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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This story originally appeared in the April 13 issue of &lt;/em&gt;Sports Illustrated. &lt;em&gt;Subscribe to the magazine here.&lt;/em&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;March 14 was one of those almost-spring Missouri mornings that flirts with warm, and two lines, each 100 people long, snaked through the parking lot. It was an hour and a half before tip-off at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, and the queue wasn\u2019t moving yet. Each time the sun slinked behind a cloud, two teenage boys shivered, clutching their arms to their chests. But they wouldn\u2019t dare budge.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CHave you seen his girlfriend?\u201D one asks the other. \u201CDo you know what kind of car he drives?\u201D No detail of Jayson Tatum\u2019s life is too mundane to ponder. He is the reason they\u2014and everyone else\u2014are here. His Twitter account, @Im_that_dude22 has more than 15,000 followers. A highlight clip from his sophomore season has been viewed 40,000 times, and when he made his official visit to Duke in early March, the Cameron Crazies chanted his name. Jayson is the best high school basketball player in the class of 2016, and some analysts say he is the most talented player to come out of Missouri. (Other notable hoopsters to emerge from the Show Me State include Naismith Hall of Famers Ed Macauley and Bill Bradley, as well as current NBA players Tyler Hansbrough and David Lee.) Today his team\u2014Chaminade College Prep, an all-boys\u2019 school from suburban St. Louis\u2014is playing in a state quarterfinal game.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then Jayson arrives, unfolding his 6'\u20089\" (and still growing) frame as he steps off Chaminade\u2019s bus. At just 200 pounds, he\u2019s downright skinny, and though his legs are solid, his spindly arms are reminiscent of a young Kevin Durant. His play, too, draws comparisons to the Thunder forward\u2019s. On this afternoon, the show he puts on will be worth the chilly wait. Although his 18 points in three quarters don\u2019t come close to his season averages\u201426.1 points, 10.7 rebounds and 3.4 assists\u2014he shows the flashes of dominance that leave college coaches starry-eyed. A combo guard, Jayson is known\u2014and sometimes chided\u2014for his selflessness, and there are still moments in Chaminade\u2019s 70\u201347 victory when he has an open shot but defers. On several drives, though, he\u2019s unstoppable, pushing the ball up the court, shedding his defender and dropping in a perfect step-back jumper.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 &lt;strong&gt;MORE CBB: North Carolina is No. 1 in off-season Power Rankings&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A week later Jayson\u2019s high school off-season will begin two days too soon, when Chaminade loses in the state semifinals, but he has USA Basketball activities to attend, AAU ball to play\u2014and a college to pick. He has narrowed his list to 10\u2014Arizona, Connecticut, Duke, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Saint Louis and Wake Forest\u2014and he\u2019ll soon cut that number in half, with the goal of committing before November. Tar Heels coach Roy Williams has attended several of his games, and the Blue Devils\u2019 Mike Krzyzewski has called him a \u201Cspecial player.\u201D The biggest names in basketball want Jayson in their uniforms, and the pull to go to an elite program is strong. But to spend even a few minutes at one of Jayson\u2019s games is to realize: St. Louis is tugging back just as hard.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jayson\u2019s father, Justin, was a basketball star at Christian Brothers College High (CBC) in St. Louis. He played at Saint Louis University, as did his best friend from high school, Larry Hughes, who was selected eighth by the 76ers in the 1998 NBA draft. Jayson\u2019s mother, Brandy Cole, had just graduated from University City High when she learned she was pregnant, and she and Justin had already broken up. Passing up volleyball and academic scholarship offers at Tennessee, among other schools, Cole opted for an affordable education at the University of Missouri\u2013St. Louis, putting her savings toward day care and car insurance.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When Jayson was born on March 3, 1998, SLU was preparing to play in the NCAA tournament. Cole had sole responsibility for Jayson in his early years, which is why her little boy\u2019s first memories of basketball are not of watching his father\u2019s games, but of playing some aquatic pickup ball himself. \u201CWe had a suction cup basketball hoop on the wall [of the tub], and I would shoot for hours,\u201D Jayson says. \u201CI think I was pretty good at that.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bathtub hoops gave way to YMCA ball and eventually to pickup games with Hughes and Justin, who played in the Netherlands for about two years after leaving St. Louis. He returned to the U.S. in 2006 and coached his son in AAU until Jayson was 14. As Jayson grew, Justin made sure his son developed ballhandling and perimeter skills, and by the summer before Jayson entered high school, he was considered one of the country\u2019s top eighth-graders.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He was also at the perfect school; Chaminade has produced Bradley Beal, a longtime family friend who now plays with the Wizards, as well as Warriors forward David Lee. But in 2013, Justin got the coaching job at his alma mater. He had dreamed of coaching his boy at CBC, but transferring schools would have meant sitting out a year, and so father and son became rivals. (Jayson\u2019s team has won three out of the four games the two schools have played.) Still, Justin hopes to see Jayson play at his college alma mater.