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Subject: "Magic, Michael, LeBron ... Emoni Bates?" Previous topic | Next topic
ThaTruth
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Fri Nov-15-19 10:05 AM

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"Magic, Michael, LeBron ... Emoni Bates?"


          

https://www.si.com/high-school/2019/10/29/emoni-bates-nba-draft-prospect-kevin-durant

Magic, Michael, LeBron ... Emoni Bates? Meet the 15-Year-Old Next in Line

He’s a typical high school sophomore and a once-in-a-generation talent. He’s the pride of Ypsilanti, Mich., and the future of the NBA. Not even old enough to drive and likely to be a straight-to-the-NBA No. 1 pick, Emoni Bates is both a product of his era and way ahead of his time.

MICHAEL ROSENBERG UPDATED:OCT 29, 2019

He should not be on the cover of Sports Illustrated. You should not be reading about him. He is slipping out of his bi-level house in a Ypsilanti, Mich., subdivision in the morning darkness, wearing a hoodie and holding a fork and a plate of waffles and eggs, just a teenager who snagged a few extra minutes of sleep. He climbs into the passenger seat of his father’s Ford Expedition, because he isn’t old enough to drive himself to school yet. It’s another mundane day in the life of a sophomore high school basketball player, except this one has a goal: “To try to be the best player—ever.”

Magic, Michael, LeBron . . . Emoni? Well, kids are supposed to dream. Don’t hold it against him. But one assistant at a college superpower, when asked about Emoni Bates, says simply, “He is the best player I’ve ever seen. You have to see it to believe it.” A college head coach laughs and agrees.

emoni-bates-cover
In basketball, every great player evokes memories of another. Emoni is 6' 9" with long arms, minimalist biceps and a shooting stroke that’s purer than a country sunset, so people inevitably compare him to Kevin Durant. This sounds crazy. It is not crazy. An NBA scouting director calls the Durant analogy “obvious . . . the shooting is remarkable. He has a chance to be really special.” One coach who recruited KD calls Emoni “the same level shooter” but “a much better ballhandler” than Durant at that age.


Fifteen years old. This isn’t fair. Let him be a kid. But he can’t be. Emoni noticed last year that no matter where he went in Ypsilanti, heads turned. By the end of his freshman season at Lincoln High, the school gym was overflowing for games, and that was before he hit two buzzer beaters in postseason games and led the team to the Division I state championship. Hundreds of fans were sitting on the floor. The hottest ticket in town had caused a fire hazard. This year, Lincoln will play at least five games in the 8,800-seat arena at nearby Eastern Michigan.

It is all too much, too soon but . . . what if it isn’t? What if he is the rare teenager who knows what he wants, and knows he can handle it? Emoni Bates has a chance to be a generational player for reasons beyond his skill or athleticism. Several people in the sport use two words when describing him: Kobe mentality.

Emoni has always had that. When he was five, he participated in layup lines at a pro-am game; after tipoff, little Emoni was pissed he wasn’t allowed to play. By the time he entered middle school he had a collegian’s work ethic. He takes incidental bumps as intentional, and if they are intentional, Emoni goes full E-mamba. Last year a kid forgot to box him out on a free throw. Big mistake. Emoni dunked his own miss. The kid shoved him to the ground in frustration. Bates popped up, eyes raging and fist cocked. He didn’t throw a punch, but he sure wasn’t going to just walk away.

He is quiet around strangers, goofy with friends—and an assassin with a ball in his hands. At one recent workout, his first after taking two weeks off on his father E.J.’s orders, he made more threes than he missed, but he was still disappointed. He cursed himself repeatedly. He kicked a ball into the stands. E.J. tried to calm him down, but Emoni yelled with disgust, “I shouldn’t be f------ missing!” But the outbursts did not derail him; they helped him refocus. He finished by making at least 30 straight high school threes. Then he sat down next to a visitor and said he was sorry he didn’t have a better day.


Put him on any Division I college team and he could start. And yet he has only five scholarship offers. Most big schools aren’t recruiting him because they assume that by 2022, the NBA collective bargaining agreement will allow high schoolers to enter the league, and Emoni will leave Lincoln to be the No. 1 pick.

One NBA front-office rep says that on Emoni’s best day he could hold his own at an NBA practice right now: “It’s nuts.” The Durant comparison is “very realistic.” But there are days when he looks 15 . . . which, of course he is.

Emoni puts his plate on the floor of the Expedition’s backseat, gets out of the car and walks to class.

