58 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED | SI.COM
west to manage his daily affairs and live in a house just
up the street in the ritzy suburb east of Oakland.
“Just seeing them every day, it’ll make me happier,”
Scoot says. “It’ll calm me down.”
It’s a long way from Kell High, where Scoot could be
studying for an English test right now instead of figuring
out where to shop for groceries. Having dominated high
school competition, he knew a year ago that he would
leave early. The only question was where to take his
talents. College? Top schools like Kansas, Georgia and
Auburn were recruiting him. Overseas? He had already
turned down a lucrative offer in China as a sophomore.
Overtime Elite? The f ledgling league, with seed money
from Jeff Bezos and Drake, made an offer, too.
Ultimately, Scoot chose the expertise and infrastruc-
ture of the Ignite. He will be playing alongside five other
high school sensations,
all a grade ahead—
MarJon Beauchamp,
Dyson Daniels, Michael
Foster, Jaden Hardy and
Fanbo Zeng—as well as
a half-dozen teammates
in their 20s and 30s who
will serve as mentors.
There have never
been so many attractive
options for basketball
prodigies, especially
now that college players
have the ability to earn
endorsement money
from their names, images
and likenesses. For the
first time since the NBA
slammed the door shut on high schoolers back in 2006,
it’s the players and their families who hold more leverage,
says Christian Dawkins, the former player agent who was
convicted in an NCAA bribery scandal two years ago and
is now the founder and chairman of Par-Lay Sports and
Entertainment, the agency working with the Hendersons.
Dawkins worked in a broken system where money was
shunted under the table to players. Now bidding wars can
play out far more in the open, as leagues and universitiesEvery inch of couch cushion in the modest living room
is filled by Hendersons and a few family friends. ESPN
is blaring from the television.
“It’s always a sports disagreement in the morning,”
says Onyx, 23, who lives a few miles away but, like all her
siblings, gravitates back to the family home on a woodsy
cul-de-sac. “It’s always shouting. But two seconds later,
it’s like, ‘O.K., what are we eating?’ And then after things
settle down a little bit...we probably go to the gym.”
The gym is Next Play 360°, which everyone in the
family calls their second home. Crystal, a health-care
administrator, and Chris, a coach and trainer, acquired
the space, with its two courts, in 2018, fulfilling a lifelong
dream of Chris’s. He’d grown up in difficult circumstances,
wishing he had access to this type of haven. They launched
a series of camps and tournaments for kids, along with a
STEM lab. Says Crystal, “We just want to continue to help
them realize they can do anything that they want in this
world and then open up their eyes to STEM.”
In this family, basketball really is life. Three Henderson
sisters played Division I basketball: Diamond, 29, atSOLID BENCH
Far from home
(and his sneaker
collection), Scoot
will still lean on his
family, especially
Crystal and Chris
(on right).SCOOTHE
NDE
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