Jayson Tatum’s first basketball court was a bathtub. His mother, Brandy Cole, hung a suction-cup hoop on the wall, and her son would shoot for hours. He was born March 3, 1998, in St. Louis, Missouri. Brandy was eighteen, a high school graduate who’d been offered a volleyball scholarship to Tennessee. She passed on it. She enrolled at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, worked gift-wrapping at Cingular Wireless, and raised Jayson alone. Four hours was a quality night’s sleep. She moved out of her mother’s house when Jayson was six months old. She brought her toddler to class. She missed his first crawl because she was at work. ‘I just broke down and cried,’ she said.
When Jayson was eleven, the bank threatened to foreclose. He understood what was happening. Cole saved the house at the last minute. ‘I’m not going to become a statistic.’ She eventually earned degrees in communications and political science, a law degree from Saint Louis University, and an MBA. Every lesson Jayson learned about work ethic, he learned watching her.
His father, Justin Tatum, played at Saint Louis University and in the Netherlands. He came back into Jayson’s life around age seven or eight. Justin’s best friend, NBA player Larry Hughes, is Jayson’s godfather. Through Hughes, eight-year-old Jayson met LeBron James and rebounded for him at practice. He’s also a cousin of NBA head coach Tyronn Lue.
The moment Justin knew: Jayson was eleven, playing in a men’s league. Justin’s team was short a player. He told his son, ‘Just shoot the ball.’ Jayson scored 22 points against grown men. But he also craved his father’s approval in ways that haunted him: ‘I could score 40 and he would never clap. He would just sit there. He would leave. I would go to the gym thinking if I score 50, then maybe that would be good enough.’
At Chaminade Prep, his coach Frank Bennett marveled: ‘I get to school about 6:30 every day, and he was here at 5:45. The only day he took off was the day after we won state. He just worked and worked and worked.’ 250 shots every morning. His mother prepared him for fame by pausing his NBA2K, shoving a hairbrush in his face, and grilling him with postgame questions like Craig Sager.
Senior year: 29.6 points, 9.1 rebounds, six 40-point games. State champion (40 in the final). Beat Malik Monk, Miles Bridges, and Markelle Fultz — three future lottery picks in three showcase games. McDonald’s All-American. Gatorade National Player of the Year. In gym class at Chaminade, he became friends with Matthew Tkachuk. Both would win championships in the same week in 2024.