John Calipari was on board with the idea. Loved the heart behind it, in fact. But he warned Kahlil Whitney what was going to happen when the 6-foot-7 McDonald’s All-American pledged to play for Kentucky in August 2018 and then put off signing his letter of intent — the wedding band of college commitments — until the following May.
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“This is going to freak out our fans,” the Wildcats’ coach correctly predicted nine months ago.
“He was 100 percent with me,” Whitney says now. “Whatever I wanted, he wanted too. He was really proud of what I decided. He just knew, and he was right, what BBN was going to think: that I was going to end up signing with another school, that I was just waiting to see who was leaving (UK for the NBA) before I decided for sure, that I wasn’t really committed. The honest truth is I made a promise to come back home for my family, for the kids, for the community, and have this big moment with them.”
So that’s what Whitney will finally do on Friday afternoon, having traveled from New Jersey, where he played his high school ball and reconnected with his father over the last three years, to Chicago, where he was born and raised until ninth grade, so that he can officially sign with Kentucky during a ceremony at his old grammar school on the bullet-riddled West Side of the Windy City. More than a year ago, Whitney promised his former principal at John Milton Gregory Math and Science Academy he would do this, use the biggest day of his life to plant seeds in the minds of children who need an excuse to dream beyond their surroundings.
There have already been 149 homicides in Whitney’s hometown in 2019 — several of them within a one-mile radius of his former grade school — according to an interactive map maintained online by the Chicago Sun-Times. That means Donella Carter can’t just worry about test scores as the principal at Gregory; she offers parents in the North Lawndale community information about how to get jobs, how to get off drugs and how to get their children mental healthcare, “which more and more of our students need because of the trauma of all that’s going on around them,” she says softly, sorrowfully.
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Whitney, who is the No. 8 recruit in the Class of 2019, a projected first-round pick in the 2020 NBA Draft and on his way to play for a Hall of Fame coach at the winningest program in college basketball history, is proof that something better is possible. That’s why this homecoming was so important to him. During an assembly in the school auditorium, he’ll show a video about his journey, make a speech about staying focused on the right things and avoiding the wrong people, then hand out bookmarks his parents had printed for all 300-some students from preschool age through eighth grade. On one side is a picture of Whitney in his McDonald’s All-American uniform and on the other is him in Kentucky gear with his nickname — The Dragon — and a message: Dreams Do Come True.
“Seeing one of our own return as such a success story, it’s a hopeful thing,” says Carter, who has known Whitney and his mother (another Gregory alum) all of their lives. “I hope our students see someone who came from where they come from, who made it to where Kahlil has made it, and walk away thinking about the importance of the decisions they make, the company they keep, and hearing me better when I say, ‘Dream big. Don’t put yourself in a box. The world is a much bigger place than this school or this neighborhood or this city, and your dreams can be big too.’ ”
Assistant principal Daphne Islam Gordon, who taught Whitney in science and remembers him as a perfectionist who got as visibly upset about underperforming in school as on the court, puts it even more poignantly: “Kahlil’s story shows these kids that just because we’re in this environment doesn’t mean we have to be a product – or victim – of this environment.”
Kelly Whitney also grew up in Chicago, where he had Kahlil with Chanel Tillmon when both were still in high school. Kelly surely had his own audacious dreams when he went off to Seton Hall as a 6-foot-8 power forward in 2002 and enjoyed immediate success. He started 108 games in four seasons, scored 1,448 points, grabbed 763 rebounds, swiped 108 steals and blocked 106 shots. He went off for 24 and 14 as a sophomore against lottery pick Channing Frye in a 2004 NCAA Tournament win over Arizona. He was an All-Big East pick as a senior.
But after he went undrafted in 2006, he hung around South Orange, N.J., for the next few years and found the exact kind of trouble he’d escaped in Chicago – where Tillmon was raising their son without him. In 2010, he and another former Seton Hall basketball player, who would later testify that Kelly was the mastermind, were charged with robbing eight college students at gunpoint. Whitney pleaded guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence and was released from prison in 2012. While inside, all he could think about was what kind of father he wanted to be when he got out.
