This Jet Only Goes In One Direction

Boom, we’re off and running. Chicago. Set the scene. 

South Side. Bronzeville. I’m 8 years old. Summer time. Living room. We’re watching the White Sox game, because we’re a Sox family, because we were raised right. It’s me, my dad and my older brother. We’re chilling.

No, we’re not chilling. Forget whatever you thought.

See … key piece of information … My dad came here from Nigeria when he was 7. He was all about that work. He’s the type of guy who’s mad he can’t work in his sleep. So every time the TV cut to a commercial break, boom, on the millisecond, we had to jump up off the couch and do a set. Pushups, crunches, squats, whatever. The whole two minutes. The manager would walk out to the mound to change the pitcher and me and my brother would look at each other like, “No, come on. He’s good. He’s still got some juice in the tank, man.”

He’s waving to the bullpen. 

Boom, Geico commercial. 

“Alright, wall sits, let’s go. You don’t work, you don’t eat. Dinner is for winners.” 

For the purposes of this story, I’m doing the dialogue, but really my dad wouldn’t even have to say anything. He’d just give us the look.

Picture an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old squatting against the wall, legs shaking like crazy, holding a 15-pound kitchen chair above their heads, just trying to hang on until they cut back from commercials. 

By the 7th inning, we were cooked. Doing those two-inch pushups where you can’t even bring your knees up off the floor. 

I actually loved it. I thought I was Kobe. I kept telling my dad, “Whatever Kobe is doing, I wanna do that. What else does he do?”

“Kobe drinks protein shakes.” 

Alright, boom, I’m coming to elementary school with the shaker bottle and my Flintstones Vitamins.

“What else can I do?”

“Well….. It’s healthier with just water.” 

Alright, boom, I’m drinking the whey with the water. No fruit, bro. No banana. No milk. Sicko mode.

I loved it. All of it. But even if I didn’t love it, I could never complain. Not with my dad being my dad. And not with my grandfather being my grandfather. See, my grandfather immigrated here from Nigeria to study at Illinois State. He left everything behind and came to a whole new culture, a whole new way of life. My dad stayed behind in Nigeria for a few years until my grandfather was all settled here, then he came over. Pretty much from the rip, he had to work to help the family. After high school, he started as a delivery driver for UPS, and any time I ever felt even a little bit tired or complained that I couldn’t play video games, he’d pull out the stories. 

“Ayo, let me tell you something….”

And me and my brother and my sisters, we all knew the whole plot already. 

I think first it started as two different stories. He was delivering a package and a dog was chasing him or something and he rolled his ankle and ended up with a high ankle sprain. So he just taped it up and went to work the next day. And then another time he had to get his wisdom teeth pulled, so he scheduled the surgery on his lunch break. 

“No painkillers, doc. I gotta go back to work.”

Yanked the tooth, and he was back in the brown gear by noon. 

But then when he got really worked up, the stories merged together and he was delivering packages with a high ankle sprain and a torn achilles and a pulled tooth in a snowstorm or whatever. Pack of dogs on his ass. Perfect front porch delivery. 

“And I never took a sick day. Never.”

After me and my brother were born, he moved his shifts around so he’d wake up at 1 a.m. and work through the night so he could be back at 2 p.m. to pick us up from school. Then boom, we’re going straight to the gym. He’d always have a bag of food waiting for us in the car to eat on the way there, and this man was so frugal that he’d always be on the DEALS, bro. The McDonald’s dollar menu. The two-piece Popeyes. The Little Caesars $5 hot-n-ready. Bro, with inflation these prices don’t even make sense anymore, but back in the mid-2000s if you had immigrant parents, you were messing with the 99-cent two-piece Tuesdays at Popeyes. When they raised the price to $1.29 that was a dark day for my dad. 

It’s crazy because when you’re 10 years old you can really eat a two-piece and a biscuit in the back seat of an SUV and then hop out and then run full-court 4-on-4 like it’s nothing. You’re invincible. 

I remember when me or my brother got honor roll in middle school, my dad used to give us 20 bux. But he’d go to the bank and get it in all ones. Crisp, new. Counting them all out in front of us, like a ceremony. “18, 19 ..... 20.”

Counting it back. 

“1, 2....”

It was like.... He was sending some kind of message. It’s not just a 20... it’s 20 ones, you know what I mean? Every dollar counts, for real. 

