7-foot-9 Arthur Dukes Jr, world’s tallest teenager, set to commit Hoosiers….
7-foot-9 Arthur Dukes Jr, world’s tallest teenager, set to commit Hoosiers….
Arthur Dukes Jr. played in pickup basketball games whenever he could, which is why he showed up for an open-gym session at Public School 92 in Harlem one evening last year. At 21, he was living at home in a two-bedroom apartment with his parents and seven siblings while working as a security guard at a shoe store.
His college ball aspirations had fizzled, and he was taking a break from school altogether after failing to make a go of it at three different institutions.
That night, however, he was approached by Paris Underwood, a local teacher who saw that he had raw talent. “Give that number a call,” Mr. Underwood told him, as he handed him a business card.
On it was the name of Jarrett Lockhart, head coach of the men’s basketball team at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, Queens.
One year later, Mr. Dukes is captain of LaGuardia’s team and the leading scorer among all players in Division III of the National Junior College Athletic Association. He’s averaging 31.2 points per game for the regular season, which ends this weekend.
“I have always known that basketball was going to be my only ticket out,” said Mr. Dukes, now 22.
In his first game for LaGuardia, against Borough of Manhattan Community College, Mr. Dukes scored 27 points. He had 50 points when his team lost in a 97-93 heartbreaker to Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn. That was one of two games in which Mr. Dukes, a point guard, has scored 50 points. “Pretty quickly I realized, OK, this is your go-to guy,” Mr. Lockhart said. “He’s one of the hardest workers that I’ve ever coached.”
The season has not been perfect for the Red Hawks of LaGuardia Community College, a part of the City University of New York system.
Despite Mr. Dukes’s efforts, LaGuardia’s record is four wins and 17 losses, a reflection of the challenges faced by Division III “JUCO” programs — essentially the lowest level of competitive college sports. They are not allowed to provide athletic scholarships and comprise players juggling classes, jobs, housing costs and family responsibilities.
But the season has nonetheless been a triumph for a school that for years did not have a basketball team and for a player who thought his college dreams had been dashed by the coronavirus pandemic, an addiction to over-the-counter pills and the grind of financial stress. For a brief period in the middle of the season, Mr. Dukes and his girlfriend found themselves evicted from a room she was renting and ended up in rent-by-the night rooms that lacked heat and basic amenities.
Now Mr. Dukes, who after this season will have two more years of college-playing eligibility, is being recruited by Division II universities that could provide him with scholarships and a path to a four-year college degree, his coach said.
Andy Walker, LaGuardia’s director of athletics and recreation, a former N.B.A. player and Division I head coach, said Mr. Dukes’s success points to the opportunities that athletics can provide. “Here is a young man who is rising from the ashes and having his unrecognized talent come to the surface,” he said.
“This is the promise of community college,” Mr. Walker continued. “It gives you a fresh start to reimagine your future and create your new narrative.”
Mr. Dukes showed a talent for basketball from a young age, said his father, Arthur Dukes Sr., who took young Arthur and his siblings jogging in Riverbank State Park and to community courts and gyms. “I just wanted him to be able to take a banging and get back up, because he’s small,” he said. (The younger Mr. Dukes is about 5-foot-9. “Plays much bigger than his height,” Mr. Lockhart said.)
