INDIANAPOLIS — For Michigan senior guard Nimari Burnett, it was a moment inspired by “The Decision,” the 2010 announcement that LeBron James was joining the Miami Heat.

Burnett sat at a table in front of a large group — family, friends, videographers and photographers — to announce where he would be attending school.

“It’s been a long thought process,” Burnett said, grabbing the microphone in front of him. “And I would like to be attending … Morgan Park High School.”

Yes, you read that right: While many players today have a press conference to announce their college destination, Burnett in 2017 — at the urging of his mother — was making his high school announcement from his middle school.

“I’ll never forget that, a little bit humiliated,” Burnett said Friday, seemingly wanting to crawl under the podium as he said those words. “But I’m grateful now looking back at it.”

Burnett’s version of “The Decision” played out on “Bringing up Ballers,” a Lifetime television show created by his mother, Nikki Burnett, and influenced by the success of “Basketball Wives.”

Brian Burnett, Nimari’s father, was also in the show. The premise was to follow the journey of several of the top young athletes in Chicago, mainly through the eyes of their mothers.

Among the kids of the other women featured on “Bringing up Ballers,” George Willborn III played college hoops at the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of California, Riverside; Danyelle Williams, the daughter of former NBA player Aaron Williams, played volleyball at Tulane and Northwestern; and Amari Bailey went to UCLA and played 10 games in the NBA after being drafted by the Charlotte Hornets in the second round in 2023.

Burnett’s winding college basketball career has covered three schools over six years but is set to conclude at its high point this weekend, having reached the Final Four with the Michigan Wolverines.

“It’s surreal, like, you see the Final Four [logos] everywhere you go here in Indy — it’s all across the hotel, all across the arena,” Burnett said. “I was walking past, like the area [near the locker room] where it said ‘68, 32, 16…’ and it hit like, we are really here in this moment. It’s something that you never want to take for granted.”

This Final Four run is the culmination of a rollercoaster three-year stretch for Burnett in Ann Arbor.

Burnett transferred to Michigan from Alabama after the 2022-23 campaign and became a full-time starter for the first time in his career, but the 2023-24 season was a tumultuous one, and the Wolverines finished with an 8-24 record — the first time the program ended a season with single-digit wins in more than 40 years.

That led to change. Michigan legend Juwan Howard was out as head coach after five years, and Dusty May was in.

For the players, change came with fear of the unknown.

“It was a huge culture shift. Everything was changing before my eyes,” Burnett said. “We were also very, very nervous because it was all new to us.”

Amid all the changes around him, Burnett remained and became a stabilizing factor, starting every game of each of Dusty May’s first two seasons at Michigan. For a team May has made over using the transfer portal, Burnett — playing at his third school, after starting his college career at Texas Tech — has been a constant at Michigan for three consecutive years.

“Nimari is a stabilizer,” May said. “He’s the exact same person emotionally, physically. His pre-practice routine is 10 out of 10.”