Sacramento’s Jaylen Wells returns home for youth basketball camp after rookie season in the NBA
A hundred basketball players — both boys and girls — from age 9 to high school, got the chance to work closely with the NBA star.
Yeah, it’s great just to be able to come in this community, you know, obviously I grew up around here, um, grew up playing sack high, so it’s cool just to be able to come out here, you know, interact with the kids, make them help them learn *** few things, and, and yeah, I’m enjoying it. I feel like growing up in Sacramento I didn’t really have my name on the map like that, so to be able to come and and now people, you know, come to this camp, you know, just to be able to see me or just to learn things and and be able to do it in Sacramento, I feel like there’s not too many of these camps in Sacramento, so I’m *** lot of fun. I know Jalen says that he went to the NBA. And I watched him on the NBA draft. I seen who it was and oh he’s *** Sacramento legend and I was like, yeah, I know who he is now and now being in this camp, I just feel proud to see *** Sacramento legend come to uh Sacramento and play. It’s good. I mean, I’ve been seeing *** lot of guys. I’m seeing guys getting dunked on. I’m seeing guys pick up pick up playing defense, pressure, and that’s what I like to see. I like to see the energy. The stuff outside of just scoring um and I said I think there’s *** lot of kids out here you know being leaders on the floor talking, communicating, pressuring, um, playing good defense, so that’s what I really like to see. I mean he’s the perfect definition of what consistent hard work is. He just has the mentality that he wants to elevate every single day and he’s not *** cool person, right? He, he wants to be able to get people involved because he understands like. His route that he went through and he it it was different than everybody else, right? He wasn’t ***, you know, top 5, top 10 player, but he had to work for everything. I, I love going to Sonoma State and then going to uh Washington State out of there was probably the first time where I was like, OK, like this dream of going to the NBA is believable. With the 3-9inth pick in the 2024 NBA draft. The Memphis Grizzlies select Jalen Wells from Washington State University. It’s, it’s, it’s *** little surreal just I mean I didn’t really expect to play as much as I did my rookie season and just be able to have the opportunity to have such *** huge role, um, defensively and just I mean being *** starter, um, it was I think it was *** big acceleration in my career. Oh my oh my. That was probably the hardest thing to hear was just that I wasn’t going to be able to finish the season and my wrist was broke, but I like to take the positives out of the negatives, so I mean I was right back in the gym whenever I was able to get in there, you know, doing *** whole bunch of left hand stuff, trying to shoot with my left hand, just having fun and just, you know, trying to bring joy to the basketball game. You mentioned going from somebody who is practically unnoticed all sudden thrust into the spotlight. Like that, like what’s that feel like? uh, yeah, I mean it’s, it’s changed *** lot. um I think the important thing for me is just staying me um you know I’m not really *** big flashy person, um, you know, so I’m just trying to use my influence for for the right and good things, um, having camps like this, but now that I do have eyes on me, um, being able to push things out that I wasn’t able to do before. No mistake, my freshman year, we went 3 and 25, um, and then obviously I went to Washington stay out of there, but I mean that just shows you, um.
Sacramento’s Jaylen Wells returns home for youth basketball camp after rookie season in the NBA
A hundred basketball players — both boys and girls — from age 9 to high school, got the chance to work closely with the NBA star.
Updated: 12:23 PM PDT Aug 5, 2025
Fresh off a brilliant rookie season with the Memphis Grizzlies, Sacramento’s Jaylen Wells returned home over the weekend for his first basketball camp in the capital city. Wells, who played with the Folsom Bulldogs, brought his camp to Sacramento High School on Sunday. A hundred basketball players in attendance — both boys and girls — from age 9 to high school, got the chance to work closely with the NBA star. They participated in drills at different workout stations and learned about Wells’ unique path to the NBA. KCRA 3’s Sean Cunningham was there to talk about his season, the camp, and bouncing back from a season-ending injury. Watch in the video above. See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
Fresh off a brilliant rookie season with the Memphis Grizzlies, Sacramento’s Jaylen Wells returned home over the weekend for his first basketball camp in the capital city.
Wells, who played with the Folsom Bulldogs, brought his camp to Sacramento High School on Sunday.
A hundred basketball players in attendance — both boys and girls — from age 9 to high school, got the chance to work closely with the NBA star.
They participated in drills at different workout stations and learned about Wells’ unique path to the NBA.
KCRA 3’s Sean Cunningham was there to talk about his season, the camp, and bouncing back from a season-ending injury. Watch in the video above.
See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel