There are two Jahlil Okafors. There is the one you see on the court: all power dunks, spin moves, stare-downs, and displays of domination. And there is the one you don’t see. The one who plays chess and the saxophone and the tuba. The one who worked stage crew for a musical in junior high. The one whose morning alarm, for years after his mother died, was a recording of her voice: ‘Jahlil, Jahlil.’
Jahlil Obika Okafor was born December 15, 1995, in Fort Smith, Arkansas. His father, Chukwudi — known as Chuck or Chucky — is a second-generation Nigerian American of Igbo descent. His paternal grandfather immigrated from Nigeria to the United States. His mother, Dacresha Lanett Benton, was an athlete — a 6-foot-2 basketball force at Carl Albert State College before a knee injury ended her playing career. Chuck and Dacresha met there while both had basketball scholarships. As a young child, Jahlil split time between his mother’s home in Moffett, Oklahoma — population 127 — and his father’s home in Chicago.
When Jahlil was nine years old, he was watching music videos on BET with his older sister, Jalen, when they noticed their mother breathing hard. Really hard. She lay on the couch taking awkward, gulping breaths. They thought she was joking — their mom was usually joking. Jahlil teased her. He said he was going to steal her Oreos. Then he realized it wasn’t a joke. He called 911. She had contracted bronchitis two weeks earlier and suffered a collapsed lung. She died. She was gone. He was nine.
Jahlil called his father. Chuck heard it immediately in his son’s voice — somewhere between a cry and a scream. The only words he could make out: ‘Mama. Mama.’ Chuck got on the next plane to Fort Smith. He stood next to his nine-year-old son as Jahlil read a poem he had written to honor his mother. He put his arms around his children and told them their mother would always be with them — and as he said it, the wind lifted, and Chuck spread out his arms and said: ‘Every time you feel the wind, that is your mom with you.’
Chuck’s own story was a mirror of grief. His mother had died from breast cancer when he was eighteen months old. His father, a Nigerian immigrant, raised six children alone, working three jobs, getting home just before midnight. Chuck had been, in his sister Chinyere’s words, a ‘roughneck’ — caught driving a stolen car at thirteen, hustling drugs, bounced through five high schools in three years, expelled repeatedly for fighting, lived in a group home. But when Dacresha died and Jahlil came to Chicago, Chuck changed. ‘Without Jah,’ he said simply, ‘I’d probably be dead or in jail.’ His sister saw the transformation: ‘I saw him try to create a human being better than who he was.’
The adjustment was hard. Jahlil was shy and so tall that classmates at Rosemont Elementary assumed he had been held back. By seventh grade, he matched his father’s height at 6-foot-5. The family moved to Chicago’s North Side so Jahlil could attend Whitney M. Young Magnet High School — the same school Michelle Obama had attended. At Whitney Young, coached by Tyrone Slaughter, Okafor became the most dominant high school center in the country. He won the national player of the year awards from McDonald’s, USA Today, and Parade. He was named Illinois Mr. Basketball. He earned three USA Basketball gold medals (U16 Americas 2011, U17 World Championship 2012, U19 World Championship 2013) and made the U19 All-Tournament team. Sports Illustrated named him a ‘Future Game Changer’ at age sixteen. DePaul offered him a scholarship before he played a high school game.
He committed to Duke in a package deal with his AAU friend Tyus Jones, his longtime teammate from the Mac Irvin Fire. Together, they gave Duke the consensus No. 1 recruiting class in the nation. ‘My deepest fear is losing someone else close to me,’ Okafor told Chicago magazine as a senior. ‘That’s something I think about way more than I should.’