What did Derik Queen mean, exactly?

Asked where he’d found the gumption to spin to his left and kiss a March Madness game-winner off the glass, the baby-faced big man answered matter-of-factly, “I’m from Baltimore, that’s why.”

With five simple words, the 20-year-old Queen bound himself to his hometown for then and probably forever. On Wednesday night, Baltimore basketball lovers will keep a close eye on the first round of the NBA draft to see where the city’s latest great will continue his career.

After he’s picked, the highlight package on ESPN’s broadcast will no doubt feature that audacious shot from three months ago — Queen digging into his precocious bag to save the Maryland Terrapins from falling to upstart Colorado State.

Why did his mind turn to home in the moments after he’d put himself on the broader basketball map with that buzzer-beater? Beyond a basic shoutout, what did he hope to convey about the city that forged him?

“I just want to put out for Baltimore,” he explained moments afterward. “A lot of people don’t really make it out of Baltimore.”

Queen’s Baltimore story is about a single mother who not only protected him but taught him to protect himself and of youth coaches who stood in for a father lost too soon. It’s the story of a curious, creative boy who found purpose with the ball he loved to dribble from his front door in Belair-Edison to the various East Baltimore courts where he honed his game.

The basketball was a gift; Queen’s mother, Lisa Anderson, can’t remember if it was for Christmas or his birthday two days later. But once it became the central object in her son’s life, she never had to fret over where he was.

“He found a basketball court some blocks from our home,” Anderson recalled. “And he was always there. From the time he got out of school until it was dark outside, I knew where I could find him.”

The nickname of the park, “Goldilocks,” was almost too perfect, an affirmation that the elementary school hooper had found his right place.

“It was a comfort,” Anderson said. “I knew there were older kids there, but I didn’t have any fears that he was getting into trouble. He had that ball with him.”

She had recognized his independent spirit even when he was a toddler. He taught himself to tie his shoes at age 2 and started preparing his lunches for school at age 5.

Queen had a rangy build, inherited from his 6-foot-1 mother and his father, Erik Queen, remembered by friends as a 6-foot-4 guard who brought an upbeat intensity to some of the same East Baltimore courts his son would later own.

Queen was 2 years old when his father was shot on E. Lafayette Ave. on a Monday night in April 2007. Erik Queen died at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 24.

Anderson said her son did not often ask about his father or the circumstances of his death. “If his dad’s death anniversary or birthday came up, I would let him know,” she remembered. “But that was about it.”

Erik Queen did live on in the minds of Woody Gunter and Donnell “Mookie” Dobbins, the two coaches who would spend the most time shaping Derik’s basketball development. Anderson credits both with becoming father figures to her son.

“I grew up with his dad,” said Dobbins, who teamed with Erik Queen in the Cecil Kirk Recreation pipeline that produced so many Baltimore standouts. “He was a two-guard. Wiry shooter. Big personality. Funny and charismatic, like Derik. Derik has a lot of his personality, as far as that goes.”

He never pressed the subject with his next-generation pupil, but when Queen did something to evoke his father, Dobbins would tell him so.

“With AAU, there’s so much travel,” Gunter said. “When Lisa was working, he would stay with us, so there were incidents when I would need to redirect him — not just him, all the kids — and he would ask why, sometimes, I was so hard on him. And I would tell him, ‘Your dad would want me to, Derik.’ He was like, ‘How do you know what my dad would want you to do?’ And I would explain to him.”

Like Dobbins, Gunter saw flashes of the father in the son. “His dad had a real edge to him,” he said. “Derik has that edge to him as well. When they were in the NCAA tournament, and he told coach [Kevin] Willard to give him the damn ball. I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s his dad.’”

Henry “Sarge” Powell, who has coached generations of Baltimore kids at Madison Square Recreation Center, alerted Gunter to Queen’s potential. He was in third grade at the time.

Gunter and Dobbins independently settled on the same word, “inquisitive,” to describe the kid they tutored on the courts at Chick Webb Recreation Center and Rita Church Community Center at Clifton Park.

“He was rail-thin, small upper torso, but his legs were long, so you could tell he’d grow,” Gunter recalled. “But he always had guard ability.”

Queen has captivated college recruiters and NBA scouts with deft footwork and court vision that belie his 6-foot-9, 245-pound frame. The seeds of that player were already evident when he was in fourth grade.

“I always told him, ‘None of you guys have a position. We’re training basketball players,’” Gunter said.

“He always made the right plays instinctively; that’s something that’s not taught,” Dobbins said. “He already had it, which allowed us to develop it. We didn’t play him as a traditional big man. We allowed him to play point guard. Get the ball off the backboard and initiate the offense, which most young bigs, people won’t let them do that, because they’re going to make a lot of mistakes.”

