The lofty nickname reflects the way he has elevated his game since college, this year becoming the first Aggie player ever to play for the Harlem Globetrotters.

As a Trotters rookie, he’s a dunking wizard. He makes it look easy, but getting there was a long, hard climb from Division II basketball, to making the Aggies as a walk-on and then playing in one of the world’s most remote professional leagues.

When he came back to the United States, it took a year of playing for the forlorn Washington Generals – the Globetrotters’ nightly opponent – before he got his big chance.

His story isn’t a typical one for a professional basketball player. In school, he got cut every season. “Then I grew five inches from 10th grade to 11th grade. I drank a lot of milk that summer,” he says. He made the team as an 11th grader.

He had the physique for basketball, but his mind wasn’t quite where everyone else’s was.

“I was this happy go lucky kid who loved to play basketball, just wasn’t any good at it,” he says. “I was a very nice guy – I still am – so I would line up at the free throw line and talk to the opposing team. I’d say, ‘Hey, man, you’re having a good game. Keep your head up.’ Or if I fouled somebody, I’m the type of person who apologized right after that. A lot of my coaches didn’t really like that, and my teammates always frowned upon it.

“Especially when I grew into my athleticism, I would dunk the basketball and still smile. Everyone thinks you have to have this killer instinct and this mean streak, and that’s just never been a part of my character.”

After high school, he went to a Division II college in Ohio but didn’t play much. He figured, “If I’m going to be sitting on the bench, I might as well go to a college I want to be at.”

He transferred to A&T as a sophomore in 2008. He didn’t play at all his first year at A&T. Not only were the coaches not interested in him, he had a broken foot.

He worked out every morning in the gym, and he got the coaches’ attention when they saw him dunking with a big boot on the broken foot. He became a team manager that season and made the team the next season as a walk-on, competing against 30 other players.

He continued to impress his coaches. After what McLurkin recalls as an especially “crazy” dunk at Winston-Salem State, even the Rams’ fans were on their feet cheering. Head coach Jerry Eaves declared after the game, “Julian McClurkin is the most athletic player in the MEAC.”

“It really made me feel pretty good because I thought I was just this average guy who was a walk-on,” McClurkin says. “That was really something I’ll never forget about A&T.”

Another highlight came as a senior in the team’s last appearance on ESPN for the season. The now-confident McClurkin went into the game with a plan.

“I told my teammates and I told the coach, ‘I’m getting on ESPN tonight. I’m either getting dunked on or I’m dunking on somebody.’ I ended up on Top 10 plays. I got number seven.”

It was a particularly glorious dunk. He sent out a tape of that highlight after the season, and it got him a call from an agent who wanted him to play in Paraguay. After a year, he returned to the United States. He got his A&T degree in 2011 and since then has earned an MBA.

His basketball career continued with the Generals.

“After I played for the Generals for one season, I knew for a fact that I wanted to be a Globetrotter because of the way they’re received around the world. They would walk into a room, and everyone would just light up. And I wanted to be that person who could put a smile on someone’s face just by walking into the room.”

The Globetrotters agreed, for their own reasons.

“I’m mainly on the team for my looks, but they also like my dunking ability,” he says modestly. “They didn’t want me dunking on them like I was with the Generals.”

Playing for the Trotters isn’t all showboating dunks for McClurkin, and he loves the off-the-court part of his job. On one game day this winter, McClurkin spent the morning at an elementary school, giving a talk called “The ABCs of Bullying.” The afternoon would be spent in a media interview followed by a visit to a children’s hospital. After a couple hours of practice, it was game time.

“There’s a lot that goes into it,” he says of being a Globetrotter.

As a rookie, McClurkin needed a nickname – every Globetrotter has one – but it’s not the player’s decision. “They make you earn it,” he says.

Earning “Zeus” makes a statement about his skills as both a basketball player and an entertainer. And about what happens when you keep working until you find the place where you should be.

“It was a series of fortunate events,” he says, “that got me to the Harlem Globetrotters, who actually pay me to smile and dunk and be the person I actually am.”

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