Our whole goal, as a family, from the time I was like 10, was for me to make it to the league. Everything we did, as a family unit, was to keep me safe and thriving. In Chicago, that can be really hard. Every day was a risk. You can be a great kid, minding your own business, and things can still happen. It’s kind of sad how you have to be on guard even with kids who are really cool. That dude in your 3rd period art class is your boy when you’re at school, but you know in the back of your mind what his brothers are up to, and if you walk to his house after school ... you never know what could happen. You almost have to approach things like an adult when you’re 10, 11 years old. 

And even then, you never know....

Darius Brown. That was my guy. The whole world should know his name. 

If you looked up the word “friend” in the dictionary, he was the definition. Darius could chop it up with anybody. He was two years older than me, playing with my brother’s team, but we just clicked right away. He was a basketball junkie like me. No other dreams. No other priorities. No smoking, no drinking, just ball. My dad used to go pick him up on the weekend and he’d sleep over our house and we’d drive to tournaments. Friday night after the homework was done was the only time we were allowed to play 2K. 

7:30–10:30 one night a week, bro. That was 2K and Madden time. Me, Darius and my bro. I swear I was so good, too. I could never play and I was still nice. I wish I could go back to those times, man. That was the best 3 hours of my life. 

One day, during summer vacation, my dad came home from work and he was so exhausted that he fell asleep. He said to call Darius and tell him we’d scoop him up in the morning. 

So Darius went to play pickup at Metcalfe Park.

5:30 p.m. on a Wednesday. Light outside. Just doing what we loved doing. Playing ball. 

Then a car drives by. Shots ring out. They weren’t trying to hit Darius. He was just a kid, man. Minding his own business. 

The shots hit him anyway.  

I was in the shower. My mom was calling me, calling me, calling me......

I got out of the shower, and grabbed the phone and she said, “Darius got shot at the park.”

“What?”

“They took him to the hospital. But …………… he didn’t make it.”

I swear it was like my brain froze. I don’t even remember anything after that. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever fully processed it. How can you process something like that at 11 years old?

The crazy part about it is that he was just as good as me, if not better. Lefty. More polished. Definitely more charismatic. Lit up the room…. 

Just a kid. Not stealing, not robbing, not bothering a soul. Just doing what he loved. Never got to make it to the 8th grade. I’ll never understand it....

From that day on, it was like I couldn’t fail. It wasn’t an option. Me and Darius used to have this saying. He came up with it, of course. You probably won’t get it, but it was Jet Life.

Not jet life like a private jet. Jet like a rocket ship. That was Darius’ whole personality. We’re only going in one direction. All the way up, all the time.

“Jet life, jet life, jet life. Jet life for Life.”

I carried that mantra with me the whole way. It went from “What do you wanna be when you grow up?”

To …….

“I’m playing in the league. Period. You can laugh, but I’m not laughing.”

After he died, it’s like I blacked out. My mom says I used to come home from school and it went from my dad being like “You gotta get your work in” to it being a blizzard outside and me putting on my hat and gloves and getting a shovel and plowing a little lane on the corner 3 and shooting for hours. I’m an imaginer. I used to be imagining the middle school gyms I’d be in next, and the kids I’d be playing against, and just going off for 30, 40, 50. 

Jet life, jet life, jet life.

From the time I was 11 years old, I knew I was gonna be doing this. And Darius was such a huge part of my why. 

Part of the reason I’m telling this story is because when a tragedy like that happens, you might see the news story or whatever, and you just see “13-year-old kid shot on the South Side” and that’s it. Or if you’re fortunate enough to play in March Madness or get drafted like I was, then it gets mentioned on TV for a minute like “Ayo Dosunmu’s friend….” And that’s it. Everybody moves on. 

But Darius was more than a 13-year-old kid, and he was more than just my friend. He was a great kid, a great friend, and a great ball player. Without him and my brother....... Man, I just wouldn’t be here without them. 

It’s crazy but I actually cried tears of joy when I signed my extension this summer. When I say that, people probably think I’m talking about my path in the league. Sliding way past where I thought I was gonna go in the draft, going in the 2nd round to the Bulls and all the pressure that comes with being the hometown guy and all that. Coming into a team with 100 guards and trying to get minutes. But really, that’s just basketball, and basketball for me is like a fish in water. It’s just what I do. I know it’s always gonna work out. If you only give me 5 minutes, it’s gonna be 5 good minutes. If you only give me 6 shots, 4 are going in. 