First Hour: Algebra
Math has always been Emoni’s favorite class. He likes it because the subject has always come naturally to him, and he has had great teachers who made it fun. Anyway, this can’t be bad. Sports are a numbers-driven enterprise.

A year ago, before he had played a high school game, Emoni sat on his couch and asked his father for LeBron James’s stats as a freshman. E.J. looked them up: 18.0 points, 6.2 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game at St. Vincent–St. Mary in Akron, Ohio. Emoni vowed to do better. Then he averaged 28.6 points, 10.1 rebounds and 1.9 assists.

Those numbers don’t mean he is better than LeBron. But the story tells you something about the kid. He has studied the King James bible but does not take it as gospel. He has talked to James. He has connected with Durant on Instagram. He says getting to know the biggest basketball stars in the world feels “normal.”


E.J., who grew up in nearby Milan, played at Kentucky Wesleyan and runs the Bates Fundamentals AAU program, has seen and coached enough players to know how good his kid is. He agreed to this cover shoot because he figures the attention is coming, so Emoni might as well deal with it. Edith Bates, a UPS logistics supervisor, has a mother’s worry about her younger son. “I don’t want this to be a thing where the exposure is bad for him.” Emoni says he wanted to do the shoot for a different reason. James famously appeared on SI’s cover as a high school junior. Emoni is a sophomore. He got here faster.

Second Hour: Spanish
Basketball was invented in the U.S., and most of the best players in history were born here, but the modern game was shaped by two weeks in Spain.

Surely you remember the 1992 U.S. Olympic Dream Team sweeping through Barcelona. Surely you do not remember the host country’s team. The Spaniards did not make the medal round. They lost 122–81 to the Americans. They also lost to Angola. But when the U.S. team sprinkled its genius on those Olympics, the rest of the world watched, learned and vowed to catch up. Nobody soaked up the lessons faster than Spain, which is now the reigning world champion.

What does this teach us about Emoni Bates? Take notes, kids: There was a widely held belief in 1992 that if Europeans wanted to make the NBA, they would have to adjust to a more physical game. What happened was the opposite: Americans adopted the European style. Traditional back-to-the basket centers are an endangered species. Even the tallest players are supposed to have three-point range.


Emoni Bates is unlike previous stars because he grew up in this era. For a hundred years, tall players learned the game from the inside out: post moves first, followed by mid-range shots, then attempts from farther if they could handle it. Bates learned from the outside in.

When he was in second grade he was a head taller than his classmates, but he was already draining threes. He was crossing opponents over at eight. Coaches talk about positionless basketball; Bates has never had a position. He dribbles, he passes, he scores from anywhere on the floor. He always has.

Third Hour: Chemistry
This is a delicate science, growing a superstar. Mix in too much of the wrong ingredient—fame, pressure, drugs, hangers-on, burnout, ego—and an explosion could result. Yes, LeBron was hailed as a once-in-a generation prospect. So was Greg Oden. So was Lloyd Daniels.

“He can figure out the basketball part,” E.J. says. “That’s easy. That’s not the part I worry about.”

This is why E.J. keeps his hands on every beaker and set of tongs. The Bateses chose Lincoln High largely because E.J. has known coach Jesse Davis since they were teammates at Grand Rapids Community College almost 30 years ago. Darryl Hudson, Emoni’s skill-development coach, has tutored him for 10 years. Ryan Sidney, who has also worked with Emoni, babysat him when he was one. They aced the auditions before they even knew they were trying out. Anybody who shows up now has to earn E.J.’s trust.


Emoni has rebuffed more invitations from USA Basketball than he has accepted. He will not fly across the country to feast on inferior competition for a dash of prestige. He would rather stay home and improve his game or rest. E.J. says his biggest fear with Emoni is “overkill.”

Emoni’s dominance brings challenges. How do you teach a kid to make the right basketball play when the best option for his team is always that he shoot? E.J. is trying to limit Emoni’s time in the post, because he does not want him to be too efficient. He does not want him to get bored.

Davis says Emoni “probably would have been the best scorer on our team when he was in the seventh grade.” But in basketball, the fast lane gets crowded. In seventh grade Emoni signed his first autograph, for a little kid, and got his first D-I offer, from DePaul. He was already so good that he was not surprised by either. But too much exposure can mess with the chemistry experiment. “It’s like having a performance review at work every single day,” Edith says. “Who signs up for that?”

