Chicago Tribune: Harrison Barnes has the drive, and the jump shot, to be nation's top basketball recruit

By Jon Yates

Chicago Tribune

(MCT)

AMES, Iowa - Days earlier, when he announced where he would attend college, the nation's top high school basketball player deftly fielded all manner of probing questions from a gymnasium full of reporters.

This one seemed like a layup.

How tall are you?

"I'm 6-8 with shoes on," Harrison Barnes said.

Across the living room his mother, Shirley Barnes, squirmed.

"What? You're going to list your real height this year?" she asked.

"Of course," Barnes said.

"I thought you were still playing the 6-6 game."

I'm not sure I follow you ...

"It's because Michael did it," Barnes explained.

As in Michael Jordan.

"He was 6-6," Barnes said. "That was the only thing I wanted to be. I wanted to be 6-6 my whole life, and then it was so funny when I got to meet him. I was way taller than he was."There are worse ways for a budding basketball star to measure himself.

At 17, Harrison Barnes of the Ames High Little Cyclones might not yet be a household name. But he's determined to become one.

In the fall, Barnes will enroll at the University of North Carolina, Jordan's alma mater. He appeared recently on the cover of ESPN's high school magazine, Rise, and he writes a monthly diary for the basketball publication Slam.

Barnes is, scouts say, the complete package, a rare combination of elite basketball skills, insatiable work ethic and intellect.

"I met the youngster when he was a sophomore," said sportscaster Dick Vitale. "I'd like to think I have a pretty good feel for people, and let me tell you, he's a winner."

In October, before Barnes decided where he would attend school, two of college basketball's heaviest hitters -- North Carolina coach Roy Williams and Duke University coach Mike Krzyzewski -- visited his house. On the same night.

"It was a little bit of a big deal," Barnes said.

If any of the attention surprises Barnes, he doesn't let on. Last month in his living room, the soft-spoken teen said he has prepared his whole life for this. As the most sought-after high school basketball player in the country (he's ranked No. 1 by ESPN and scout.com), Barnes knows he has a target on his back. And that suits him just fine.

"I'd say it motivates you knowing that every time you play, you want to be the best player and everyone's out to get you," he said. "I'd say it makes it more of a challenge."

Some would call it destiny.

Before Barnes was born, his mom taped every televised Michael Jordan game. She started showing her son the tapes as soon as he was old enough to watch TV.

"That's what I grew up watching," Barnes said. "They were my cartoons. I just always watched his basketball games, and through time it started to sink in. And then I really had a passion for the game."

Shirley Barnes also bought her son instructional videos about basic basketball skills: " 'Better Basketball,' " she said. "How-to videos."

She identified her son's potential almost immediately.

"I just always saw the way he moved, his body composition. It was just like he was deemed for greatness," she said. "I guess for me, since I had always taped those Michael games, I knew he would watch them and he would probably try to emulate them, so I think he was destined in his life to be great."

Barnes tried out for a fourth-grade Amateur Athletic Union team. He made the team, but was not a starter.

"I was about average height," Barnes said.

"Unless my mom would like to interject ..."

"Can I interject?" she asked. "He was never average height."

The summer before his eighth-grade year, Barnes dunked for the first time. A year later, he was so adept at dunking, he became a local sensation.

His high school coach, Vance Downs, remembers Barnes showing up for his first varsity practice as a freshman. One of Downs' assistants told him he had to check out the new kid, so he walked down to the court and saw Barnes dunk the ball so hard, he almost broke the basket support.

"I turned around just about as fast as I could and walked away because I didn't want a 14-year-old kid to see me in awe of what he just did," Downs said.

He didn't start as a freshman, either. But it wasn't for lack of effort.

Every morning, Barnes woke up before classes to run, lift weights, shoot free throws or swim laps.

After his high school team lost in the substate semifinals that year, Downs told the players to take a week off and rest their legs. The coach woke up at 6:30 Monday morning to find several messages on his cell phone.

"Well, it's him, he's trying to get into the weight room," Downs said. "I said, 'Hey, you've got to give your body some rest.' And I remember these words he told me. He said, 'We're not going to win any championships taking days off.' "

Scouts praise his smooth jump shot and ability to drive to the basket. A small forward with a center's wingspan, Barnes is a tenacious rebounder and a strong defender. He can dribble through traffic, then pull up and nail a 3-pointer.

But it's his work ethic that impresses observers the most.

"Driven? That would be an understatement," said David Telep, national recruiting director for Scout.com. "He's a basketball scientist. He's constantly studying and evaluating. He's able to see the negatives and turn them into a positive. The basketball court of life, it's like a giant laboratory to him."

For years, Barnes has compiled an index of players he thinks are better than him. He calls it his "hit list."

As he improves his game, he checks players off and adds new names.

The list has four names -- young men who Barnes feels got the best of him in previous meetings.

"So those are the people I want to play again," Barnes said. "Every level you go up, there's a slew of other people you also want to play against, and I put their names on the hit list."

His goal is to be the "complete package" -- on the court and off. He keeps two plans: one for basketball, the other for business.

