{"id":814182,"date":"2024-08-12T16:31:56","date_gmt":"2024-08-12T20:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=814182"},"modified":"2024-10-15T14:43:26","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T18:43:26","slug":"caleb-wilson-251-feature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/the-magazine\/251\/caleb-wilson-251-feature\/","title":{"rendered":"Caleb Wilson Studied the Legends of the Game, Now He’s Channeling Their Wisdom as He Makes His Own Mark as a Top 10 Player in the Class of 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This story appears in SLAM 251. Get your copy now.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like any young hooper, Caleb Wilson tended to look to the most obvious sources for inspiration. \u201cWhen I was younger, I used to only look at the stars\u2014LeBron, Kobe, the big names,\u201d he explains. \u201cBut my dad brought it to my attention that there were a lot of people I didn\u2019t know about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A willingness to accept his father\u2019s guidance helps explain how, when asked to name some of the players whose games he admires, the 18-year-old rattles off a list of guys who would impress any hoop-savvy dad\u2014and probably a lot of grandfathers, too. \u201cI watch Tracy McGrady, Penny Hardaway, John Stockton, Steve Nash, David Thompson, Alex English. I watch Clyde Drexler, Rick Barry, Chris Mullin and Run TMC, Nique, young Shaq in Orlando, and then the Lakers\u2014I could go on and on about Magic and Kareem\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He smiles. \u201cI can keep going. I know a lot about basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, his appearance in this magazine means Wilson is more than just a well-informed fan. The 6-9, 205-pound forward at Atlanta\u2019s Holy Innocents\u2019 Episcopal School is also a consensus top-10 prospect in the 2025 class, with a game informed both by that multigenerational collective of NBA greats and current stars like Nikola Jokic. With the game\u2019s positionless revolution firmly entrenched, it only makes sense that a dude like Wilson would look far and wide for inspiration. \u201cI feel like every player has aspects you can learn from,\u201d he says, \u201cespecially the great ones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Wilson has a long way to go before he hears his name mentioned in the same breath as the aforementioned All-Stars and Hall of Famers, but then he\u2019s already come a long way. He was a relatively late bloomer compared to most of his peers near the top of the rankings, and the memories of how far he felt from the game\u2019s elite provides ample motivation now that he\u2019s among the best high schoolers in the country. \u201cI feel like a lot of younger kids look up to me because of that, so I want to talk about my humble beginnings, my struggles as a young player,\u201d he says. \u201cI remember not being the best player\u2014it sticks with me. Just because you\u2019re not good at something now doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t be good at it later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilson\u2019s rise is proof of that, as evidenced by his production at Holy Innocents (he averaged 21 points, 15 rebounds and over 4 blocks last season) and on the Nike EYBL circuit, as well as his invite to this summer\u2019s USA Basketball U18 junior national team camp. Of course, big-time programs have noticed. As we went to press, Auburn, UNC, Stanford and Duke were among the favorites to bring him to campus in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Low-key off the court\u2014\u201cI like to play video games, I watch a lot of TV, especially anime, and sometimes I do Legos,\u201d he says\u2014Wilson is committed to the game and usually in the gym. Still somewhat raw offensively, he\u2019s athletic and savvy enough to still get his points or get teammates involved, and as those blocked-shot numbers attest, he\u2019s got the potential to be a game-changer on D. Talent and motivation go a long way, of course, but ultimately, Wilson says the foundation of his game comes down to nothing more complicated than holding himself accountable and putting in work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel like it\u2019s just discipline and commitment,\u201d he says. \u201cOnce you tell yourself, I\u2019m gonna do something<\/em>, and you follow through with it, you build trust with yourself. I became true to myself about that: Caleb, you\u2019re going to dribble every single day for 30 minutes, you\u2019re going to do push-ups, you\u2019re going to do sit-ups every single day.<\/em> It allows for belief that you can do better. You\u2019re competing with yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Portraits via Omar Rawlings.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story appears in SLAM 251. Get your copy now. Like any young hooper, Caleb Wilson tended to look to the most obvious sources for inspiration. \u201cWhen I was younger, I used to only look at the stars\u2014LeBron, Kobe, the big names,\u201d he explains. \u201cBut my dad brought it to my attention that there were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":814188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65257],"tags":[65265,62525,12990,64741,65258,64927],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-814182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-65257","tag-caleb-wilson","tag-feature-1","tag-nba","tag-shaquille-oneal-2","tag-slam-251","tag-slam-hs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814182"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":820021,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814182\/revisions\/820021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814182"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=814182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}