Younger and Younger

Courting a 10-year-old basketball prodigy

By Eli Saslow
The Washington Post

BALTIMORE — Four coaches clapped and snapped fingers in front of Justin Jenifer's face to demand his focus, but Justin's attention drifted. He felt hungry, particularly for Skittles.

The adults who huddled around Justin spoke in hushed tones. The 10-and-under Bentalou Bombers basketball team trailed by six points. A loss could devastate their season.

As usual, coaches had called a timeout and turned to Justin, a 4-foot-6 point guard. One problem: Justin, 10, refused to look back at them. He rolled his eyes, bounced in his chair and playfully shoved a teammate. "If we win," Justin whispered to him, "I'm going to get money from my dad and go straight for the food."

During the last two seasons, youth coaches had anointed Justin as one of the most talented 10-and-under players in the country. Justin has been pursued by AAU summer-league teams that troll nationally for players, high-school coaches who recruit aggressively and shoe companies who scramble for potential future endorsers.

The burden of so many pressures rarely registered for Justin. But they weighed heavily on a handful of men who watched inside the Chesapeake High School gym in Baltimore. They had invested considerably in Justin's development, and they expected a payoff.

Howard Jenifer, 32, Justin's father, paced behind the bench. During the past year, he had fielded requests from at least seven AAU coaches who wanted Justin on their travel-intensive teams, including one in Atlanta that offered to fly Justin in for weekend tournaments. Howard Jenifer had kept Justin with Bentalou, a team run out of an inner-city recreation center in Baltimore, so his son would remain comfortable and carefree. Could Justin stay that way under pressure?

Don Aaron sat in a section of bleachers. A friend of Howard's and a private basketball instructor, Aaron had outfitted Justin with a weighted vest during workouts to build upper-body strength. He had suggested Justin cut juice from his diet and regularly run up and down bleachers to build endurance. Would fortified legs carry Justin late in the game?

Across the gym, Scottie Bowden, a representative of Adidas, had invested many weekends and about $20,000 of company money in Justin and his teams. Bowden had provided the boy and teammates with sneakers and travel money to tournaments in an effort to build brand loyalty in a 10-year-old with distant NBA prospects. In Justin, had Bowden accurately identified a star?

Over the next four minutes, Justin reassured his admirers. As the smallest kid on the court, he looked outmuscled and immature, with shorts that fell almost to his socks and a jersey falling off his shoulders. But Justin spun and dribbled the ball as if it were a yo-yo. Later, he dropped back on defense and shadowed his opponent, his legs shuffling furiously. Justin scored 10 of his team's final 12 points and stole the ball twice, propelling Bentalou to a four-point win.

"It was cool," Justin said afterward. Then he shrugged, took $2 from Jenifer's pocket and rushed to the concession stand.

DVD breakthrough

Justin never so much as hit the rim in the first five basketball games of his life, as a 6-year-old. Timid and undersized, he tended to run away from the ball. "He was scared," said his mother, Kisha Hull, 31. "He hated it."

For inspiration, his father bought Justin a basketball DVD featuring flashy players, and the father quickly realized his son learned visually. Justin mimicked the players by dribbling through his legs in the living room of their two-story Baltimore house, and Howard Jenifer rushed out to buy more DVDs.

The DVD collection swelled, and Justin's skill set expanded with it. By 7, Justin scored most of his team's points. By 8, he scored most of the points in leagues designated for 9- and 10-year-olds. Opposing coaches and parents buzzed about the diminutive guard.

Justin's confidence skyrocketed. He appeared briefly in a commercial with NBA standout Carmelo Anthony, and that three-second spot made him a celebrity at Arlington Baptist School in Baltimore, where he recently finished fourth grade. Once reserved, he now boasted to friends that he would play in the NBA — or, if that fell through, at least become an NBA coach.

"Basketball kind of brought him out of his shell and made him silly, which is great," said Ken Gibson, who coaches Justin on an 11-year-old team. "But it's also a little scary, 'cause if his basketball slips, it's like, 'Well, does everything else slip, too?' "

Howard and Kisha often remind themselves that phenomenal talent, at 10, remains tenuous and fleeting. The uncontrollable terrifies them. Justin must grow taller than his 5-10 father, Jenifer said, and the family's genes hold little promise.

"I always tell Justin: 'Get to 6-2 and we're good. We're good,' " Jenifer said. "But if he stops growing way early and everybody else keeps shooting up? Then that's it, man. That's a wrap. We might as well go try badminton or something."

Grueling workouts

On a Monday afternoon in April, Jenifer hung a stopwatch around his neck and walked Justin into the football stadium at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore for what had become their regular workout. He told Justin to take a sip of water and a deep breath. Then he told his son to run up and down 240 rows of stairs in the bleachers — in 100 seconds or faster.

Justin widened his eyes in playful disbelief, shook his head and took off. As his footsteps echoed on the metal bleachers, Jenifer looked at his stopwatch and hollered updates: "Hurry. Seven seconds left. Five. Four. Boy, you better go!"

