Ready for the Moment

By: D. Scott Fritchen

Want to know about Dai Dai Ames? He is one of the best. He is the highest-rated high school point guard ever to sign with Kansas State, according to 247Sports. He is the third-best high school player ever to sign with the Wildcats as well. And when it comes to crossover dribbles or step-back jumpshots, it might be hard to find anyone better in a Wildcat uniform.

He speaks slowly. He is intentional. He takes a break from filming introductory highlight videos to be shown at K-State basketball games. It's nighttime. Dinner awaits at a nearby table. He sits in front of a window and peers into the darkness outside.

"Basketball," he begins, "was my first love."

He has been on campus since June 3. He left his home in Chicago, Illinois. He was a 2023 Jordan Brand Classic All-American at Kenwood Academy High School. He once scored 65 points in a game. Sometimes it feels like yesterday. Sometimes it feels so long ago. The first night in Manhattan, he lays his head on a pillow. He thinks about his family and friends. He's homesick. He doesn't cry. He cried once when he was 9. It was after a pickup game. His father said, "You can't cry. You've got to be strong. Be strong all the time."

"That really stuck with me," Ames says. "I keep that with me."

The homesickness passes. It lasts two weeks.

He talks about hoop dreams. How they began. A boy, a ball, a dream. He sees Team USA play on TV. He watches Kyrie Irving. He loves how he creates shots and uses his dribble to get to his spot for shots. He and his father go to the basement. He begins to dribble the ball.

"I wanted to be like Kyrie," Ames says.

For most of his life, Ames has played with the big boys. In the fifth grade, he plays on an eighth-grade team. At first, it was challenging. His father tells him to "keep working and don't stop working." By the time the game starts, Ames is ready.

"His seventh grade year, one of the coaches brought him into the gym," head coach Mike Irvin tells Sports Stars of Tomorrow. Irvin coached Ames in both AAU and in high school. "We had a tryout and we had about 30 kids out there, and one kid stood out to me on one move he did. He split a pick-and-roll. It's mind-boggling but at that age to split a pick-and-roll, it was, 'Woah.'

"From then on I said, 'That's the kid I want.'"

Ames continues to turn heads. He helps Kenwood Academy to its first-ever super-sectional titles his junior and senior seasons. Kenwood Academy rises to become the No. 1 team in the state. Ames averages 21.4 points on 53.1% shooting with 3.1 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 2.4 steals. He sinks two free throws with 5 seconds left to cap an 18-point effort as Kenwood Academy beats powerhouse Simeon, 46-43, for the first time.

There's much love for Chicago.

"It's a great city," he says. "If you're focused on one thing, you've got to stay focused on that thing and not let anything distract you from your path or where you want to go. Just stay in your lane. That's all."

Where did Ames want to go?

"The NBA," he replies. "That's been my dream since I first looked at a basketball."

Ames is a 6-foot-1, 185-pound point guard who bursts with highlights. One highlight, he's driving the lane and kissing the ball softly off the glass on a reverse layup, the next he's penetrating and maneuvering in mid-flight and dishing off to a big man, and the next he's alone in a gym throwing down a one-handed dunk.

He receives scholarship offers from Illinois, Maryland, Michigan State, Oklahoma and Notre Dame, among others. K-State offers him in March 2022. He commits to K-State four months later. He likes K-State head coach Jerome Tang and the assistant coaches — "I felt comfortable being around them," he says — and knows it will be a big transition to major college basketball.

"I'm ready for the moment," he says.

He believes that there's no better conference than the Big 12. He knows it will be an adjustment.

"I love the lights," he says. "I like to show people what I'm capable of. That's when I perform the best."

He gets his chance to make a first impression in K-State's exhibition game against Emporia State. He scores 11 points. Once, holding the basketball, he pulls back and unfurls a sweet 15-foot baseline jumpshot. Swish. He smiles. He runs down to the other end of the floor. The crowd at Bramlage Coliseum goes crazy.

"I work on that shot every day," he says. "It's like automatic to me."

He looks ahead to the season opener against No. 21 USC on Monday at 9 p.m. in the Hall of Fame Series Las Vegas in T-Mobile Arena on TNT. Another smile comes to his face. He will be playing on national TV for the first time. He will represent Manhattan, Kansas, and the Windy City he's left behind.

"I'm very excited. I'm very ready," he says. "I think about basketball all the time. That's the only thing that's on my mind."

There will be a time when he thinks about his beginning, about watching Kyrie Irving, and about how he himself dominated the hardwood at Kenwood Academy. There will be a time when he thinks about his father, and he will think about that first time dribbling a basketball in his basement.

Monday night, his focus will be on the present, on his new beginning, and what is still to come.

"I'm ready," he says, "for this moment."

Dinner is coming.

And he is starving.

Kansas State University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Dai Dai Ames

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