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Imo\u2019s pizza, a variety unique to St. Louis, has a cracker-thin crust, and its provel cheese clings to the roof of the mouth. It\u2019s polarizing. Outsiders find it revolting. It\u2019s like eating cardboard, they say. But if you\u2019re from St. Louis, you\u2019d sell your pinkie for a piece.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022&amp;nbsp;\u200B&lt;strong&gt;MORE CBB: Winners &amp; Losers from spring signing period&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jayson loves Imo\u2019s. When he returns home after a trip\u2014he\u2019s been to Uruguay and Dubai with USA Basketball teams\u2014it\u2019s the first thing he eats. When he\u2019s in town, it\u2019s on his plate three times a week. Asked about the benefits of staying in Missouri for college, Imo\u2019s\u2014and his dog, Lennox\u2014top Jayson\u2019s list. He just loves St. Louis as much as its pizza, and when he dreams of his first NBA paycheck, he imagines buying Cole a house\u2014albeit with a catch. He\u2019s lived in the same home in University City since he was two, and he doesn\u2019t want to go anywhere else. He\u2019ll knock the house down, he says, and cram something bigger onto the lot. Cole, now a lawyer, laughs. \u201CThat\u2019s not how property value works,\u201D she tells her son.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jayson has grown accustomed to certain things: the house, the pizza, his family at each of his games. Before Chaminade\u2019s quarterfinal win, his grandmother Kristie Jursch was one of the first in the building, staking out a section of bleachers for her party of 30. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents\u2014none would miss even one of Jayson\u2019s games, and most sport a red-and-black T-shirt that Cole has had made. Jayson has come to expect the crowd, his mother\u2019s hollering, his father\u2019s eyes following him on the court, dissecting every possession. That\u2019s basketball. That\u2019s home.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jayson has heard for years the tales of Justin\u2019s and Hughes\u2019s era at SLU, when record crowds filled the Scottrade Center in Billiken blue. Both Justin and Hughes were initially headed out of state, but when Hughes\u2019s brother\u2019s heart condition worsened, they committed to the Billikens and to Spoonball, as former SLU coach Charlie Spoonhour\u2019s style of play was termed.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Justin knows, though, that SLU no longer has that certain hoops cachet, and that his son\u2019s USA Basketball friends wouldn\u2019t understand the appeal of Saint Louis. But if Jayson were to sign with a Missouri school, Justin says, it would become a destination. \u201CBe a trendsetter,\u201D Justin says. \u201CYou don\u2019t have to go on this road because it was made for Shane Battier or Grant Hill. You can do what they did\u2014at home.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hughes, too, endorses SLU. Just as he does with his critiques of Jayson\u2019s game, he filters his opinions through Justin. Hughes, who runs a fitness club in Atlanta, remembers how many voices were in his ear when he was 17. He doesn\u2019t want to distract, but he makes his feelings known to Jayson. \u201CI always preach home,\u201D Hughes says.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But home has its drawbacks. Missouri and SLU went a combined 20\u201344 in 2014\u201315. Kim Anderson, formerly of D-II Central Missouri, is the Tigers\u2019 third coach in five years, and SLU, under Jim Crews, who took over for Rick Majerus in 2012, lost to Duquesne in the first round of the Atlantic 10 tournament. Plus, neither has been as committed to recruiting Jayson as Justin would like. When out-of-state coaches are in the stands and Anderson and Crews are missing, Jayson notices. Still, Justin and Cole tell their son to go where he\u2019s comfortable. Corey Tate, Jayson\u2019s AAU coach and a former SLU guard, has a feeling that the teenager will make an unconventional choice and shock the basketball world.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;****\r\n\r\nAfter Chaminade\u2019s quarterfinal win, Jayson is slow to leave the locker room and make his way up the bleachers. He has his baby half sister, Kayden, to bounce and his dad to greet. Jursch intercepts him for congratulations, and there are aunts and great-aunts, grandparents, cousins and friends to high-five. There are autographs to sign, too, which Jayson does willingly, and he smiles wide for photos with strangers. He handles the requests with grace, making it easy to forget that he\u2019s just a kid who gets to school at 6:30 a.m. to shoot hoops, who has a math tutor after the final bell rings, whose baby sister wants a hug.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Three years ago Jayson was an eighth-grader, and three years from now he\u2019ll most likely be in the NBA. When told this, his eyes pop. He remembers the advice Beal has given him: \u201C[It\u2019s] tempting to look too far ahead,\u201D Beal says. \u201CNone of us knows what our future holds. You have to enjoy the moment.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;At this moment, Cole is hollering the address of a barbecue joint near Chaminade\u2019s game, and Jayson\u2019s girlfriend, Toriah Lachell, is showing off a picture of her prom dress. Hoping the autographs are over, Jayson walks Toriah to her car at the back of the lot. The two duck between vehicles, and Jayson hugs Toriah against the trunk of her car. They stand still, normal teenagers for a few moments.\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/college-basketball/2015/04/21/recruiting-jayson-tatum-class-2016-missouri>