Two seconds before his deadline, Justin leapt off the last step, sweat rolling down his forehead. Already, these twice-weekly workouts had chiseled his physique. Only Justin's round face betrayed hints of baby fat as he dropped his hands to his knees and leaned against a fence.

"Don't lean up against that," Jenifer said. "That's a sign of weakness. Get off the fence."

Before they returned home for dinner, Jenifer told Justin to do 25 pushups ... after jumping rope 100 times in a minute ... after making 14 consecutive free throws ... after shooting 300 jumpers ... after running up and down 720 more rows of stairs in the bleachers.

Each time an opposing coach found a weakness in Justin's game, Jenifer eradicated it. Justin took lessons with local coaches who specialize in shooting, dribbling and defense.

Get 'em while they're young

Adidas pays Scottie Bowden to find impact players and get them into Adidas gear. That usually means 15- or 16-year-olds, but the company has no age minimums; it wants to procure the best players, said Darren Kalish, Adidas' director of grass-roots basketball programs.

Shortly after he turned 9, Justin was courted by Bowden.

"It's about brand loyalty," Bowden said. "If you're in my uniform at 10 or 11, maybe you will stay with me later on. I'm not always happy we're focusing on 9-, 10-, 11-year-old kids. That's so early. But this is a business. And if that's what I've got to do now, then that's what I'm going to do."

The Adidas representative blames his recruitment of Justin on an inevitable chain reaction: Three shoe companies — Adidas, Nike and Reebok — try to get top players on AAU teams they sponsor. High-school players quickly develop firm allegiances. The companies shift to the next set of available players, which means a younger and younger demographic.

Bowden, who is the principal at Golden Ring Middle School in Baltimore, gets about $100,000 worth of Adidas equipment and cash each year as a consultant, he said. With that he has helped build the Baltimore Select AAU program, which has four teams in four age groups.

Late one afternoon in April 2005, Bowden dropped in on practice and gathered the dozen 9-year-olds around him. He dropped 12 Adidas gym bags on the floor, each one stuffed with shoes, headbands, jerseys and socks.

During the months that followed, Jenifer said Bowden's gift felt more like a backhanded bribe. Bowden wanted Justin to play for the Baltimore Select 10s and 11s this season, each to be backed by an estimated budget of almost $20,000. When Jenifer, driven by loyalty, decided Justin would play 10s with Bentalou and 11s with Select, Bowden refused to talk with him for two months.

Justin enjoys the rewards of his courtship: He displays almost 20 pairs of shoes in his room, and he has come to expect free Adidas headbands. He's oblivious, though, to the obligations attached to those gifts. In March, Justin asked his dad, "Why can't I just play for every team?"

Kisha said, "I feel like they give you all of these nice things just trying to lure you to them. I told Howard, 'Don't take anything else from them. If you take too much, it's like they own you.' "

Said Todd Kays, a sports psychologist who counsels young athletes and their families for the Athletic Mind Institute in Dublin, Ohio: "Those sorts of gifts can create a lot of pressure. I used to think the pressure of sports hit in high school, but now it happens more in middle school. That's risky. It can make a young child a major candidate for low-grade anxiety and burnout."

More wooing likely

Bowden said he expects Justin to repay his loyalty by playing exclusively for Select next season. Coaches for D.C. Assault have suggested Justin would get more personal attention if he left Baltimore and played for a Washington-based team. And Carlton Carrington, coach of a Baltimore-based AAU program called Team Melo, said Nike sponsors his team and could help Justin pay for air travel. If that pitch fails to entice, Carrington said he will have Carmelo Anthony, who also funds the team, call Justin to woo him.

"I'll throw everything at them but the kitchen sink to bring them over to me," Carrington said.

Elite high-school teams also started to pursue Justin this season.

"It's kind of crazy to talk about a 10-year-old, but he's on everyone's radar," said Mount St. Joseph coach Pat Clatchey. "His ability to handle the ball, his vision on the floor ... those aren't just tremendous for someone that young; I'd take any player who can do that. I don't think there's a coach in the state who doesn't want Justin in his uniform."

College-recruiting Web sites will rank Justin for the first time next year — as a fifth-grader — and he could well be No. 1 nationally in his class. By middle school, the shoe companies probably will beg him to go to their summer camps. The first college-recruiting letter is likely to roll in shortly after that, Jenifer said.

Kisha said visions of that future sometimes wake her up in the middle of the night. "It's too much," she said. Already, she runs interference between Justin and the men who pursue him. Last year, Sam Cassell, a Los Angeles Clippers guard who is from Baltimore, watched Justin make a dozen consecutive jumpers and slipped a $100 bill in the youngster's pocket.

It seems as if the gifts blend together for Justin, who might lack a solid grasp of money's worth.

"All these people, it's a little like they're trying to buy him or something," Kisha said. "And I'm like: 'Wait a second. You really want to do this? My son is 10. He's not for sale.' "

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company