Anthony Davis' path to stardom began at a small school in Chicago that didn’t make stars. He calls it 'surreal' and says 'I never take it for granted.'
It’s not really a parking lot, this cracked blacktop underneath a row of cars. White lines denote a basketball court, and a sedan is parked on top of the blue painted area in front of the hoop.
Not quite, but there’s a gym in the back of this church that served as a practice space for Perspectives in Davis’ early days of attending middle school. Today, the place has blue painted walls and a hardwood floor. A collection of basketballs — one of them is a dusty purple and gold — sits behind the base of the stanchion under the hoop. There’s also a bright red ball about the same size — these days, Perspectives uses this gym for dodgeball.
A visit to the home where the Davis family lived reveals a yellow house with multiple stories. Ornate columns with peeling white paint hold up the front porch. The gutter is falling from the roof over the entry, and the backyard is overgrown with foliage. “I did find it weird at first,” Davis said years ago. “I mean, what school doesn’t have a gym? But we worked with what we had.”None of his teammates spent all four years of high school on the basketball team. During his sophomore year, the team began with 15 players and ended with six. Hale remembers trying to recruit other top players to Perspectives but says the school’s academic requirements prevented that.
Perspectives played on ESPNU against Chicago public school powerhouse Whitney Young, a team with starters headed for Ohio State and North Carolina State and a freshman named Jahlil Okafor coming off the bench. Okafor went on to become the third overall pick in the NBA draft in 2015.“Mentally, physically and fundamentally, as a team [we were] not prepared for the exposure we would get from him,” said Manuel Whitfield, who was a year younger than Davis and now works for the mayor of Chicago.
“The kids always knew him as Anthony, as Fatman,” says Jonathan Daniels, a college counselor at Perspectives. Davis was a fat baby, which led to the nickname. “They were a real close-knit group of young people. They treated each other like family.”
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