He maintains a 3.31 grade point average, taking mostly advanced-level courses. Heading into his senior year, he already accumulated 22 college credit hours. He figures he'll be a sophomore academically when he enrolls at North Carolina next fall.

Although he has not discounted the notion of going pro after just a year or two of college basketball, Barnes said he intends to get a diploma.

"That's very important to me," he said. "When you get to the professional level, it's a business, and I'm majoring in business. I want to be as business savvy as I can be before I enter that world."

As Barnes walked down the hall between classes, a member of the Ames High staff approached him with a copy of a magazine. Barnes is on the cover.

The staff member handed him the magazine and a Sharpie pen.

"That doesn't happen often," Barnes said later, as if embarrassed by the exchange.

But such requests are becoming more common. When he travels to away games, the gyms are always packed. Opposing players have asked for his signature.

Even in his own high school, he creates a stir. At his first practice of the season, classmates lined the balcony overlooking the gym, straining to catch a glimpse of him.

His Spanish teacher, Kay Billings, told a story about a freshman who had taken a makeup test one day and had come to her classroom to turn it in. Barnes was inside for his eighth-period Spanish IV class.

"She (the student) said, 'I looked through the window of the door and saw Harrison Barnes and I just couldn't come in,' " Billings said. "I said, 'He's just a person. He's just a student.' "

Barnes does his homework, answers questions in class, participates in discussions and seems utterly normal sitting behind a plastic desk.

Still, there's a lot riding on his future - not just for him, but for his teachers, his classmates and the town. Almost everyone you talk to about Barnes gushes with pride over what he has accomplished.

"There's almost a little bit of fear, too, that the pressure might be too much or that the world might change him," said Darin Johnson, his composition and literature teacher. "Because he's become such an extraordinary man in that, from what I can tell, he's really balanced."

Shirley Barnes, who works in the music department at Iowa State University, said her son took ownership over his schoolwork in second grade, after classmates accused him of getting his mother's help on a coat-hanger-and-paper mobile about George Washington Carver.

The mobile still hangs in the Barnes' kitchen. The effects of the incident linger as well.

"The kids accused him of that and from then on, he didn't want any advice from me whatsoever," she said. "Since second grade, he has always made his own schedule, and I don't check his homework."

Not that his upbringing hasn't influenced his life.

He wears uniform No. 40, the same number his dad, Ron Harris, wore when he played for Iowa State in the early 1980s. Barnes said he talks to his father on the phone from time to time, but his mother and 11-year-old sister, Jourdan-Ashle, remain his biggest influences.

His mother keeps boxes filled with his old school work, newspaper clippings and other memorabilia.

"My mom is what Jourdan-Ashle and I would call a 'very proud mother,' " Barnes said.

"I am incredibly proud," Shirley Barnes said. "The thing is, I envisioned it and for it to actually be coming true, it's the most amazing thing."

Sunrise was still an hour away when Barnes and his teammates arrived for practice at the Ames High gym. Fluorescent lights bathed the court in a stark glow. It was so quiet you could hear sneakers squeak against the wooden floor.

During a half-court drill, Barnes hurled up a shot that bounded off the rim. The reigning Gatorade Iowa Boys Basketball Player of the Year charged the basket, grabbed his own rebound and jammed the ball with menacing authority.

His teammates seemed completely nonplused. You get the sense he could do this every play.

Finding sufficient competition in a state like Iowa isn't always easy.

"We're a state of 3 million people. Just do the math. It's not going to happen very often," Downs said. "To be truthful, it didn't matter where this young man was coming from. He could be from Mars - he's going to be a special kid."

In terms of basketball talent, Iowa is more like Pluto.

Of the 10 highest-rated high school seniors by ESPNU, Barnes is the only one who is not from the East or West coast. Most scouts said they hadn't even heard of Barnes until he burst onto the scene at a series of basketball camps several years ago.

"I didn't know a thing about him," said Jerry Meyer, national analyst for rivals.com, which breaks from most other recruiting evaluators and rates Barnes the No. 2 prospect in the country.

Meyer said he first saw Barnes at a camp in Fayetteville, Ark., when Barnes was 15. Immediately, Meyer could tell he was a top 100 player. "He's just gradually increased his stock since then," Meyer said.

Barnes said growing up in Iowa has neither helped nor hindered his development.

"I think it's just a matter of how dedicated you are to the game," he said. "Michael Jordan, he came out of North Carolina's Laney High. Nobody knew about him until after he went to North Carolina."

When he finally met Jordan during a visit to the North Carolina campus this fall, Barnes soaked up every moment. He watched how Jordan spoke, how he carried himself, how he moved.

Jordan even gave him some advice.

"He just said, 'No matter what you do, continue to work hard and you'll be successful wherever you go,' " Barnes said.

So he works on it.

He's unabashed about his ambitions.

"I want to be the best, and I want to play at the professional level, so that means being the best player in the world," he said. "But that's a long ways off. I'm just worried about the high school season."

___

(c) 2010, Chicago Tribune.

Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com/

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.