<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;DURHAM, N.C. \u2013 The class is called Decoding Disney. It is an introductory writing course at Duke, and it explores the values, messages and ideology in some of the company\u2019s canonical films. In his first semester of college, Jahlil Okafor is lucky enough to like all of his classes. As a Disney fan, this is one of his favorites. He also says it is kind of ruining his childhood.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He did not imagine, for example, that the Seven Dwarfs are a motion picture studio\u2019s way of making fun of people with disabilities. And then there\u2019s Pocahontas. Okafor always assumed she was a heroine trying to bridge the gap between one culture and another, and not, say, representative of an over-emphasis on beauty. And all those fat and ugly villains? Do they teach children to dislike anyone who is overweight or unattractive? These are things Jahlil Okafor had not thought about. These are things he didn\u2019t &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to think about.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also on the syllabus: \u201CThe Lion King.\u201D That is his favorite movie. Apparently, it might be racist.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI never knew that,\u201D Okafor says softly.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He much prefers that everything is what it seems. The 6-foot-11, 270-pound center is the most talked-about freshman in college basketball, last season\u2019s high school national player of the year and the presumptive top pick in next summer\u2019s NBA draft. At 18, he has seen enough that he is not completely na\u00EFve. But Okafor generally likes to take the world at face value. It\u2019s how he\u2019d like the world to view &lt;em&gt;him&lt;/em&gt;, anyway.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 &lt;strong&gt;Read all of SI.com's 2014-15 college basketball preview content&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Until now, it has. Okafor, though, has yet to experience the spotlight he\u2019ll feel at Duke, one of the nation\u2019s most polarizing programs, which means people will now see him how they choose to, not how he really is.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For now he likes where he is because it reminds him of his time at Chicago\u2019s high-achieving Whitney Young Magnet High. His peers have bigger things on their minds than judging him as he strolls through campus. He and roommate Tyus Jones, a fellow McDonald\u2019s All-American, can walk to a field on East Campus, find a swatch of grass to sit on and watch \u201CThe Incredibles\u201D on an outdoor big screen, unbothered. There, Okafor is just another bored freshman. He can be large but not larger than life. He likes this.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because of how he carried himself and where he went to school, Okafor has always been able to blend in. He has been extraordinary but not exalted. Now he is expected to be one of the best players in the country and to lead Duke back to the Final Four. Blending in may be impossible. Most everyone will see him as the aggressive, intimidating force he is in the post, no matter how kind he remains off the court.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are three other high school All-Americas to weave into a Blue Devils rotation with several veteran holdovers. That dynamic will define Duke\u2019s season as it tries to move past an embarrassing loss to Mercer last March. Entering the season as SI\u2019s No. 4 team, there\u2019s little doubt the Blue Devils have the talent needed to get back to the Final Four. And there\u2019s no doubt who will be in the middle of everything if they do.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is Okafor, who averaged 24.1 points and 11.3 rebounds per game as a high school senior, the phenom with impeccable footwork and body control for a player his size, which complements a polished post game balancing finesse and touch with sheer force. He didn\u2019t have to face up in high school, but he can. And he will for Duke, which sees value in being unpredictable with its prized freshman, especially because he\u2019s a deft enough passer to allow the offense to flow through him.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CHe can be dominant,\u201D Duke associate head coach Jeff Capel says. \u201CThat\u2019s what we expect.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This may require Okafor to adjust how he sees himself, at least at times. He must become the centerpiece of the offense. And that much the Blue Devils\u2019 players and staff will have to draw out of him.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If he was triple-teamed in high school, he implored teammates to find an open shooter, even if he was still the best option. Off the court, he\u2019s equally as generous. Instead of ignoring the cleaning staff at Cameron Indoor Stadium, he makes small talk, asks them how they\u2019re doing, offers a high five.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But don\u2019t confuse kind with passive. He is highly competitive. His team\u2019s loss to Currie High, led by now-Kansas freshman Cliff Alexander, in last year\u2019s city 4A championship \u201Cstill hurts,\u201D he says. &amp;nbsp;He is also highly driven. From his first day at Whitney Young, Okafor craved his own All-American banner in the gym. (\u201CI always wanted to be there,\u201D he says.)\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 &lt;strong&gt;MORE CBB: Okafor leads SI's preseason All-America team&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Away from the game, he doesn\u2019t seem to think of himself often. He is a prized college freshman who, after an open gym this offseason, asked Capel if a birthday party for his 2-year-old-son Elijah was still on for that afternoon. Then Okafor asked if he could come.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For the big day, Capel\u2019s house was stuffed with family members, and a few Blue Devils players trickled in as well. When the first set arrived, Capel noticed a large absence. \u201CWhere\u2019s Jah?\u201D he asked. He was told Okafor stopped by the mall. Capel figured Okafor went to buy jeans or a belt. About a half-hour later, Okafor showed up. He wasn\u2019t empty-handed.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He had bought a toy guitar. It was for Elijah.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CWe were just blown away,\u201D Capel says. \u201CA guy who\u2019s the No. 1 recruit coming in, people are saying all these things about him, potential No. 1 pick \u2013 I hate to say this, but a lot of times you don\u2019t see those guys thinking about anyone else but them.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;How did a player so talented remain so humble throughout a burgeoning basketball career? He\u2019s been working on it for a while.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When he was nine years old, Okafor was living with his mother, Dacresha Lanett Benton, in Moffett, Okla., a tiny town across the Arkansas River from Fort Smith. It was spring 2005 when she contracted bronchitis. On March 16, she began coughing violently at home. Okafor witnessed the episode and called the paramedics who tried to save his mother. She died within hours.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jahill wore blue to the funeral \u2013 there would be no mournful colors for the children, the family decided \u2013 and he read a poem he wrote for his mother. &lt;em&gt;Mom&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;you have a smile as bright as the sun&lt;/em&gt;, it began. When Okafor finished, he returned to his seat, put his head down and cried. He was a little boy who had no answers, so he escaped.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CIt\u2019s made me attack basketball harder than I would have,\u201D Okafor says of his mother\u2019s death. \u201CWhen it first happened, the thing I relied on was basketball. I remember going outside, shooting all night, going back inside and crying right away. Every time I would go outside to shoot, I would just forget about everything. Ever since then, that\u2019s been my breakaway, what I use if I\u2019m thinking about too much stuff. Basketball was my thing I was always able to use to forget everything.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;After that, Okafor moved to Chicago, where his father, Chuck, lived. (His parents were never legally married.) How he grew into an uncomplicated star remains a bit of a mystery even to the man who raised him. Taking away basketball for bad grades or bad behavior was always an option. Chuck just never had to use it.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having learned that he could be someone else, somewhere else with a ball in his hands, basketball gradually became less a refuge and more a path ahead. And Okafor began to hone an edgy obsessiveness about the game. When he was 10 or 11, Chuck recalls, he missed seven free throws during a loss in an AAU game. Furious, Jahlil returned home, marked a spot on a door to simulate a rim and shot balled-up socks at that spot for an hour or two. Because Jahlil wanted to dunk by the time he was in sixth grade, he wore special sneakers aimed to enhance his vertical leap and did exercises in a narrow hallway maybe 90-feet long near his Dad\u2019s office at American Intercontinental University, where Chuck served as a senior admissions advisor. Often, when Chuck finished work around 9 p.m., he and Jahlil went to fitness centers or gyms instead of straight home for the night.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Okafor was in seventh grade when Tyrone Slaughter, his future coach at Whitney Young, first saw him: 6-5 and carrying some baby fat, yes, but also gifted with tennis racket-sized hands and footwork like a guard, displaying a craftiness around the rim that belied his years. \u201CI was like, \u2018This is not real,\u2019\u201D Slaughter says.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Despite those obvious attributes, by the time Okafor reached the varsity two years later, he was limited to a supporting role on a veteran team featuring stars such as future Ohio State forward Sam Thompson. Okafor averaged seven points over 30 games with just three starts that freshman season. \u201CHe was angry with me, and rightfully so,\u201D Slaughter says. \u201COur outcome [a 20-10 record] would have been different had I committed to playing him [more]. But I didn\u2019t. It was wrong.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Says Okafor of that season: \u201CI was so ticked off.\u201D What peeved him most was that he felt he was working hard, putting in time outside of practice to get better, and still the minutes didn\u2019t follow. It created a different sort of baseline: He would continue that level of diligence because he would not be a high-level player who took things for granted. It wasn\u2019t about proving Slaughter wrong. It was about proving himself right.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Okafor blew up as a sophomore, averaging 24.8 points and 12.6 rebounds, then became a USA Today All-American as a junior even as his numbers dipped to 20.9 points and 8.8 rebounds. The summer before his senior season, Okafor was on the USA Basketball Under-19 team that won the 2013 FIBA World Championship in Prague. Florida\u2019s Billy Donovan coached the team, and after the title game, Donovan offered Okafor one final piece of advice. \u201CHe said I was the best 17-year-old he\u2019s seen in the post,\u201D Okafor recalls, \u201Cand the one thing that would stop me is my conditioning.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 &lt;strong&gt;SI TOP 25: Blue Devils land at No. 4 in our preseason rankings&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Okafor overhauled his diet, cutting out fried foods and for about three or four months drank nothing but water. \u201CI was a big sweet tea guy,\u201D he says. \u201CBig sacrifice.\u201D He continued using a personal strength coach but committed to extra running on top of basketball and the private workouts. Sometimes Slaughter would send a text message to Okafor after practice and it went unreturned for hours; Okafor eventually would reply, late at night, explaining that he had been in the midst of a workout session. \u201CHe was obsessed with wanting to be better,\u201D Slaughter says. \u201CNot wanting to be No. 1, No. 2, just to be better.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What was left of that baby fat disappeared. Okafor remembers his legs feeling fresher in practice, and teammates telling him he was jumping more explosively than usual. \u201CAll those things made me want to keep doing what I was doing,\u201D he says.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When Okafor was pulled from the blowouts that regularly occurred at the end of his high school career, he pouted on the bench. \u201CLike a big baby,\u201D Slaughter says. An assistant might ask what was wrong with Okafor. &lt;em&gt;He\u2019s mad at me again&lt;/em&gt;, Slaughter would reply. \u201CHe is probably one of the most fierce competitors, that\u2019s &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; good, that I\u2019ve ever been around,\u201D Slaughter says. \u201CJust relentless. His teammates -- they may not say this -- they were almost afraid to disappoint him in their play. Because he was relentless about getting it right to win.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;About a month and a half into Elizabeth Graf\u2019s speech class at Whitney Young, the students had completed a few assignments. One soft-spoken senior in particular had talked, among other things, about lions and tigers, his connection with his mother and the impact his father had on his life. Graf thought the kid was just so pleasant, and one day she mentioned to a colleague that there was this really nice boy in her class named Jahlil. &lt;em&gt;You mean Jahlil Okafor?&lt;/em&gt; the colleague replied. &lt;em&gt;He\u2019s the top-rated player in the country&lt;/em&gt;. Graf was baffled.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For what?&lt;/em&gt; she asked.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Graf makes no presumptions about her students. (Asked how she had no inkling of who a 6-11 student might be, she replies, \u201CI gotta say, if you knew me better, you would know that it wouldn\u2019t occur to me.\u201D) But after that conversation with colleague, she Googled Okafor\u2019s name. She read all about the basketball life he hadn\u2019t mentioned in nearly two months. She saw Okafor later that day. \u201CSo,\u201D she said, \u201Cyou play basketball?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CA little,\u201D he told her.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;To understand how this scenario is possible, you have to understand a bit about Whitney Young, an elite selective enrollment public school in Chicago\u2019s West Loop neighborhood. It draws a student body that is sharp (the school says 350 of more than 3,000 ninth-grade applicants were admitted for 2014-15, and the graduation rate exceeds 90 percent) and diverse (in 2013, it was 30.1 percent white, 24.4 percent black, 23.7 percent Hispanic and 17.3 percent Asian).\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 &lt;strong&gt;MORE CBB: SI experts predict Final Four teams, player of the year and more&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, Whitney Young comprises more than 1,800 smart city kids that come from all over the city. What is captivating to some can seem standard to them. It was perfect for Jahlil Okafor, because it was one of the few places where he could appear to be something less astonishing than he was. \u201CHe just came into my classroom as another student,\u201D Graf says. \u201CAnd that\u2019s the feeling I had of him, until one of my colleagues was like, \u2018Man, that guy, he\u2019s worth a lot of money.\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018What are you talking about? It\u2019s just Jahlil.\u2019\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He spent his high school years hoping to make everyone think exactly that. \u201CIf I had to look over all my 20 years of being principal and assistant principal here,\u201D says Dr. Joyce Kenner, the current principal, \u201CI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve ever had an athlete who combined his athletic ability with his humanistic characteristics as [positively] as Jahlil.