I recently came across a nice article about basketball phenom/prodigy Jahlil Okafor (pictured below) and his life with his dad Chukwudi Okafor (pictured at the end). Jahlil suddenly lost his mom when he was just 9 years old and had to be raised by his dad (Chukwudi) whose life was in turmoil at that point. It an interesting story albeit a long read but worth it. Jahlil should be high draft pick for the NBA. He college, Duke University, won the NCAA men's basketball championship (college basket ball) on Monday 6/4/15.



DURHAM, North Carolina, USA. – The best player in college basketball is sitting across from me in a trophy room at Cameron Indoor Stadium. A few steps away is Coach K Court, the place where, during the 19-year-old’s presumably short college career, he has already displayed to the world a preternaturally mature basketball player, perhaps the best offensive big man since Tim Duncan.

At this moment, though, Jahlil Okafor, all 6-foot-11, 270 pounds of him, is bent over at the waist, his head in his hands, tears welling up in his sad brown eyes.
He is talking about his mother, Dacresha “Dee” Benton, and his final memories of her. Jahlil was 9 years old, living in small-town Oklahoma with his mother, his older sister and two toddler half-brothers. The little ones were napping, and Jahlil and his sister, Jalen, were in the living room, watching music videos on BET. Suddenly, they noticed their mother, who’d been battling bronchitis for a couple weeks, start breathing hard. Really hard. She lay on the couch and kept taking these awkward breaths: labored, struggling, almost gulping for air. They thought she was joking – after all, their mom was usually joking – so Jahlil teased her back. He said he was going to steal her Oreos.
Then came the violent coughing, and the breathing that grew more and more pained, and the sudden realization that something was seriously wrong. The family’s phone wasn’t working, so Jahlil dashed to his neighbor’s house. He dialed 911. The ambulance came. The family went to the hospital. His grandma, his aunt, his sister: They all waited for the doctors’ news.
The news was this: Jahlil’s mother had a collapsed lung. At age 29, the woman who had raised him was dead. Jahlil walked into the hospital room. The boy stared at his lifeless mother, not wanting to ever have to say goodbye.

This is a story about Jahlil Okafor that’s been told often. His mother’s death, which happened almost exactly 10 years ago, has become part of the Jahlil Okafor legend – as much of a legend as a college freshman who is the presumptive No. 1 pick in June’s NBA draft can have. He speaks of his mother frequently, with a confident assurance that there is some deeper meaning to his tragedy. His profile on Twitter begins, “R.I.P. I love you mom.” A picture of her headstone is the backdrop on his cell phone. For years after her death, his morning alarm was a recording of his mother’s lilting voice, saying, “Jahlil, Jahlil.” Before every game, he prays to his mother, that she may become his wings on the floor.
But the story that hasn’t been told is what happened next, after a doctor broke the news to 9-year-old Jahlil that he was now without his mama.
What happened next was this: Jahlil phoned his father, Chucky Okafor, who had moved from Oklahoma back to his hometown of Chicago a few years before. Chucky heard it immediately in his son’s voice, which was somewhere between a cry and a scream. The only words Chucky could make out: “Mama. Mama.”
Then Chucky got on the next plane to Fort Smith, Ark. He went to the funeral that overflowed the school gym. He stood next to his 9-year-old son as Jahlil read a poem he wrote to honor his mother. He listened to Jahlil sobbing uncontrollably at the gravesite. He said to Jahlil that his mother’s death would be something that he would never get over. He put his arms around his son and his daughter, and he told them their mother would always be with them – and, as Chucky said that, the wind lifted up, and Chucky spread out his arms, and he told his kids, “Every time you feel the wind, that is your mom with you.”
Then Jahlil moved to Chicago to live with his father, and Jahlil’s story became two stories, connected: The story of a boy turning to his father to learn to become a man. And the story of a father whose wandering life – a life of mistakes and trouble and unfulfilled potential, a life cast in the shadow of his own mother passing away at a young age – was set straight when he realized that, now, he was all his son had.
“Without Jah,” Chucky Okafor told me simply, “I’d probably be dead or in jail.”

