Alperen Şengün carried his family's dreams for years. Can he carry the Rockets?

He remembers his coach’s words, back when he was just 12 years old. Back when he was growing up in Giresun, Turkey, a historic city on Turkey’s Black Sea coast.“You got to be the one.”Alperen Şengün was only a middle-schooler, but he realized he had to quickly grow up. Become the man his family needed him to be. Which meant leaving everything and everyone behind and pursuing basketball at a renowned Turkish hoops club far away, in a city about 650 miles west of his hometown, on the southern coast of the Sea of Marmara.Advertisement