Editor’s note: This story was originally published on March 3, 2021. Emoni Bates on Friday released a top 8 that includes Michigan State, the school he was committed to at the time this was first published, as well as Oregon, Miami, Memphis and Baylor, and three professional options (the G League, Overtime Elite league and National Basketball League).
YPSILANTI, Mich. — Elgin Bates, known as EJ, is here to talk about fear.
Not the scary, hair-raising kind, but the abstract kind. The kind that comes with misunderstanding the present. The kind that comes when you think of the future disappearing. The 44-year-old cocks his head to the side when he says, “People fear things that they’re not knowledgeable about — the unknown.” He grins and adds, “If it’s never been done, it’s automatically negative.”
Bates is slouched on a leather sofa in a side room attached to Ypsi Prep Academy’s home gym. His son, Emoni, is on the other side of the wall, probably doing one of two things: getting up shots or thumbing through his phone. Emoni, 17, is widely considered the best high school basketball player in the world. Sure, some voices out there might make a case for this player or that player, but Bates has been the sport’s most talked-about NBA prospect since he was in the seventh or eighth grade. That hasn’t changed because cats like Chet Holmgren or Jalen Duren are coming into focus.
That’s why all of this was created.
For those inside the very circumscribed world of Emoni Bates, Ypsi Prep is not a school as much as it’s a vessel. It exists to transport Emoni from this life to the next — from today’s mundane realities to tomorrow’s NBA stratosphere. In EJ’s mind, it’s both an appropriate pedestal for his prodigious son and a golden ticket for those who’ve chosen to join him.
