I Wanna Be Like Mike

Many years ago I lived in a tightly-knit condo community in Southwest Atlanta. There wasn’t much unique to the neighborhood; just lots of hard-working adults and their fun-having children. My next-door neighbor did hair in her basement. One of her clients was Jamal Lewis’ mother. That meant whenever she needed a trim, we had another player for baseball or football. But even back then, we knew Jamal, now the Baltimore Ravens starting running back, was something special. (Of course, my eighth grade vocabulary limited the articulation of what I was actually seeing.) He cut differently. He ran differently. He even breathed differently. No matter the age, when cats are special, you just know it.

I shared that life snippet with you because the same feeling came over me recently while scouting at the Adidas Superstar Camp last week. If you’re up on your high school hoops, you know that the big shoe companies (Adidas, Nike, Reebok) all have their summer showcases right after the July 4^th holiday. Many of the country’s brightest prospects (Eric Gordon, Lance Stephenson, Nolan Smith) were in attendance for this one, but it was clearly Michael Beasley’s show. An absolute man among cross-dribbling boys, the 6-9, 235-pound Beasley at times looked like Charles Barkley and others like Carmelo Anthony, but all the while, exactly like an NBA lottery pick.

Beaz was really good last year. But something happened over the ’05 season. Sure, he averaged his usual 20 points and two eye-popping dunks for famed Oak Hill Academy, but the Maryland native’s swagger had gone up 10 fold. He talked trash to opposing forwards and he backed it up with suffocating defense, smooth feet and better range than T-Mobile. Fans flocked to his games over the week, hoping for a glimpse of wonderment. They got it in abundance. So did Bob Huggins, the Kansas State head basketball coach who won the Michael Beasley recruitment sweepstakes for the 2007 season.

Note that I said the 2007 season. That’s it. Having spent many afternoons haplessly chasing after Jamal Lewis, I know what professional talent looks like. Believe me, Beasley’s got it and he’ll show it in the NBA much sooner than later. Everything you might have heard (or undoubtedly will hear) about this confident 17-year-old is inaccurate. He’s even better than that.