The easy solution is to let him be a typical kid, but people take advantage of typical kids. E.J. is extremely conscious of being a father, a coach and the CEO of startup that should be worth nine figures someday. Emoni is not just a product of this era of basketball. He is a product of this era of the business of basketball. He identifies at least as much with his dad’s AAU program as his high school team; he is in his Nike-sponsored Bates Fundamentals jersey on the cover because that is what he wanted to wear. He has played more ball for Bates than for Lincoln. The NBA franchise that lands Emoni should be forewarned: It will have to earn the Bates’s trust, too.


“You want to make sure you’re the landlord, not the tenant,” E.J. says. “Sometimes just go with the flow, not really setting themselves up for generational wealth. If he is in that position, I want to make sure he is in control with everything he does.”


Fourth Hour: Literature
These superstar stories are all novels, aren’t they? Kid gets left off the varsity at Laney High in Wilmington, N.C., uses it as fuel, becomes the most famous athlete in the world. Man-child from Philly towers over every-body, gets tabbed the Stilt and the Big Dipper, and scores 100 points in a single NBA game, but is remembered largely for the times he lost. Boy grows up in Akron, Ohio, never knows his dad, gets drafted by his hometown team, leaves it, then returns to end the city’s championship drought.

The Emoni Bates story may read like a novel someday. Right now, it feels like a comic book. He is Spider-Man: Something bit him at a young age, stretched his limbs and turned him into an angry, supernatural hoops phenomenon.

There were early signs he was not like the rest of us. When he was four, Edith worried she would lose him in the wave pool at Rolling Hills County Park, but Emoni instinctively understood how to get his head back above water while avoiding the inner tubes. He had never taken swimming lessons. The first time he put on ice skates, at a birthday party when he was nine, he just stepped on the ice and took off. He never lost his balance.


Sit down with him, and he is a sweet kid, talking so fast and softly you might miss a word or two. After one AAU game last year he fell asleep in his mother’s lap. Try to guard him, though, and he transforms. He is Emoni Bates off the court and Norman Bates on it.

At 185 pounds he is impossibly skinny but craves contact. He will match you elbow for elbow, dagger for dagger. He says Jordan is the best player ever, not just because of rings or points but because the NBA was nasty back then: two-armed fouls, clotheslines, the occasional brawl. The two guys he would love to meet are Bryant and Allen Iverson. They were not the two best players, but they were the ones who thirsted for blood, and this is how Emoni plays.

E.J.: “It’s an alter ego. There is no name for it.”

Emoni, smiling: “Somebody will come up with one and I’m going to like it.”

Fifth Hour: Lunch
Emoni knows he should gain weight; how many people wear size 14 shoes and have a 32-inch waist? He says, “I like to eat. I just don’t eat as much as I should.” His favorite meal is baked chicken with rice and cream-of-mushroom gravy. He loves chicken fingers, hamburgers and fries, cookies. It doesn’t matter. He burns so many calories that he can’t possibly consume enough to make up for it.

Eventually Emoni’s metabolism will slow, strength training will take hold and protein shakes will become a staple. For now, he eats like a typical teenager. Lunch? Turkey with mayo. String cheese. Chili Cheese Fritos. His dad packed it.


Sixth Hour: History
“I don’t like history,” he says. “It’s boring. It’s long, too.”

O.K. But just a drop, please: Shaquille O’Neal played three years of college ball. Tim Duncan played four. James didn’t play any. These days, the best players are, of course, collegiate one-and-dones. And Bates is widely expected to be the poster man-child of the next era.

There are good reasons for this. Everything Bates does is projectable. There just aren’t that many 6' 9" players in the world who can shoot as well as he does. Most of the ones who can don’t have his athleticism.

This is why most college coaches have not bothered to call. Duke, the era’s dominant recruiting power, has barely shown interest. Emoni understands the reasoning, but he is still miffed. He says, “I never said nothing about me going to college for a year or going straight to the NBA.”

Maybe the coaches are right. But here is some more history: When Emoni was in eighth grade, he skipped the Clague Middle School basketball season. He was too good for it. His mom says, “It wasn’t even fair. He was dunking on everyone. It wasn’t challenging enough for him.”

Bates could play three more years at Lincoln, play all his senior-year games at EMU and then go pro. He could sign with Nike in a year, end his high school playing career and wait for the 2022 draft. And there is a real chance that he reclassifies, finishes high school in three years, plays one year of college ball and then becomes the No. 1 pick in the draft.


Seventh Hour: Art
Basketball at the highest level is not just a game. It is a form of self-expression. Personalities are revealed through creative passes, ferocious drives or fear of the big shot. Michael Jordan wanted to rule the world. LeBron James wants his buddies involved, but he wants to be in control. Tim Duncan played like Tim Duncan.

