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New York City • When a young Jakob Poeltl got his first taste of the NBA in this city, he was overwhelmed just watching from the stands at Madison Square Garden.
"I was just in awe at how big the arena was," he recalled. "The bright lights and everything just really impressed me."
Seven years later, Poeltl knows that feeling is coming again.
"I think it's really going to hit me tomorrow when I'm walking up," the former University of Utah center said Wednesday afternoon, speaking to reporters in a Manhattan hotel. "It's just a surreal feeling. During the workouts, every time I go into one of these interviews, it's like, wow, this is amazing. This is like my dream come true."
On Thursday night, Poeltl will be one of the 60 players fortunate enough to hear his name called in the NBA Draft. He will stroll across the stage, shake the commissioner's hand and realize a childhood ambition that has taken him from Austria to Salt Lake City and now to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
It is a storybook ending to a chapter in an unlikely fairytale. In fact, Utes head coach Larry Krystkowiak chuckles thinking back to one of the first times he watched Poeltl play in a game. The coach visited Austria twice in recruiting the 7-footer and said the big man played "horribly" in one of the few games he saw there.
"If anybody would have watched him play," Kyrstkowiak said, "they wouldn't have been interested."
On Thursday night, Krystkowiak will be at Poeltl's side in the green room — a special invitation for the draft's top talents — looking on like a proud father.
"I guess the closest thing I can relate it to is being a parent," the coach said. "You're just really proud of him and you just kind of flash back two years ago when we were first recruiting him. It's one of those 'who'd have thunk it' moments, where you're pretty dang proud about how it all came together."
The Pac-12 Player of the Year has the talent and personality to be a fit for a number of teams. Mock drafts have Poeltl going anywhere from Toronto at No. 9 to Chicago at No. 14. But the athletic 7-footer is worrying more about which suit to wear to the event.
"I'm not sure yet," he said after whittling his choices down to two. "I'm getting there."
As for fretting about where he will end up?
"I'm not too worried about it," he said. "I can't really influence it now. It's up to the team. Whoever wants to pick me, I'll do my best to help out that organization."
And the 20-year-old Poeltl and his coach believe he has plenty of upside to offer whichever team takes the chance.
"Whatever obstacle was in front of him, he tackled it head on," Krystkowiak said. "He's on a great curve for the NBA. Teams would be crazy to think he's not going to keep developing and moving in that direction."
When Poeltl arrived in Salt Lake City two years ago, he was far from a sure thing. The young center was gifted but raw.
"I think if anybody tells you they knew he was going to be an NBA guy for sure, that's a little crazy to think," Krystkowiak said.
But hard work transformed Poeltl, who is set to become the first Austrian-born player to be drafted by an NBA team.
"He'd be the first to tell you he never really had a big-man coach," Krystkowiak said. "A lot of what he did was instinctual. When you combine that with his athletic ability and a great set of hands, it's a nice combination. Once he started to be taught the game and the intricacies, developing his favorite moves, it all came together."
After struggling with his free-throw shooting as a freshman, Poeltl improved by 30 percentage points as sophomore. And after having the benefit of playing alongside point guard Delon Wright, now with the Toronto Raptors, during his first season, Poelt learned to fight through — and skillfully pass out of — double-teams as Utah's top option last season.
Last season, Poeltl averaged better than 17 points and 9 rebounds a game for the Utes. And while his decision to return to Salt Lake after his freshman year didn't change his draft position much, he said he has no regrets about his choice.
"I didn't go back to improve my stock, necessarily," he said. "I went back to college because I thought it would help me out as a basketball player. There were things I wanted to work on and I'd have the best opportunity to do that in college."
Now, Poeltl said he is ready for the next step, ready to realize a dream he didn't quite know he had just a short while ago.
"I don't think I was thinking about this back then," he said thinking back to his first NBA experience, a Knicks-Wizards game at Madison Square Garden. "It was my dream, I guess, but I wasn't at the point where I thought that was going to be me in a few years."
Twitter: @aaronfalk