Golden State Warriors’ Gui Santos goes from homesick to at home in NBA

Golden State Warriors forward Gui Santos now knows his mother knew best.

Five years ago, the G League proved much harder than the skinny 19-year-old Brazilian expected. Arriving in America alone, Santos was homesick and playing basketball on a pay cut for the Santa Cruz Warriors.

Weeks into his G League career, he hit a breaking point and called home with thoughts of returning to Brazil — until his mother offered a new game plan.

“My mom, my dad, I called them. I was like, ‘Mom, I don’t know if I can make it. I’m by myself here all the time,’” Santos told Andscape. “I speak English, but my English was very broken at the time. So, I was always just by myself [trying] to make it to the NBA.

“That was really tough for me to call my mom. I said, ‘Mom, I might go back to Brazil.’ She was like, ‘Gui, you’re good. We’re here to support you.’ They knew at that time that everything was not going well. So, ‘Make sure you’re just giving your best. Give it one year, two years. If things don’t go well, then you can find something else.’ I’m glad that I have them in my life.”

Lucineide Carvalho clearly gave her son great advice.

After spending the past three years on a minimum contract, Santos signed a three-year, $15 million extension on Feb. 28. While his $4.6 million salary this season may not sound like much by NBA standards, it is a massive raise from the $40,500 he earned in the G League five years ago.

Tonight, Santos and the Warriors visit the Houston Rockets (ESPN, 8:30 p.m. ET).

“I was picked 55th, but the [Warriors] trusted me,” said Santos, who enters Wednesday averaging 6.1 points, 4.0 rebounds and 1.5 assists in 19.1 minutes per game this season. “They saw a skinny guy from Brazil, a guy that might be good, and they picked me and took care of me.”

Santos was born into a basketball family June 22, 2002, in Brasilia, Brazil. His father, Deivisson Santos Costa, played five seasons in Novo Basquete Brasil, the country’s top professional league. Santos’ agent, Aylton Tesch, played in college at Middle Tennessee State and was a professional teammate of Santos’ father. Santos’ mother also grew up playing the sport.

That allowed Santos to make fruitful connections with Brazilian NBA players whose footsteps he was hoping to follow.

Over the first two decades of this century, numerous Brazilians made their presence known in the league in a variety of roles, ranging from short stints and role players to individual award winners and NBA champions. These included Rafael Araújo, Leandro Barbosa, Bruno Caboclo, Vitor Faverani, Cristiano Felício, Alex Garcia, Marcelinho Huertas, Scott Machado, Fab Melo, Nenê, Raul Neto, Lucas Nogueira, Tiago Splitter, Anderson Varejão and Marquinhos Vinicius.

Santos’ father and Tesch helped put him in touch with several of the names on that list, who were willing NBA mentors.

“I always had these guys as good examples for me, like Leandro Barbosa, Anderson Varejão, Raul Neto, and another guy, Cristiano Felício,” Santos said. “All these guys, I got a little bit about the NBA from them. Every time that I could ask them something about the NBA, I was asking. The first thing I asked LB [Barbosa] was to tell me one thing that could get me closer to the NBA. And he said, ‘You got to learn English, because that’s going to make your life easier 100 percent.’ So, it starts with English.

“Then when I got [to the G League], I was talking a lot with Varejão. He was talking to me a lot about staying ready in every situation and also controlling what you can control, because when you’re in the NBA, you don’t know what you’re going to do next. When you come in the [game] situation, you don’t know if you’re going to play. You don’t know when the opportunity is going to show up for you. And talking to these guys was so great for me, because they give you all the advice. They said, ‘Gui, make sure you’re ready.’”

Santos was far from an overnight NBA success story, however.

Tesch has known Santos since infancy and signed the “special” talent when Santos was just 13. After being passed over by Esporte Clube Pinheiros in São Paulo, Tesch said, Santos signed with Minas Tenis Clube in Minas Gerais, playing there from 2018-22, beginning at age 16. He averaged 10.5 points and 5.0 rebounds per game during the 2021-22 season, earning NBB Sixth Man of the Year honors.

With his eyes on the NBA, Santos was taking steps to prepare himself for life in the United States. Speaking limited English at the time, he began learning from a tutor, watching movies on Netflix and listening to American music.

He was selected for the World Team at the 2021 Nike Hoop Summit, which pits the top international teens against the top American high school players. The event was canceled, however, due to pandemic restrictions, robbing Santos of a chance to further establish his name on NBA radars.

“He just had a niche for getting baskets back then in Brazil. That was what he was known for. He played hard. He just did it,” Tesch said. “Gui, from the beginning, he just knew what he wanted. He was like, ‘No one is going to take this game away from me.’”

Replicating his success in the NBA would take an adjustment, though.

The Warriors drafted Santos with the 55th pick of the 2022 NBA draft in the same month they won the NBA championship. Santos played for the summer league team before being assigned to the G League Santa Cruz Warriors during the entire 2022-23 season.

Santos arrived to the beach town of Santa Cruz, California, standing 6-foot-7 and weighing just 185 pounds. He was homesick, making a minimal salary and wondered if this basketball journey was truly for him. Tesch also gave Santos a credit card to use in case he needed a meal.

Santos averaged 12.7 points, 6.0 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game for Santa Cruz that season. Tesch said Santos initially made the mistake of thinking he needed a scorer’s mentality. As he struggled to find a rhythm offensively, his confidence took a hit.

“That was a big change for me,” Santos said. “In Brazil, I was athletic and guarding [positions] one through five. And when I moved to America, my first year in the G League, I was 185 [pounds]. Everybody was just moving me, driving by me, bumping me, talking crazy to me.

“And I was like, ‘Damn, I don’t know. I’m in the G League and they say the NBA is a whole other level.’ So, that was really tough for me. I was thinking that maybe I should go back to Brazil. I was making more money in Brazil. I was living a better life in Brazil. But my [goal] was always to make it to the NBA.”

Said Tesch: “I had some tough conversations with him and his parents. I am glad he listened to us and he is what he is today.”

Santos fought through the frustration and homesickness and was rewarded by Golden State on Nov. 7, 2023, with a three-year contract paying the veteran’s minimum.

Stronger at about 230 pounds, Santos made his NBA debut Nov. 16, 2023, playing the final four minutes of a 19-point Warriors loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder. But there was still work to do, and he split time between the NBA and Santa Cruz during the 2023-24 season.

While under contract, Santos sought to prove he belonged through hard work, unselfish play, screen-setting and professionalism.

“I was feeling like, ‘OK, I made it, but I’m not comfortable right now,” Santos said. “I got to prove myself. I got to show them that I can help them. … I also want more. I also want to be a guy that helps the team even more now.

“I want to show them they can come here for the next thing they need from me — a guy that can score, rebound, move the ball or just be a great energy guy. I would do whatever just to make sure that I show them that I want to stay here. I want to be a guy in the NBA for a long time.”

Warriors head coach Steve Kerr grew increasingly confident in Santos, playing him in 56 and 68 games in the past two seasons, respectively. Santos’ emergence also made it easier for the Warriors to trade forward Jonathan Kuminga on Feb. 5, as Kerr often deferred to Santos instead.

“Gui is great. From Day 1, the energy he brought, coachability, wanting to get better,” Kerr said. “Being in the gym all the time. Soaking up the knowledge that he needed. And building up the reps and attacking. He’s been playing here for three years. And night after night, he’s playing heavy minutes.”

Nearly three weeks after the Kuminga trade, the Warriors made a preemptive move to prevent Santos from becoming a restricted free agent, signing him to a new contract. He emerged as a key rotation player on the wing during the final two months of last season, filling in for injured star forward Jimmy Butler. Santos averaged 15.2 points, 5.6 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 1.4 steals over the Warriors’ final 35 games, scoring in double figures 26 times.

Now, Santos can mentor and inspire future Brazilian basketball players dreaming of the NBA, just as Barbosa, Varejao and others did for him.

“The kids now see me as an example,” Santos said. “’Oh, this guy, he is in the NBA because he worked really hard. He’s not the fastest guy. He’s not the tallest guy. But he’s a guy that worked hard.’ And I like that. Even in Brazil, they have a nickname for me, ‘Gui the Worker,’ because I do just that. I go out there and do what I need to do. …

“If you work hard, and you are a guy that really wants that, you can make that. At some point, if you’re patient, you can make it.”