Thanks to Family and a Few Famous Friends, Duke's Jayson Tatum Ready for Stardom

They happened roughly two hours and 1,200 miles apart on the opening Saturday of the NCAA tournament. In Providence, Rhode Island, Duke outlasted Yale 71-64 to advance to the Sweet 16. And in Columbia, Missouri, St. Louis' Chaminade College Prep held off Springfield's Kickapoo High 72-59 for a state championship.

America cared deeply about one of those results, if not the other.

Yet shortly after the Blue Devils' dynamic duo of sophomore Grayson Allen and NBA draft-bound freshman Brandon Ingram went off for a combined 54 points in their victory, the Red Devils' Duke-bound senior sensation, Jayson Tatum, exploded in his, scoring 40 points—27 in the first half—and grabbing 14 rebounds.

Soon enough, America will care about Tatum, perhaps the finest player in the 2016 class—a 6'9", 205-pound scoring machine with power forward size and lead guard skills.

After starring in the early-spring All-Star circuit—McDonald's All-American Game in Chicago, Nike Hoop Summit in Portland, Oregon, Jordan Brand Classic in Brooklyn, New York—Tatum was officially ready to swap red for blue (Devil, that is) and arrive on campus in Durham, North Carolina, in late May as polished and ready for the big time as any 18-year-old could be.

Tatum is a three-time gold medalist with USA Basketball and a three-time Missouri Gatorade Player of the Year. He has played up in age so often in his basketball life, his ascension to the college game seems overdue.

He has a "who's who" of mentors and one most important friendship. He has played on the biggest stages available and under such unique pressure that there can't be much he'll face at Duke that he won't be equipped to handle.

Jayson Tatum is ready. And he is coming.

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Tatum was 800 miles from home, yet all he saw last February, as he gazed upon his future in his first visit to Duke, were signs of home, of connatural attachment, of family. He saw himself in all that. He felt it. He was moved by it. He knew it.

"This is unreal," he told his father that day. "This is where I belong."

Tatum saw the student tents in Krzyzewskiville before a game against Syracuse. He sensed the secure warmth of the campus.

He was awash in the bond he already felt with Duke assistant coaches Jeff Capel and Jon Scheyer, with the reverence he felt for head coach Mike Krzyzewski, and he knew he could get fellow all-everything recruit Harry Giles to join him from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. At the end of the day, they couldn't not play together. They were like brothers.

Giles would soon join Tatum in pledging his allegiance to the Blue Devils, giving Duke the Nos. 1 and 2 high school players in America. Most call the 6'10", 230-pound Giles No. 1 and Tatum No. 2, but what does the order matter? Each is a spectacular talent. Each is firmly on the one-and-done track to the NBA.

Along with incoming guard Frank Jackson and a good group of returning players led by Allen, they'll almost surely have Duke ranked No. 1 heading into the 2016-17 season.

Elbow-to-elbow with Giles, many expect Tatum to deliver instant magic.

"Winning a national championship at Duke is at the top of the list for me," Tatum said. "Duke is everybody's biggest game, right? You always get everybody's best shot; the other team always plays above their ability. I want to be challenged every day like that. I want to have that target on our backs and be hungry every game we play. I want to win them all."

At the center of it all will be Tatum and Giles' friendship, which blossomed over the years on the national AAU circuit and on USA Basketball assignments. Last summer in Greece, the pair roomed together for a month and won gold medals with Team USA's under-19 squad at the World Championships.

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Both were 17. Their performances rose and fell individually, but their bond strengthened throughout. They came to not only understand their differences on the court—Giles stronger and more athletic, Tatum more skilled—but also to appreciate them as complementary parts.

They realized then they weren't in competition to be Nos. 1 and 2 in their class, but they could become, if they went to college together, even greater than the sums of their parts.

"We play good together," Giles said, "and at the same time, we happen to be good friends. I mean, every time we see each other, it's like we haven't seen each other in 20 years. We're just vibing. It was like, 'Why not both go to Duke?' It just made too much sense."

They've texted or talked on a daily basis since last summer, and only here and there have they had conversations about basketball. They are about good days, bad ones, school, girls and all the other things that only a pair of friends as in-demand and fast-tracked for superstardom as Tatum and Giles could understand.

