KEY POINTS

  • Emoni Bates has earned comparisons to Kevin Durant
  • Bates doesn't like spending much time on social media
  • The teenage basketball prodigy is expected to be drafted in 2023

The No. 1 high-school NBA prospect is beginning to regain his rhythm and enjoy playing basketball again.

Social media has become somewhat of a necessity these days. Most young athletes made Facebook, Twitter or Instagram a part of their lives--but certainly not YPSI Prep Academy basketball star Emoni Bates.

The lengthy teenager burst onto the scene in 2019 when he became the cover of Sports Illustrated’s “Emoni Bates: Born For This: Magic, Michael, LeBron…And the 15-Year-Old Who’s Next in Line.”

Arguably the best high-school basketball prodigy in the U.S. today, Bates earned the moniker “Next Kevin Durant,” and has had NBA scouts monitoring his progress.

But unlike the original Durant, Bates prefer to live in anonymity and often shied away from social media.

“I don’t like social media,” Bates exclusively told Stadium. “I get on there once in a while. I delete it — I try not to get on there and stay away from it.”

Kevin Durant Team USA
Kevin Durant #7 of Team United States reacts against Team Australia during the first half of a Men's Basketball quarterfinals game on day thirteen of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Saitama Super Arena on August 05, 2021 in Saitama, Japan. Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Basketball is a truly competitive sport and players often jaw at each other during games. For Bates, it’s not how a player should act in or even outside the court.

“The things people say definitely affect me,” the 17-year-old revealed. “People don’t really know me. If people knew who I really was, I don’t think they’d be saying some of the things they say.”

“Outside of basketball, people live real lives, they go through things,” he added. “People deal with the stuff they don’t talk about that you might not know. On the court, you don’t know what might be happening. I’ll tell them, ‘Don’t bash a person so much that they break.’ People have feelings, and you should watch out for people’s feelings.”

Bates almost quit on his dream of becoming a basketball star after his close friend and grandmother passed away last year.

Atop that, he also had to adjust, having transferred from Lincoln High YPSI Prep Academy, a school founded by his father Elgin.

“I wanted to stop playing,” he admitted. “I was ready to be done with it.”

With the help of his family, Bates managed to cope up and eventually got his rhythm back saying, “it’s been fun again.”

“I was overjoyed seeing it,” Elgin said of Emoni’s return. “You could see the love starting to come back for the game. He was playing with an organization that had one goal in mind: winning.”

Bates has been back working on his journey to the NBA.

However, with the league mandating all draft prospects must be a year removed from his high school graduating class and must be turning 19 in the same calendar year, Bates would have to wait two more years before he becomes eligible for the draft.

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