim protector and vertical spacer coming back in vogue around the NBA. Moreno also has shown a deft passing touch in the practices in Portland.
"As a five man, I kind of want to dominate the paint first, and then, that sucks everybody in, and it opens it up for my teammates…" Moreno said." I'm more of a 'we over me' kind of player. I prefer for my teammates to eat, get their confidence going, and that gets my confidence going."
Some players are born with the confidence it takes to play high-level basketball. Moreno was not one of those guys.
"He wasn't necessarily too interested in basketball as a young kid, then he sprouted up and was always the biggest kid in his class," and that's when things started to change, Michael said of his brother.
"I can be brutally honest, the skill was not always there," Moreno said. "But once I got to high school and, I think it was more so my freshman summer, I got a couple of Big 10 offers, and that's when the drive really came to me — like this is really what you can do. You can make a living out of this. And that drive just kept me motivated. And then every day, I just wanted to get better and better and better."
That drive has led him all the way to representing the USA at the Nike Hoop Summit.
However, wherever the game takes him, Moreno will always be representing Kentucky.
And home.
How to watch the Nike Hoop Summit 2025
The Nike Hoop Summit games take place Saturday, April 12, and will be broadcast on the USA Network as well as streamed on Peacock.
The broadcast begins at 7 p.m. Eastern, with the women's game tipping off at 7:30 p.m. and the men's game at 10 p.m. from the Moda Center in Portland (home to the NBA's Trail Blazers).