The need to constantly mind where they go, what they do, with whom they associate. The ever-growing fame. The ever-intensifying pressure. Giles' high-profile rehab from an ACL injury that cost him his senior season in Winston-Salem. Tatum's rock-star quest for a title in St. Louis.

"We've basically been through the same paths growing up," Tatum said, "from being ordinary kids to, now, everybody wants to know us, meet us, take pictures. Not many kids on my team or around the St. Louis area know the things we have to deal with on a daily basis, the little things we have to watch. There's so much to worry about. So we just lean on each other, I guess."

After Giles hurt his knee in early November, he called Tatum and told him, "You're playing for both of us now. You've got to win everything."

Tatum delivered on that order. Elbow-to-elbow with Giles, Jackson, Allen, Luke Kennard and the rest of his Blue Devils teammates, many will expect him to deliver next March on everything again.

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It's a struggle to think of anything Tatum doesn't do well on the court. He's a brilliant ball-handler for his size, a blow-by driver and an unselfish distributor. He rebounds in volume. He lives at the foul line and shoots freebies as well as any point guard. He defends. He encourages teammates.

Tatum is smart, efficient and always, it seems, a step ahead of the competition. All week at the Nike Hoop Summit—first in USA Basketball practices and then in Team USA's 101-67 blowout of the World squad—Tatum thrived by beating other bigs down the court and feasting at the foul line. USA Today's Jim Halley described his Jordan Brand Classic performance in April as "[scoring] 18 without seeming to break a sweat."

And there is an utter absence of "too cool to care" in Tatum.

But what seems just as relevant—and what makes him a perfect fit for Krzyzewski's family-oriented program—is that Tatum is a nice kid.

When he was a little boy—dating back as far as when Tatum learned to write—he left Post-It notes on the bathroom mirror for Brandy Cole, telling his mom he loved her, wishing her a good day. He has yet to fail to detect a new hairstyle or perfume. Cole, a single mother, still recalls the night when she was stressing over a pile of overdue bills and her only child walked into the room with his piggy bank.

"I have money," he announced.

Photo courtesy of Brandy Cole

She remembers the amount to the dollar. She remembers the countless times Jayson would bring school friends of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds into their modest home and beg to have sleepovers. She would step over sleeping little bodies in their living room in the morning and wonder, "Why do they want to come to my house?"

But Jayson has always told her—even after he became the most famous person in the neighborhood, even with NBA riches within his grasp—how much he loves their home. His bedroom is overrun with sneakers and other basketball apparel, but he sleeps there blissfully with the family's seven-year-old Boxer, Lennox, in his bed. He also shares his dinners with the dog. Mom just shakes her head.

"I can't wait to get out of this house," said Cole, who plans to move to North Carolina over the summer and perhaps settle in Winston-Salem to be near Giles' mother, Melissa. "But I'll be sad to leave, too, because Jayson has been the most wonderful son here that I could ever ask for. He's high maintenance with his haircuts, [but] that's the whole list. With everything else, he's easygoing, laid back, sweet, easy. He has been the easiest child from day one."

Tatum has also been on a path to basketball greatness from an early age.

Justin Tatum can no longer beat his son one-on-one, so he has refined the rules to make their battles at least sort of fair. They play on only one side of a half court. Jayson is allowed only three dribbles. The games, which used to be played to 21 points, now are played to three. Justin is 6'7", still in his 30s, strong—yet he loses four of five of these games, easy.

"His shot is so pure, and he gets it off so fast," Justin said. "I just have to find a way to get my shot off."

Photo courtesy of Brandy Cole

Justin was a standout power forward at Saint Louis University and a professional player in Europe. He played alongside former high school teammate and best friend Larry Hughes, who, according to many, was the top player the St. Louis area has produced.

Jayson was in third grade when Justin decided to come home from Amsterdam—to give up his own dream—and coach his son. The AAU train got rolling from there, with Justin coaching and Jayson routinely playing kids two or three years older.

By the time Jayson was in fifth grade, doctors projected his growth to anywhere from 6'8" to 7'0". By seventh grade, he was being touted as a rising star. As an eighth-grader, Jayson blew up at John Lucas' camp in Texas and garnered an invitation to play on USA Basketball's U15 squad. He was the youngest player on the team.

Meanwhile, Justin had taken a coaching job at Soldan High School and led the St. Louis program to a 2012 state championship. Jayson, still an eighth-grader, practiced with that team regularly and got his rear end handed to him. But little bits of progress turned into full-fledged, ahead-of-his-time skills.