\u201D When Okafor saw Kenner in the hallways, he hugged her. When he was late for Graf\u2019s class, he always brought a hall pass, instead of relying on his celebrity to serve as one. He participated in the school\u2019s open houses, designed to attract new students. He regularly attended soccer matches or girls basketball games to support his classmates.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CThey just treated me like anybody else,\u201D Okafor says. \u201CGoing to class, not being bothered [or] asked a million questions about where am I going to school, things like that. I was just like everybody else.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In his senior year, he took an Honors TV Production course. When teacher Jay Rehak passed out sign-up sheets to determine what duties his students were interested in \u2013 producer, editor, writer, etc. \u2013 Okafor checked off \u201Cgrunt man.\u201D So, at times, his job was to stand in the hall and prevent interruptions to the shoot. But he did demonstrate some versatility. When he was on camera, Okafor made himself source material for a weekly 15-minute production that was the Whitney Young equivalent of &lt;em&gt;Saturday Night Live&lt;/em&gt;.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;One bit poked fun at his height: The camera showed Okafor dropping a quarter to the ground, then deciding it wasn\u2019t worth bending down to retrieve it. He kept dropping currency of increasing value and thinking increasingly harder about going through the trouble of picking it up until, finally, $100 was enough to goad him into it. Another segment filmed the day before his college choice announcement was even more self-aware. Two news anchors introduce a \u201Cbreaking news\u201D clip, breathlessly tagged as \u201Cthe moment we\u2019ve all been waiting for.\u201D The camera cuts to Okafor at a table with microphones before him. He talks about an extremely difficult decision, and how much of a relief it was to get it over with. Then he turns to his left.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CJeremy,\u201D Okafor says, \u201Cwhere are you going to school?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In slides Jeremy, who is decidedly not a Division I basketball prospect. \u201CIt\u2019s been a long run, man,\u201D Jeremy says, \u201Cbut I decided on Southern Texas State University. Sea Lions, woo woo!\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CGreat choice,\u201D Okafor deadpans.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CHe was an eminently decent guy in the sense that he would do whatever he could do,\u201D Rehak says. \u201CHe\u2019s a good man, good heart, he\u2019s a gentle guy. He, in the end, was a high school kid.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It might explain why he was so uncomfortable with his own real-life announcement. ESPN wanted to simulcast the college commitments of Okafor and Jones Jones, who made his announcement at Apple Valley (Minn.) High School, the friends and top 10 recruits who decided to be a package deal. (They\u2019d known each other since grade school via AAU and Team USA.) Okafor and his father met with Kenner and Slaughter to go over the logistics. The idea was to have the entire school in the gym behind Okafor as he made his choice public. The guest of honor didn\u2019t like the plan.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI felt uncomfortable having them miss their last part of the day of class to come see me announce what college I was going to,\u201D Okafor says.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately he relented to the arguments of the adults in the room, announcing for Duke with Whitney Young basketball players lined up over his shoulder. Yes, Okafor concedes now, a televised announcement was pretty cool for him and his family. Still, given the choice, he\u2019d do it differently. \u201CIt would have just been me in the gym, with Tyus on the other end [of the television earpiece],\u201D Okafor says. \u201CNobody in there besides me.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was, of course, too late for that. He may have wanted to commit to the quiet way, to be a footnote on another school day. But when you\u2019re a nearly 7-foot star heading to one of the best programs in college basketball, being just another a face in the crowd is no longer an option.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Long before Duke began preseason practices, the Blue Devils knew they had possibly the best player in the country on their side, and they also knew this player was eager to fulfill that promise. Quinn Cook, the team\u2019s veteran guard, often ended his nightly summertime workouts at Cameron around 10 or 10:30 p.m. As he finished, Cook would see Okafor coming in to &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; his own session. Eventually Okafor got mad at Cook for heading to the gym without him, so the senior started to call the freshman in advance.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CHe works,\u201D Cook says. No, indifference is not a problem. Okafor works off the floor and on it. He is also capable of more than just playing hard. He can be &lt;em&gt;unforgiving&lt;/em&gt;.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 &lt;strong&gt;MORE CBB: Okafor leads list of projected freshman scorers&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The goal is for Okafor to be this way all the time. To be \u201Cnasty,\u201D as Capel puts it. During one of the last individual workouts before official practices began in early October, Okafor was getting sloppy around the basket, finishing poorly. \u201CThat\u2019s soft,\u201D Capel told him. Shortly thereafter, Okafor caught the ball near the baseline with the rim to his right. He faced up, started backing the defender down, then made a quick move to the middle and dunked with his left hand.