James Lafferty is shedding new light on his fan-favorite character Nathan Scott on One Tree Hill. 

During the show’s annual fan event hosted by Friends with Benefit Charity Events in Wilmington, N.C., recently, the actor, 39, revealed an interesting new detail about his basketball-playing character and why his NBA dreams were cut short. 

Throughout the series, Nathan was portrayed as a star athlete, playing on the high school basketball team alongside his half-brother Lucas Scott (played by Chad Michael Murray). Though his character gets very close to getting drafted into the NBA, a spinal cord injury changes the entire course of his athletic career. 

Answering fan questions during a Q&A panel, Lafferty revealed there was a simple behind-the-scenes reason for the storyline.

“The NBA itself didn’t really want to play ball,” he explained. “At the time, they were very, very protective of their brand. This is just what I heard from the producers. They just were not willing to let us work the brand into the storylines.” 

“It was going to be super, super complicated because not only are you dealing with the NBA, but you’re dealing with individual franchises and they just wouldn’t do it,” he continued. 

Though they were able to include the Charlotte Bobcats (now Charlotte Hornets) on the series, the NBA wasn’t willing to have one of their teams heavily featured on the show. 

“We didn’t really want to have a bunch of fake NBA teams and some fake league that nobody would actually buy was real,” Lafferty added.

When it came to other basketball scenes on the show, Lafferty and many of his costars fondly remembered filming the iconic state championship episode from season 4. 

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“It just was the Raven storyline. It was getting to that state championship,” he said. “That was the most intense basketball that we had in the show. We were practicing the most for it. When we weren’t on set shooting basketball, we were practicing basketball.”

“Just being there on that court, being in NC State, that’s hallowed ground there,” he added of filming at the Lenovo Center in Raleigh, N.C. “We all wanted to get it right. I feel like that was the only time we left Wilmington as a team, and we were on our best behavior.” 

During the Q&A panel, Lafferty also addressed where he thinks his character Nathan would be today amid news of the show’s potential reboot. 

“I think it would be great if he stayed with Haley and had a family and is all good,” Lafferty said, referring to his character’s girlfriend and eventual wife, portrayed by Bethany Joy Lenz. “I think it’d be cool to see where his agent-ing career is now.”