60 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED | SI.COM
with four teams spread across the Mid-Atlantic and will
pay $50,000 to $200,000 per season, plus scholarships
to attend local schools. Add in professional leagues in
China, Australia and Europe, and you get what Dawkins
calls “a perfect storm.”
“It’s a battle royal on a bigger scale now because now
you have everybody on a global level coming after teenag-
ers,” says Dawkins. “The price will just continue to rise,
which I think is a good thing for the players.”
Dawkins will advise the Hendersons on marketing and
business matters but, because of his conviction—he served
six months in federal prison—he cannot represent players
as an agent. His firm employs other certified agents who
are handling Scoot’s basketball contracts. “He helped us
understand the space a lot more, and what is to come,”
Crystal says. “A lot of people don’t want you to know. They
don’t want to empower you.”
If there were any doubts about the Ignite’s viability for
launching NBA careers, they were silenced in July, when
Green went No. 2 to the Rockets and Kuminga went to
the Warriors five picks later. That proof of concept will
surely encourage other young phenoms, like Scoot, to
follow their path, drawn by the advantages of competing
against teams with seasoned players in their 20s
and 30s, working with NBA coaches and learn-
ing NBA sets and focusing on a basketball career
without having to juggle schoolwork.
Scouts attending Ignite games last season told
Chad Ford, who covers the draft via Substack
after years as an ESPN guru, that they found it
easier to evaluate Green and Kuminga than the
college prospects in the 2021 draft class. “So if
you shine” in the G League, says Ford, “I think
the takeaway is that’s a safer bet in the draft than
someone who shines in the NCAA.”
It will be 19 months before Scoot can test that
theory, and, of course, much depends on how
he’ll perform over the next two seasons. It’s dif-
ficult to say how far this will all go—how big
the contracts will get and how many teens will
be signing them. But a future in which the top
of the NBA draft board is dominated by ignite,
ote and pcl, instead of kentucky, duke and
gonzaga has all but arrived. Scoot HendersonThe deliberations went on for months, culminating last
spring in a family meeting in the STEM lab at Next Play 360°,
where Scoot made his decision over a takeout feast from
Infusion Crab. The discussion lasted just 10 minutes.
Scoot knew exactly what he wanted and never wavered.
The Ignite offered better competition than the NCAA. The
G League offered more stability and a longer track record
than OTE. “It’s one step closer to my main goal, getting
to the NBA,” he explains. “That’s really it.”
He had nothing left to prove in high school; as a junior
he averaged 32 points, seven rebounds and six assists and
was the state’s Class 6A player of the year. Scoot’s closest
friends, including CJ, had graduated in 2019. Sure, he
would miss out on things like homecoming and the senior
prom, but none of that mattered much to him. So last fall
Scoot doubled his academic workload in order to graduate
a year early. He left with a 3.5 GPA (the G League requires
a high school diploma).
More than a dozen big-time college programs put
offers on the table. The allure of the NCAA is still potent:
March Madness, national television exposure, the chance
to be the BMOC. But that, too, held little appeal for Scoot,
who will play in relative anonymity for the next two years.SCOOTHENDERSON