"I could tell he was going to be special," Justin said, "but I didn't know he was going to be this damn special. It's like one in a million."

Jayson's parents agreed he wouldn't attend Soldan; he would remain a private-schooler at Chaminade, where he'd started, a prodigy on scholarship, in seventh grade. Even when, after Jayson's freshman season at Chaminade, Justin landed the head coaching job at his own private alma mater—Christian Brothers College, where he and Hughes had won a state title in 1997—the family determined Jayson would stay put.

Tatum had too much of a good thing going at Chaminade, a strong basketball school where Dallas Mavericks forward David Lee had thrived and where Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal had hung a state banner. Beal, five years older, was a junior when Tatum arrived and almost instantly became a big brother figure and mentor. Tatum went on to break Beal's school scoring record in his next-to-last game.

Jeff Roberson/Associated Press

"If anybody is deserving of it, it's him," Beal said. "He works tremendously hard, and it's amazing to see how well he's grown and how much he's grown. And before you know it, he'll be in the NBA.

"Something I always told him ever since he was in middle school and I was in high school: 'Make sure that you're better than me one day.' He always told me, 'I want to be just like you.' I said, 'No, make sure that you're better than me.'"

Tatum is quick to point out that he isn't there yet. He continues to learn that firsthand in pickup games with Beal and with Hughes, now 37, who played for eight teams over a 13-year NBA career. Before Tatum can wrest Hughes of the title of the best player ever from St. Louis, he'll have to consistently beat the 6'5" local legend one-on-one—and not to three points, either.

Hughes has been a mentor, an uncle and a soundboard throughout Tatum's journey. When Hughes played for the Cleveland Cavaliers and worked out with LeBron James, he brought Tatum along. Tatum has no bigger fan.

"His basketball IQ is incredibly high, like LeBron's," Hughes said. "His size reminds me of Kevin Durant. His offensive game reminds me of Carmelo Anthony's. Jayson has that jab step; he plays so well with the live dribble. If you can put all those guys together and mix it up, you have a superstar."

Suffice it to say he has been well-schooled. And he's ready for what comes next.

Ironically, Justin Tatum's CBC program is Chaminade's No. 1 rival. They are district combatants—playing two games a year and often, in this rivalry, a head-to-head playoff matchup to advance to state.

Photo courtesy of Justin Tatum

Justin Tatum won his second state championship as a coach in 2013-14, his first season at CBC. Along with his title as a player, that gave him three.

"My son is respectful and loving, a dream, a wonderful kid and player and friend and teammate and all that," Justin said in early February. "But he hasn't hung a banner up. That's the one thing I have over him."

Not anymore. But before Jayson finally hung a banner of his own, he had to square off against Dad seven times. CBC won the first meeting, when Jayson was a sophomore. After that came six straight Chaminade victories, with Jayson averaging 33.3 points and converting 72 of an eye-opening 87 free-throw attempts.

The matchups were pressure-packed, highly awkward and unpleasant for both. How could they not be?

They were so hyped locally, regular-season games were held before overflow crowds in Lindenwood University's 3,270-person gym. The crowds were raucous; at one game this season, with Beal in attendance during the NBA's All-Star break, a CBC fan in his 50s was kicked out for shining a laser pointer at a Chaminade player who was shooting free throws. Justin was tossed from the same game as his son—who hit two technical free throws as Dad left the floor—was on the way to a 38-point night.

"I hate playing against my dad," Jayson said afterward. "But if I have to play against him, I want to beat him."

Chaminade beat CBC again in the quarterfinals, with Tatum scoring 45 and dropping in 14 of 16 from the foul line.

Six days later, he was celebrating a state championship. As the clock wound down, Brandy and Justin were there, screaming in delight. Jayson gripped the ball, doubled over and instantly began to cry. Then he flung the ball into the air and began jumping with teammates, hugging and shouting and rejoicing. He wiped tears with his jersey.

It was an ending and a beginning. The deed was done. If the red didn't immediately begin to fade, the blue was there, in the air, everywhere. The future awaited.

Steve Greenberg has covered college sports for nearly 20 years, namely for the Sporting News and the Chicago Sun-Times. Follow him on Twitter @SLGreenberg.