Brixton Topcats is the most famous basketball club in England, and it was founded in 1984 in the aftermath of the Brixton riots by a man named Jimmy Rogers — "the Bishop of Brixton" — who had been the only Black child in his Newcastle orphanage as a boy and who, having found basketball at twelve, decided that South London's Black children deserved a home in the sport that had given him his. Rogers built the club out of nothing in the basement of a public-housing estate. By the time he died in 2018 at seventy-eight, Brixton Topcats had produced Luol Deng, the WNBA's Andrea Congreaves, BBL MVP Justin Robinson, Matthew Bryan-Amaning, Pops Mensah-Bonsu, and a long list of other British professional basketball players — plus, in the words of his memorial coverage, "numerous other professionals who beat the odds; doctors, lawyers, academics, journalists, teachers and more, who all credit the club for their success." The club's most famous alumnus, Luol Deng, called him simply: "Jimmy is Brixton."
Eric Yamoah Boateng was one of Jimmy Rogers's kids.
He was born November 20, 1985, in London, the British-Ghanaian son of Florence Boateng. He has a sister, Rebecca. He grew up playing soccer first — soccer was the sport every Tooting boy played in the 1990s, and the Boateng family was no exception — but at the Brixton Topcats gym he found what would become his calling. From 1997 to 2002 he attended Ernest Bevin College in Tooting, South London, the comprehensive school named after the Labour foreign secretary, while his Saturday and after-school basketball home was the Topcats. By age sixteen, he was big enough — eventually 6'10" and 257 pounds — and skilled enough to make the move that all of Rogers's most-talented Topcats sooner or later made: he came to America.
His American chapter began at St. Andrew's School in Middletown, Delaware, the elite Episcopal boarding school whose campus had famously served as the filming location for the 1989 movie Dead Poets Society. He was, by every account, an exceptional student before he was an exceptional basketball player. He was named a chapel assistant and lecturer at the school. He gave lectures on the European lifestyle as a junior and senior. He won the Macolm Forbes Award as a junior. He won the St. Andrew's Cross Award as a senior — the school's highest honor. He won the school's prize for academic distinction. He served as the kind of student-leader that the most demanding boarding-school faculty hold up as a model.
The basketball, meanwhile, was getting better and better. As a sophomore, 18 points, 12 rebounds, four blocks per game. As a junior, second-team all-state at 20 points, 13 rebounds, four blocks, leading St. Andrew's to a 16-7 record. As a senior in 2004-05: 21 points, 16 rebounds, five blocks, two assists per game, leading St. Andrew's to the second round of the Delaware state tournament. He was named the 2005 Gatorade State Player of the Year in Delaware. He was named to the fourth-team Parade All-American team. He was selected to the McDonald's All-American Boys Game (East squad), where he played 10 minutes, grabbed 6 rebounds, and added an assist. He was named to the World Select team for the 2005 Nike Hoops Summit — the same all-star game that, in the same week, named Marty Pocius to the same World Select team. The recruiting rankings followed: Scout.com had him as the No. 3 center and No. 36 overall prospect in the country; Rivals.com listed him at No. 82 overall and No. 19 among power forwards; the Recruiting Services Consensus Index put him at No. 39 in the 2005 class.
He had scholarship offers from Boston College, Georgetown, Michigan, UCLA, Villanova, and Duke. He chose Duke. The recruiting class he committed to was the same one — Greg Paulus, Josh McRoberts, Jamal Boykin, Marty Pocius, and Eric Boateng — that Krzyzewski's program would lean on heavily in the post-Redick / post-Williams era.
He was the first British basketball player ever recruited to Duke.