Jahlil Okafor: Playing with Purpose

It was basketball that brought his family together, and basketball that kept him going. Reid Forgrave sits down with Duke's Jahlil Okafor to tell moving story about his connection to the game.
Chucky Okafor became the father Jahlil needed the day Jahlil's mom passed away 10 years ago.
After Jahlil’s mother died, the father came to save the son.
It turns out the son saved the father, too.
******

It’s not that Chucky Okafor was some sort of lowlife thug. And it’s not like he was some awful dude. Far from it. Chucky Okafor was always the life of the party, always everybody’s friend, always loud, always right in the middle of things. It’s just that maybe he was in the middle of too many things.
When Chucky was 18 months old, his mother passed away from breast cancer. His father was a Nigerian immigrant who came to America because he saw it as a place of opportunity. Chucky’s father raised their six children on his own. He gave his children traditional Nigerian names; Chucky is short for “Chukwudi,” which means “in the presence of God.”
The house was a typical immigrant’s house. The dad worked long hours, sometimes three jobs at a time, getting home just before midnight then doing it all over again the next morning. But when he was home, he was strict. Bedtime was 8:30. Education was paramount. On weekdays, television was allowed only for “The Cosby Show.” The family sat around the table and played Monopoly or Sorry or Uno together. And Chucky’s sister, Chinyere Okafor, took on a bit of that mothering role with Chucky.

“It just happened that way – it wasn’t planned,” Chinyere Okafor said. “He just became a part of me. I just felt like as a big sister, that’s what you do. So it didn't start off about raising him. It became a homework assignment. He couldn’t write, and he would try to write C’s or an H. I’m like, ‘No. Sit down right here.’ It turned into playing school. From writing a C you just keep going to how you write in cursive: ‘You need to sit down and do this.’ Then, it kind of turned into raising Chucky.”
Chucky turned into a pretty difficult kid to raise. He got into fights. He ran the streets in the rough neighborhoods of Chicago’s South Side, where his family lived.
“I didn’t look for problems,” Chucky said. “It just seemed like problems found me.” He got kicked out of school, attending five high schools in three years. He was sent to live with his grandmother. He got in trouble for stealing someone’s credit card. He got sentenced to a juvenile detention center twice, the first time at age 14 or 15 when he was arrested for stealing cars.

“I didn’t know how to steal a car,” Chucky told me. “So my job was to break a window. And so I shattered the glass of a car. And somebody else would actually go hotwire the car, or ‘peel’ the cars, as they would call it. They did like four or five cars that day, and I didn’t know how to drive. So I got stuck with a car with a cracked windshield and literally got pulled over maybe about 30 or 40 minutes later.”
Chinyeye was dismayed to see her little brother losing his way. It was as if he’d forgotten his family roots.
But through it all, Chucky always had basketball. He was big, and a superior athlete. His attitude in the gym was the same as his attitude in the streets: Get in his way and Chucky Okafor would run right over you.

He was good enough at basketball that, despite all the trouble, colleges were willing to take a chance on him. And Chucky was ready to take a chance on a place other than Chicago, so he enrolled in a junior college in Fort Smith, Ark.
“Chicago, if you allow for it, it can overtake you,” Chucky told me. “It's a beautiful city. I love my city, I love Chicago with a passion. But there’s different areas, different environments, different situations that a young, urban black man can fall into if he doesn't have the right support or the right guidance, and the motivation to get out. And at an early part of my life, I didn't see the big picture.”

It was when he was in junior college that Chucky met a vibrant young lady with the best smile in the world. They were both watching the same high school basketball game one night. Dee hollered at him, and Chucky hollered right back. Chucky loved that smile; he loved Dee’s swag. It didn’t hurt that Dee loved basketball and was a standout high school player in tiny Moffett, Okla. She’d been a great shooter with soft hands, destined for college ball herself until she hurt her knee.
But just like it had in Chicago, trouble followed Chucky to Arkansas. The day he found out Dee was pregnant? It was the same day Chucky found out he was being expelled from college. .... (continued)

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Jahlil 'Okafor' isn't Nigerian and Would never play for D'Tigers. The reason is simple,his relations to Us here is pretty faint.

The stúpid áss and rétardéd spam bot did not permit me to post the rest of the story.

I've provided the source link here. There's a short 8 min video there too that gives a good summary.

All credits for the article goes to : Reid Forgrave (of FóxSports)

With the 3rd pick in the draft, the Philadelphia 76ers picks up Jahlil Okafor.