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“It wasn’t about me anymore. Everything in my life was about my kids from that point on,” he says. “I came home and reassured them that I was going to be there for them, for the long haul, and everything they wanted to do in life, I was going to be 110 percent into it.”
And he kept his word.
“He was a completely different man,” Tillmon says. “I’m proud of Kahlil, but I’m also proud of Kelly. This is going to be a big day for both of them, for all of us.”
Kahlil’s parents are no longer together, but once Kelly had demonstrated that his turnaround was real and permanent, Tillmon agreed to an arrangement before his sophomore year of high school that pained her. Kahlil would move to New Jersey with his father and his stepmother to attend Roselle Catholic, a budding basketball power whose blue-chip alumni include Isaiah Briscoe and Naz Reid. Kelly would teach him all the right moves on the court and how to avoid the wrong ones off it. And he’d be safer than on the streets of Chicago.
“It’s scary here for everybody,” Tillmon says. “Kids are outside having recess one minute and running inside because somebody is doing a drive-by the next. And it could happen any time, in broad daylight. There’s a park right across the street from our house, but I never let my kids go play there because it isn’t safe. So it was hard to let him go, but I felt like I had no choice. And I’m so thankful that I did, because it was really important for their relationship. Kelly spent a large, important amount of time out of Kahlil’s life, so for him to reunite and build a relationship, that meant a lot to my son.”
Some fathers in that situation might be tempted to be more friend than parent, but not Kelly.
“You’re not going to like me all the time, but in the long haul you’ll know why I did it,” he remembers telling Kahlil. “I grew up kind of different from how Kahlil grew up. He has me now. I didn’t have anybody to bring me out of Chicago when I was a freshman in high school, to bring me to a better place and make sure I stayed on the right path. I only met my biological father one time, so I feel very fortunate to have an opportunity to give my son much more than that.”
Kahlil Whitney blossomed quickly in his new city, helping Roselle Catholic win New Jersey’s Tournament of Champions as a junior, then averaging 21.1 points and 7.2 rebounds last spring and summer on the Nike EYBL grassroots circuit against some of the best players in America. He shot up the national recruiting rankings and earned a scholarship offer from Kentucky, which has been his dream school since he was 9. The Wildcats had a star that year named Anthony Davis, another Chicago kid who made a little something of himself.
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“That’s all he talked about forever, wanting to play for Kentucky,” Tillmon says, and when the scholarship offer finally came, they had a joyful freak-out together on FaceTime. “It was a wrap after that. The recruitment was over.”
Whitney wasn’t even finished with his official visit to Lexington last summer when he committed to Calipari and then explained why the Wildcats would have to wait for his signature.
“He just had something special planned,” Kelly says. “It probably threw everybody on the outside for a loop, but everyone close to Kahlil always knew he was going to Kentucky. We tried to reassure Cal and his whole staff — I’m sure it wasn’t easy for them — that loyalty matters to us. You give somebody your word, you honor that.”
Kahlil promised he would end up at Kentucky, and he will. He vowed to come home to Chicago, to North Lawndale, to Gregory Academy, when it was time to make that official, and he has. Last week he dropped 38 points to earn MVP of the Iverson Classic, a national high school all-star game. He attended the prom in New Jersey on Thursday night. He’ll enroll in college next month. But for this one special day, he’s back in the place that needs him most.
“I want them to see that we can be anything we want to be,” he says. “I didn’t live in the greatest neighborhood, but I take a lot of pride in where I come from. When I left, a lot of people disagreed with my decision, but I had to take my own path. And I told everyone, ‘You can count on me, when I make it big, to come back here and let the kids know it’s possible.’ Maybe if they see and hear that enough, we can change the path for more kids, change the next generation, and the future of this city might be brighter.”
Even the most anxious Kentucky fan would agree: That’s a message worth waiting for.
(Top photo of Kahlil Whitney: Brian Spurlock/USA Today Sports)