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The next day, Capel watched the film of the sequence. He pulled out his phone and took a video of the video, then sent it to Okafor. &lt;em&gt;This is what I\u2019m talking about&lt;/em&gt;, he said in the accompanying message. Demanding the ball. Making strong moves. Being aggressive. \u201CYou can do this often,\u201D Capel says, recounting the rest of this particular lesson. \u201CIt took you getting pissed. What this is going to do and the impact it has on your teammates, on the game, on your opponent \u2013 these are the types of things you can do. You have to get in the habit of doing them all the time.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It\u2019s not merely the Duke staff cajoling Okafor to view himself this way. The rest of the Blue Devils have given Okafor permission to destroy people. Asked what he expects of his vaunted young teammate, Cook says: \u201CJust dominance.\u201D During one of the team\u2019s first workouts, Okafor recalls, junior Rasheed Sulaimon expressed a similar thought to him: If Okafor had the chance to score, to take over a game, he should do it. Don\u2019t even think about it.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CIt\u2019s easy when the guys on your team are pushing you to be great,\u201D Okafor says.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the past five seasons, Duke has won a national championship and been to an Elite Eight. It also has two NCAA tournament of 64 exits, both occurring within the last three seasons: Losing to Lehigh as a No. 2 seed in 2012, then to Mercer as a No. 3 seed this past March.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A freshman from Chicago with great promise, Jabari Parker, wasn\u2019t enough to prevent the latter loss last season before he left Duke for the NBA. Another first-year phenom from the Windy City has taken his place this season. The two are close friends. They have similar low-volume personalities and are averse to the spotlight, though Parker, who set multiple Duke freshman records including scoring average (19.1), total rebounds (306) and 20-point games (18), did instruct Okafor to beat all of his marks this winter.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And now the clock is ticking. \u201CWe know we\u2019re not going to have him but for eight months or so,\u201D Capel says of Okafor.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mike Krzyzewski and his staff know all of this \u2013 \u201CA kid like Okafor has a chance to be a star,\u201D the Blue Devils\u2019 head coach told reporters before a late October practice -- so they told Okafor how he could best help Duke. They used different words to say it, but they informed him that his days of blending in are just about gone.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CThey emphasized me being the most dominant player in college basketball this year,\u201D Okafor says. \u201CSo that\u2019s something I expect of myself.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can he do it?\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CNo question.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Before Duke\u2019s Countdown to Craziness event on Oct. 25, Okafor was nervous. There would be a scrimmage, the first time he played in a Duke uniform before an audience. He also had his father and seven other friends and family members in attendance, because they wouldn\u2019t dare miss this night. So Okafor didn\u2019t want to disappoint anyone, because even though nothing counted, he was smart enough to know the crowd would be full of people hoping he was as great as they prayed he could be.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In two 12-minute periods, Okafor took 16 shots. He made 12 of them. He scored 27 points. In a pair of subsequent exhibitions preceding Friday\u2019s season opener against Presbyterian, Okafor averaged 15 points, seven rebounds and 3.5 blocks playing barely more than half of each game.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CHe\u2019s a kid that wants to be normal,\u201D Capel says. \u201CHe just happens to be 6-foot-11, 270, 7-foot-5, 7-foot-6 wingspan, huge hands and great touch and feet. Which is not normal.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The day after his Countdown to Craziness debut, the kid who seems to be anything but normal was at the State Fair in Raleigh. Okafor and his family went from a basketball carnival to the regular kind, and everyone had a good time there, too. They went on rides, and Okafor tried to win a giant stuffed teddy bear at the basketball shot booth, the one with the bent rims meant to rig the game. He didn\u2019t win the bear, which made him mad. He also tried the rope ladder game, which involves a sharply angled climb up a dozen or so wooden rungs that were about as unstable as the law allows. Okafor couldn\u2019t make it to the top and conquer that test, either, and it was against the rules to jump up and use his long arms to snatch at the bandana at the end.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It had to be an outrageous sight: A 6-foot-11 teenager up in the air, determined to reach the top of that ladder and win, a big kid straining and twisting in the crowd, unconcerned about what anyone else saw.\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/college-basketball/2014/11/14/jahlil-okafor-duke-blue-devils>