Matured Telfair leads Lightning to 16U title at HOF National Invitational

Ethan Telfair needed a game like this, running the show for the Long Island Lightning 16s, scoring and facilitating for his teammates. In the team’s 81-74 win over an excellent Grassroots Canada squad in the Hall of Fame National Invitational championship game in Springfield, Mass., the rising junior point guard had 19 points, 10 assists and five rebounds in front of a boatload of college coaches.

“They didn’t give out MVPs,” Lightning 16s coach Shandue McNeil said. “But if they had, it would have been Ethan.”

Any kid competing on the AAU circuit this July would have longed for a game like Telfair’s on Tuesday at the Mass Mutual Center. But the performance was so vital for the 5-foot-9 Brooklyn native because of what happened in May. Telfair, the younger brother of Minnesota Timberwolves guard Sebastian Telfair, was arrested on gun possession charges with Lincoln teammate Shaquille Davis after an incident in Coney Island’s O’Dwyer Gardens Houses.

Denis Gostev

Two months after his arrest, a more mature Ethan Telfair had 19 points, 10 assists and five rebounds to lead the Lightning 16s to a tournament championship.

Telfair is trying to erase that stigma now attached to him. It was a major learning experience, he said.

“I was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Telfair said. “Shandue says 30 seconds can change your life and he’s right.”

He knows now that he cannot fall in with the wrong crowd and he vows to make changes in his life. Telfair says he will leave Lincoln to play with Lightning teammate Kuran Iverson at Northwest Catholic (Conn.) next year and he just recently changed AAU programs from the MetroHawks.

“My brother made my last name special,” Telfair said. “I need to know that because of that people are watching me more closely. … [The arrest] made me more mature. I gotta pick my friends better.”

McNeil, a former star at Archbishop Molloy and St. Bonaventure, has taken Telfair under his wing. Telfair, McNeil says, has been “an angel” in his time with the Lightning. And on the court, he was the missing ingredient on a team filled with incredibly talented wings like Iverson (16 points on Tuesday) and Trinity Catholic’s Jason Boswell (15 points), a Bronx native, who both have high-major schools lining up.

“We needed him,” McNeil said of Telfair. “He’s just a natural born leader.”

Telfair doesn’t have any offers right now, due most likely to his brush with the law, but McNeil thinks that will change by the end of the July live period. The Lightning head out to the Fab 48 in Las Vegas next week.

The coach is confident Telfair’s true colors will shine through over the next few months and year. And if he continues putting together games like he did Tuesday against Grassroots Canada, he has a chance to put his family name on the map yet again.

“He’ll be fine,” McNeil said. “Everybody needs a floor general.”

mraimondi@nypost.com