AKRON, Ohio -- From a distance, he looks the part.
The Next Big Thing?
Sure, I see it. And so does everybody else -- which is why a major American newspaper ran a feature story on Michael Gilchrist when he was just 13, which is why he's long called LeBron James a friend, which is why Scout.com and Rivals.com have both labeled him the best prospect in the Class of 2011. All those things are facts because Michael Gilchrist is a prodigy. But the thing about prodigies is that they're typically very young. And that's why the Michael Gilchrist you see from a distance isn't the same Michael Gilchrist you see up close, because the one from a distance appears in control at all times, and the one up close looks like someone still trying to figure out exactly how to handle what has come and is coming.
And for good reason.
"I'm only 15 years old," Gilchrist said. "I just want to be a kid sometimes."
Perhaps it's that I just watched a memorial for Michael Jackson.
Or maybe that's not it at all.
But whatever the reason, I walked away from a conversation with Michael Gilchrist almost sad, because what I had was a conversation with a 15-year-old whose childhood is already over, and it's pretty clear he had little say in the matter. Like most young people with unique gifts (i.e., Michael Jackson), Gilchrist has been pushed into a world that's equal parts great and insane. He travels the country in Nike shorts, spends his days as the central figure on recruiting message boards, and it's been this way for at least two years already.
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| At 15, Michael Gilchrist's childhood is already over. (Courtesy of MaxPreps.com) |
Two years ago, at this same camp here at the University of Akron, LeBron James was sitting in the bleachers, watching hoops and being a genuinely nice human to everybody around him. He was making small talk with campers, reporters, anybody. And when he decided it was time to leave, James walked over to William Wesley (if you don't know him, Google him), slapped hands and told him he was heading out.
"You going to eat?" Wesley asked. "See if little Mike wants to go with you."
Little Mike was Michael Gilchrist.
Now he's 15 instead of 13.
Now he's considered among the best high school players in the country.
"And I think he feels the pressure," said Kevin Boyle, Gilchrist's coach at St. Patrick's High in New Jersey. "Now the pressure doesn't bother him [on the court] because he's always risen to the pressure. But I think he thinks it's a big responsibility, like that he has to hold that [No. 1] spot. I think he's a little uncomfortable with the spotlight. Maybe not as a player, but as a person."
Gilchrist doesn't even dispute this.
"I remember the first time I was ranked; I was so happy," he said. "I think I was like 56th in the country or something like that, and I was so happy. But I don't even want to be ranked no more to tell you the truth."
"I just want to, I don't know, just relax sometimes," Gilchrist added. "You know what I mean?"
Yeah, I know what you mean.
But I also know that such isn't possible -- not with the scouting services watching Gilchrist's every move, not with college coaches (particularly Kentucky's John Calipari and Villanova's Jay Wright) positioning themselves to sign him, not with agents and runners and shoe companies and every other controversial entity working angles in an attempt to someday profit from Gilchrist's gifts.
Sure, Michael Gilchrist is just 15 years old.
He's a humble and personable and kind young man.
I like him.
And I'd like to tell him that all of this is just a phase, that he'll soon rejoin his childhood already in progress, that he'll get to be and act like a normal 15-year-old any day now. But none of that would be true because the reality is that Michael Gilchrist has lived his last "normal" day for the foreseeable future, and perhaps ever.
He'll never blend in.
He'll never not be ranked.
And though the simple reaction is to point out that most of us would be wise to trade our futures for Gilchrist's future because he's on the verge of a fantastic life, the other side of the equation has Gilchrist wishing he could trade his present for somebody else's present, you know, like the present of a 15-year-old boy who only deals with things that typical 15-year-old boys deal with.
In an ideal world, that spotlight Boyle mentioned would dim, at least a little.
But we do not live in that world.
So the spotlight won't shrink.
"Not if he keeps playing the way he's playing," Boyle said. "It's only going to get bigger."