Queen found fellowship with a core unit of teammates who would play beside him from grade school all the way through the end of high school on rec league powerhouse Team Thrill. Sarmartine Bogues (Muggsy Bogues’ grandson). Mike Williams. Isaiah Williams. Karim Harris. DJ Dormu. Queen had no siblings at home, so they became his family.

They had sleepovers at Gunter’s house and later served as groomsmen at his wedding. They traveled to the Caribbean to celebrate graduations. They maintain a lively communal text thread that will be popping on draft night, with several in the group planning to be at Barclays Center in Brooklyn to watch Queen shake NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s hand.

By middle school, the rapidly growing Queen — he sprouted from 5-foot-11 to 6-foot-6 seemingly overnight — was the superstar in the bunch, averaging 20 points and 15 rebounds at national tournaments.

He overpowered opponents without sacrificing the creativity he’d demonstrated early on. That move he used to beat Colorado State? He’d been trying stuff like that for years.

“His imagination is a little different at that size,” Dobbins said.

Queen had already earned acclaim as one of the top players in the country when he began his high school career at St. Frances. He had his way with opponents, scoring 56 points in one game against Annapolis Area Christian.

Many players would have seen such manhandling as cause for celebration. Queen, with Dobbins in his ear, took it as a sign that everything was coming too easily. As they plotted next steps, the idea of leaving Baltimore to seek fiercer competition at a Florida boarding school sounded better and better to the independent, ambitious teenager.

Dobbins had watched that path pay off for Baltimore native Jarace Walker, an earlier trainee who went from IMG Academy to Houston before becoming the No. 8 pick in the 2023 NBA Draft.

“I just thought because of the talent Derik was, the ability to be around other pros, guys who were older than him, he would have to work harder every day,” Dobbins said. “He was not going to be at the top of the totem pole, and he would not be able to get complacent.”

There was only one problem: It didn’t sound so great to the mom who’d been with Queen essentially every day of his life.

“Derik is my only child,” Anderson said. “It was not convincing, and they tried every avenue. I was just not willing to let my 16-year-old son go to Florida. He had always been independent, but I was still able to put ears and eyes on him.”

She visited Montverde Academy with Queen, listened to pitches from the school’s coaches and administrators on countless Zoom calls. In the end, it was her boy’s consistent, specific argument for why he needed to go that wore her down. She had always trusted him to be in the right place, to do the right thing.

“I waited until the day before the deadline,” she said. But she let him go. She and Dobbins dropped him off that August. “The plane ride back, it was so emotional, so, so emotional,” Anderson remembered.

She was still the one to build him up over FaceTime calls when he struggled to find minutes as part of Montverde’s stacked roster that first season. He missed his friends, his house, home-cooked meals. Even then, Anderson didn’t regret the decision.

“He grew up fast,” she said.

On the court as well, where Queen solidified his status as one of the stars in his class, playing beside Cooper Flagg, who’s expected to be the No. 1 pick in Wednesday’s draft.

No one in Queen’s inner circle was surprised when he came home to play for Maryland. In three years away, his bonds with Baltimore never frayed. Willard’s staff knew that connection was paramount for the program’s most important recruit in at least a decade.

He became the centerpiece of the Terps’ “Crab Five” starting lineup that captured a region’s basketball imagination in March.

As Queen prepares to relocate to some NBA city, his choices continue to point back home.

Dobbins, who recently traveled with him to Santa Barbara and Houston to prepare for predraft workouts, has remained his most constant basketball adviser. Based on feedback from teams picking in the top 15, they’ve spent the last eight weeks hammering on his footwork, agility, shooting range and diet.

It’s just the latest example of the steadfast love and strength Queen found in a city often misunderstood by outsiders.

“He is what Baltimore is,” Gunter said. “He has that grit. … We sheltered him from some of the hardest parts of it, but he was able to see some of that as well. It was a good mix.”

Anderson thought it was pretty cool when her son credited Baltimore with giving him the confidence to demand the ball and make that game-winner against Colorado State. She didn’t realize how deeply his words struck until her pastor mentioned them from the pulpit the next Sunday she was in church.

With Queen on the cusp of another milestone, she’s thinking about how that purposeful boy, who dribbled his basketball everywhere, never stepped off course.

“The same kid that I groomed from a baby until now, nothing has changed,” Anderson said. “Everything stayed consistent. We always had that bond. We could talk about anything, and for the most part, I never had to doubt his answers. They always seemed truthful. So we had that confidence in each other. We know that he is an excellent basketball player, but I always drilled into him — because that’s how I was raised — the character, the morals, respect. And every city we’ve ever traveled to, people have told me, basketball aside, ‘That’s a great kid.’ I’m grateful for that.”