Thanks to modern technology, Emoni Bates can easily study basketball art history. He admires elements from each of the greats. Kobe? “Relentless.” Durant? “Scoring machine.” Steph Curry? “Using screens.” For all the Durant comparisons, Bates often resembles a 6' 9" Curry: exceptional deep range, superquick dribble.

Every Emoni game features a few distinctive brushstrokes to make hoops aficionados swoon. When he dribbles at the top of the key, the ball rarely goes above his knees. His crossover is obscene. During one Lincoln game last year, he missed a three-pointer, grabbed the rebound and threw it down. Another time, he bobbled an alley-oop, hung on the rim with his right hand, caught the ball with his left, and lobbed it in for a swish. It was preposterous. It was also obvious goaltending. The great ones draw outside the lines.

He is learning a skyhook, which slow centers don’t even use anymore; when he lifts his right knee, reaches up and drops the ball in the bucket, he looks as if he has watched Kareem Abdul-Jabbar his whole life. See Bates enough, and you may laugh at the absurdity of his skills. While he waited for an SI photographer to set up this cover shoot, he hit 22 straight three-pointers from the top of the key. During another workout, he made 255 out of 365 threes, or 69.9%. Catch-and-shoot, off the dribble, NBA range: It doesn’t matter. If his three-point percentage in a workout drops below 50%, he is probably shooting lefthanded. Seriously. He expects to launch lefty threes in a game soon. E.J. says, “Why not let them think you’re ambidextrous?”


Emoni’s two favorite parts of basketball are scoring and scoring a lot. He did a 360-degree dunk recently, and he is working on a windmill, but most of his jams are angry. He lives to bury threes in defenders’ faces. He says he does not love playing defense, but he is so long, athletic and competitive that he will probably become great at it. His goal this year is to be a better teammate. Enjoy the show, Ypsilanti. It won’t be yours for long.

  

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Magic, Michael, LeBron ... Emoni Bates? [View all] , ThaTruth, Fri Nov-15-19 10:05 AM
 
