6’6″ Duke Recruit Justise Winslow, Photo by Andrew Slater
In the well air-conditioned Durango High School gym in a city with the dry heat of a sauna, Las Vegas, 6’6″ Justise Winslow ended his summer in fitting fashion, with a championship trophy and an ankle wrap filled with enough ice to keep the Kennedy clan refreshed for a night in Palm Beach. Winslow’s AAU team, Houston Hoops, won the Las Vegas Classic 54-53 in overtime over the Mac Irvin Fire, a Chicago-based AAU program. Despite injuring his ankle in three games prior, Justise prevailed and defended all five positions, including fronting one of his best friends, 6’11″ Jahlil Okafor, in the title game of the Las Vegas Classic.
A year after not making the USA Basketball U-16 team in Colorado Springs, CO, the determined Houstonian Winslow not only made the United States Men’s World Championship U-17 squad, but played such an integral role on the squad that he made the All-World Championship U-17 team in Kaunas, Lithuania. Justise, a resilient young man, roomed with Jahlil Okafor of Chicago, Tyus Jones of Apple Valley, Minnesota, and BeeJay Anya of Gaithersburg, Maryland. Bringing efficient decision-making, defensive versatility, toughness, explosive athleticism, an on-court tenacity and maturity, Winslow started the last five games for the United States, registering four consecutive double-doubles at one stretch. In the championship game against Australia, the rising junior scored thirteen points, grabbed eleven rebounds, and generated four steals to help the team capture the coveted gold medal. Soon after, the gold medal-winning team was flown more than fifty-seven hundred miles away to Sin City, watching the United States Men’s team prepare for the Olympics. Justise was able to meet with the Olympic team members and observe Coach K run a practice and scrimmage against the USA Select team. Less than two weeks later, the four-time NCAA Champion head coach would offer Justise Winslow a full scholarship to Duke University.
The MVP of the World Championship and fellow Duke recruit Jahlil Okafor said of Justise, “Justise Winslow is an amazing player. He’s one of my best friends. He’s a freak athlete. He can shoot it, he can dribble, and he’s like 6’6.” He’s really strong and a tremendous defender. He’s an amazing player. He was my roommate and, so, we obviously hung out a lot. You know how we’re both really humble. We’re like-minded. We’re both very serious basketball players. We don’t listen to all the other stuff influence us. We have a lot in common. We’re both just very focused on basketball and improving.”
St. John’s School in Houston, an academically rigorous institution with an average SAT score more than 130 points higher than the incoming freshman class at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, had not won a basketball title in thirty-two years. In his first year of high school, Justise helped add a banner to the rafters by scoring a career-high forty-three points, grabbing fourteen rebounds, and making the game-winning assist to his older brother Josh in the waning seconds of the championship game against the Episcopal School of Dallas to win 69-67.
Following the loss of ten seniors from the first title-winning team in three decades, the Mavericks of St. John’s had some initial growing pains, including Justise receiving a controversial ejection from a December game after a crowd-electrifying dunk against Antonian Prep of San Antonio. Once again, however, Winslow, a now sixteen year-old with the physique of a young defensive end in football and the reserved demeanor of a fourteen-year veteran NBA player, willed St. John’s, alma mater of director Wes Anderson, to a second consecutive Southwest Preparatory Title, registering a near triple-double of twenty-five points, ten rebounds, and eight assists, against arch-rival Kincaid in the title game. For the season, the southpaw earned MaxPreps Sophomore All-American distinction, after averaging 22.5 points, 11.4 rebounds, and 3.2 assists en route to a second consecutive Southwest Preparatory Title.
Justise Winslow of Houston Hoops, Photo by Andrew Slater
The son of Rickie Winslow, a member of the University of Houston’s famed Phi Slamma Jamma, who played professionally in the NBA as well as in Europe, and fellow Cougar Robin Davis, Justise’s statistics belied the overall importance that he played on this year’s Houston Hoops team. The rising junior averaged 9.8 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 3.5 assists, while shooting 51.4% from the field in the Nike EYBL regular season, but, infused with the confidence of his success in Lithuania, took his game to another level at the Peach Jam in North Augusta, SC, where he averaged sixteen points, over eight rebounds and three assists in five games against a superior level of EYBL competition.
His head coach with the Houston Hoops, which also produced McDonald’s All-American and incoming Duke freshman Rasheed Sulaimon, is Tim Schumacher. Coach Schumacher said of Justise, “He’s a phenomenal kid. He’s a phenomenal athlete, which is obvious, but he’s also a high IQ basketball player. When you put those things together, the great personality, the great work ethic, and the phenomenal athlete, I mean the sky is the limit for Justise. He’s really got the ingredients to be a very special player.”
Of Justise’s experience with both making and achieving a high level of success with USA Basketball, Coach Schumacher continued, “Well, I think it was great for Justise because he didn’t make the team for the sixteen-and-under and he was really disappointed about that. He really spent about a year with that as his goal and the fact that he achieved his goal and then, when he was there, he had so much success, it really gave him a lot of confidence and swagger, which I think he needed to get. He’s so unselfish and he makes all of the right decisions to such a point that, as a coach, I sometimes want him to be more selfish. Sometimes, I want him to be more aggressive with ball because he is so good. He’s a very efficient player. With his work ethic, the better that his jump shot gets, the higher that his game is going to go.”
Justise Winslow spoke with me in Las Vegas and Oakland about a wide array of topics, including his new offer from Duke University, his gold medal-winning experience with USA Basketball, what he’s looking for in a college program, his father’s advice, and his relationship with Jahlil Okafor.
Let’s start with the most recent championship run.
Well, coming from Peach Jam, we went four and one, but didn’t make it out of the pool. Here, we just played with a chip on our shoulder. It was a lot of fun to be able to play and win with some of these guys…some of them we’ll never play again with. We just got the job done.
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