Jahlil Okafor’s Great Expectations
The elderly man wearing yellow compression shorts cranes his head at an uncomfortable angle. A cadre of women fresh from a morning spin class stop and gawk. Small children point and giggle. It’s a Friday in Santa Barbara in early June, and Jahlil Okafor, one of the best talents in the 2015 NBA Draft class, has just entered the local YMCA.
There he goes now, clad in orange Nike shorts over black Under Armour workout tights, headed to a small weight room in the back corner, his longtime coach, Rick Owens, and childhood friend, Adam Walker, in tow. Some septuagenarians and wannabe hardbodies notwithstanding, the 6-foot-11 Okafor and his posse are all alone here. They like the peace and quiet it offers. And yet, as he eases his way into a rigorous weightlifting session, something he’s been doing nearly every day since he arrived in Southern California to prepare for the draft, it’s near impossible for Okafor not to draw attention. People are constantly stopping him on the street for autographs and congratulations.
“It’s definitely gotten to a whole new level,” Okafor, whose Duke team won a national championship this past April in his freshman year, says. “But it’s definitely a great feeling.”
If Okafor is experiencing any sort of nervousness or unease about being thrust beneath the spotlight – which should happen sometime tonight, after he strolls across the stage at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, shakes NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s hand and is immediately called upon to resurrect whichever struggling NBA franchise has just drafted him – he doesn’t show its effects. Perhaps it’s because the 19 year old, whose killer post game, fanciful footwork and pull-up jump shot have drawn comparisons to Tim Duncan and Hakeem Olajuwon, has gotten used to it by now. For as long as he can recall, “the expectations everybody else put on me didn’t really bother me,” says the Chicago-raised Okafor, who was named to the preseason All-America team last November before ever playing a game at Duke, and received his first college scholarship offer at age 13. “I’ve put the highest expectations on myself since Day One.”
And so, even now, as speculation runs rampant over whether he’ll be drafted Number One by the Minnesota Timberwolves or in the second slot by the Los Angeles Lakers, Okafor remains utterly unphased by the enormity of the moment. As he’s always done, he’s put his head down and plowed ahead. “He’s been handling this type of pressure all of his life,” his father, Chukwudi “Chucky” Okafor, says. “His approach to it is that of a professional: work, work, work and not complain. He’s just a kid and he got his first job.”
He pauses and adds with a laugh: “Not a bad first job though.”
Speak to enough people who know Jahlil, and you begin to pick up on a recurring theme: He is wise and mature beyond his years. That admirable trait didn’t came easy, however: Jahlil’s mother, Dacresha, died when he was only nine years old, and a young Jahlil was forced to grow up faster than any child should. “People always credit me for being nice to people, but that was all due to her,” he told Chicago magazine last year. Even now, before every game, he speaks to her. “I’ll just tell her, ‘Let’s go, Mom. I’m ready.’ I think of her as my wings on the court, my extra step.”
As a toddler Jahlil and his family resided in Poteau, Oklahoma, where his parents each had basketball scholarships at Carl Albert State College. When the pair separated a few years later, Jahlil lived with his mother in the small border town of Moffett, Oklahoma; he’d visit his father in his native Chicago, where Chucky had gone to get a bachelor’s degree at Chicago State University. Following his mother’s death, Jahlil moved to Chicago to live with Chucky, eventually moving from the rough South Side and settling in to suburban Rosemont.
Basketball soon became the dominant force in Jahlil’s life. Even as a toddler, Chucky says, Jahlil was always competitive with his older sister, Jalen, and cousin, Josh. “He and his sister would see who could eat cereal faster,” Chucky recalls with a laugh. “Whatever he put his mind to he just hated to lose.”
Always the tallest of his friends, Jahlil began playing basketball at an early age; he started concentrating on it intensely upon moving to the Chicago area. Okafor played on an an über-talented AAU team that won three age-group national championships in four years, and by eighth grade, already standing at 6-foot-8, Okafor was offered a scholarship to nearby DePaul University. Needless to say, this made national news. Jahlil started seeing his name and face online and on ESPN. “That’s when I first starting getting negative Facebook messages,” he recalls. “Like, ‘Who do you think you are? You’re not supposed to get scholarship offers.’ And there were arguments on message boards like, ‘What if he’s a thug?’ That’s when I realized that in doing something good, there will be a lot of negativity as well.”