Subject Author Message Date ID
folks have been talking about him for years
Nov 18th 2019
1
yep. dude hit so many GW shots last year in big time moments.
Nov 18th 2019
4
      State Championship game was incredible.
Nov 18th 2019
6
First HS player I've been excited about in years
Nov 18th 2019
2
seen clips on IG which obviously doesn't capture the whole story...
Nov 18th 2019
3
only other thing to know is the clips all came from Ws
Nov 23rd 2019
8
      and it's not like he went to one of the traditional powerhouse squads
Nov 23rd 2019
9
Reminds me of Thon Maker, but BETTA!!!
Nov 18th 2019
5
he should take the Slim Reaper nickname
Nov 18th 2019
7
LOL...
Feb 19th 2020
10
Chelsea HS is not exactly a traditional power lol
Feb 24th 2020
11
Commits tooooooooo....Michigan State?
Jun 29th 2020
12
maaaan, on the other hand...
Jun 29th 2020
13
      lol Izzo turns those guys into senior journeymen
Jun 29th 2020
16
Izzo got eem
Jun 29th 2020
14
like brooklyn said, if he ever goes.
Jun 29th 2020
15
So I actually watched a full game of his last night and a few others
Nov 13th 2020
17
supercut of the whole Emoni/Chet game
Nov 13th 2020
18
RE: So I actually watched a full game of his last night and a few others
Nov 13th 2020
19
RE: So I actually watched a full game of his last night and a few others
Nov 13th 2020
20
You fuckin crazy. Wrong guy.
Nov 13th 2020
21
age-wise Mikey should be a junior
Nov 13th 2020
23
Totally agreed. Chet dominated.
Nov 13th 2020
22
i'll keep my fingers crossed he decides to go pro for a year
Nov 13th 2020
24
      Paolo's a special kid. He *loves* Duke.
Nov 13th 2020
25
Not in on Bates. I see Rashard Lewis/Middleton. And that's good.
Nov 14th 2020
26
I almost brought up Danny Granger.
Nov 14th 2020
27
      lol...it felt like KD at Texas got every rebound...every single one
Nov 14th 2020
28
That H.S game/Matchup alone told the entire story of E. Bates
Mar 12th 2022
49
734!!!!
Nov 14th 2020
29
He'll be decent to good. He won't be THAT guy though imo.
Nov 14th 2020
30
Not so fast, my friend!! (c)
Apr 30th 2021
31
Everyone saw this coming except MSU fans.
May 01st 2021
34
      and the 1-2 to the gut with Boakye bailing. hilarious lmao
May 01st 2021
36
           : )
Aug 26th 2021
48
I hope he goes overseas and then the league .
Apr 30th 2021
32
he isnt even draft eligible until 2023
May 01st 2021
33
      Wouldn't be surprised if he joins that Overtime league.
May 01st 2021
35
      If he ends up in Ann Arbor I’m waving the white flag
May 01st 2021
37
Should I be excited?
Aug 25th 2021
38
As a Memphis fan? Yes, you should be.
Aug 25th 2021
39
I'm still hoping LB is the difference from a coaching aspect
Aug 25th 2021
40
      Bates will just go streaks of inefficiency.
Aug 25th 2021
43
           RE: Bates will just go streaks of inefficiency.
Aug 26th 2021
           RE: Bates will just go streaks of inefficiency.
Aug 26th 2021
47
           Well, I was right in that the entire season was one long streak!
Apr 16th 2022
53
                Glad I didn't hitch my fandom on him like others in the city
Jun 30th 2022
67
i am so jealous. this makes me angry towards my alma maters coach
Aug 25th 2021
41
He’s been working out with Melo, looking to see if his game has grown....
Aug 25th 2021
42
      Unsurprising that he's working with Melo.
Aug 25th 2021
44
           Lol.. Hey, it works.
Aug 25th 2021
45
           RE: Unsurprising that he's working with Melo.
Aug 26th 2021
46
Entering the transfer portal…
Apr 16th 2022
50
I wonder where he will end up
Apr 16th 2022
51
He needs to go the Brandon Jennings route
Apr 16th 2022
52
He was exceptionally poor last year.
Apr 16th 2022
54
damn...
Apr 16th 2022
55
his parents ruined him. he never got a chance to develop
Apr 16th 2022
57
Felipe Lopez, Darko Milicic, Korleone Young... Emoni Bates?
Apr 16th 2022
56
      Emoni *wishes* he was Felipe in college.
Apr 16th 2022
58
           dominican MJ
Apr 16th 2022
59
Eastern Michigan, now...damn
Jun 29th 2022
60
To me as an Ypsilanti native, this is great for EMU. Could potentially
Jun 29th 2022
61
      Yeah, this is a big win for EMU and for tangentially for the MAC... n/m
Jun 29th 2022
62
      He wasn't getting any serious high-major looks. Which is wild.
Jun 29th 2022
63
     
Jun 30th 2022
64
      This isn’t a win/win. It’s a lose/lose and his
Jul 28th 2022
72
           There’s is zero chance of a lose/lose, because what does EMU have
Jul 28th 2022
74
           lmao seriously
Jul 28th 2022
77
           It's definitely no-lose for EMU.
Jul 29th 2022
78
           every post you make is a lose/lose.
Feb 01st 2023
           .
Feb 01st 2023
87
he had "overblown hype that will never deliver" on him since day 1...
Jun 30th 2022
65
thats simply not accurate
Jun 30th 2022
66
It's also just really hard projecting a freshman as a pro.
Jun 30th 2022
68
i mean, that's your opinion, and my opinion is mine.
Jun 30th 2022
69
      But your opinion is NOT based on fact,
Jul 28th 2022
70
      is this the part where we pretend all opinions are equally informed?
Jul 28th 2022
75
No school wanted this kid because of his father’s influence
Jul 28th 2022
71
The Moral of the story is....everyone can't be LaVar Ball
Jul 28th 2022
73
My kids are doing a basketball camp at Lincoln HS this week.
Jul 28th 2022
76
... and now he's been arrested on gun charges.
Sep 19th 2022
79
Report I heard was that it was a borrowed car
Sep 20th 2022
80
Since he was also charged with "altering ID marks" on a gun...
Sep 20th 2022
81
      Fingerprints or DNA evidence could do it
Sep 20th 2022
83
           How would fingerprints disprove possession?
Sep 21st 2022
84
I hate to see these kids fuck up a bag
Sep 20th 2022
82
1.24.23. Career high in points. 43 on the night.
Jan 25th 2023
85
I just don’t get how he’s been so wildly inconsistent while
Jan 25th 2023
86
2 round to Cleveland, will he get tick?
Jun 23rd 2023
88
In the G-League, sure, probably.
Jun 23rd 2023
89
I think to make sure his head is right, sign him to a two way deal
Jun 23rd 2023
90
      He will not destroy folks in the summer league.
Jun 25th 2023
91

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