Basketball is basketball. 

I cried tears of joy when I signed that piece of paper because of life. 

I know I came here at the trade deadline last year as a “wait and see.” That’s what the whole league was saying. I’m a basketball junkie, so I knew the deal. When you get traded, it’s like a breakup. Except in basketball, you can’t pick your new girl! You don’t know how it’s gonna go! Might be a good fit, might not be. 

Thank God, from the first day, everybody embraced me here. I got on the plane to Minnesota with 2 bags, and I literally just kept those two bags all through the playoff run. My fiancée was texting me like, “Are you sure you don’t want me to bring you some new clothes?”

But I was so locked in that I didn’t even want to think about anything but ball. I had spent my entire life in Chicago, in my cocoon with my family, all the way from a kid to Illinois to the Bulls. So it felt like God was telling me, “Alright, it’s time to grow up. I’m throwing you in the deep end for the first time. You gotta ADAPT or sink.”

And he threw me in with the sharks.

The great white shark, bro. 

Ant. 

He’s special. As a trash talker, he’s like what you hear about with the Kobe stories, the MJ stories, the KG stories. No, really I think a better comparison is like the Ali stories. 

He’s jogging back after a bucket like, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! I’m a bad man! I’m so pretty!!!” 

And listen, this is the thing about me. I can go one of two ways. I can stay really quiet out there and lock in. But I’m from Chicago. If you want to talk, we can have a dialogue. So the first few weeks I got to Minnesota I was just trying to observe and stay in my lane. Once it gets to playoff time and the energy is a little different, I’m talking sh*t back to Ant in practice, and I can see he’s going up a level. 

Ant goes to the hoop like, “MFer you too little!”

I come back down and hit a pull-up like, “MFer take that!!”

He hits another one, “MFer I’m him!!!”

I hit another one, “MFer you him?? I’m me!!!!”

And you know when the trash talking is so good that it’s like you black out and you almost get confused? 

He’s saying, “I’m him!!! I’m him!!!” 

I’m saying, “I’m him!!! You’re you!!!” 

We’re like Spiderman and the other Spiderman pointing at each other. 

“I’m you!!! You’re me!!!”

Hahhaha. I love this team, man. It was so hard to see Ant go down, but we know he’s gonna be back better than ever and we’re going to hold it down for him in the meantime and keep that same energy.

After the way things ended last year, signing that extension and committing to Minnesota was a no-brainer. There’s no place else I want to be. 

“It’s cold.”

Bro, I’m from Chicago. I was born cold. Give me a shovel and I’m plowing a lane. It’s nothing. 

This whole offseason, it’s been at a different level. The energy in our gym is something you can’t even capture on video. They won’t allow it. It could get taken outta context the way we’re talking sh*t and going so hard. We’re really so young and so determined and so hungry, and it’s an exciting dynamic. I’m telling the world now: Get your League Pass ready. 

It’s so interesting to me as a pure basketball junkie, because I really get to see this team and these guys from the inside. I see the way that the perception is about certain guys, and I’m not saying that people are lying on purpose, but you only see what you see. 

“Jaden’s quiet.” 

Bro, Jaden is quiet. But he’s not quiet. He’s not what you’re thinking. He’s a psycho. 

“Rudy’s French.” 

Bro, Rudy IS French. He’s a philosopher for sure. But he’s one of the most dedicated professionals I’ve ever seen in this league. He’s showing me every day how to really be a pro and take care of your body. 

“LaMelo is too chill.” 

Bro, let me tell you something about LaMelo. He’s more curious about the game of basketball than anybody I’ve ever seen at his level. How many guys who are worth $300 million are still asking questions every day in practice? He’s worth $300 million and he’s trying to learn and get better every day. 

For me, the vibes are just so good, and I feel so at home. It’s a bunch of young guys who are just doing what we love. I can’t ask for a better situation. Jet Life For Life! There’s only one direction this plane is going. I might have these MFers doing wall sits when we’re watching League Pass in the hotel on the road. When Ayo is around you can’t relax! Let’s gooooooo! 

Shout out to my father for teaching me how to work. Shout out to my brother and my family for always protecting me. 

Shout out to Chicago for raising a dog. Shout out to Popeyes for the two-piece special. 

Shout out to all the immigrant families hustling to build something here.

Shout out to basketball for giving us everything. 

Shout out to Darius Brown. You were a big part of my story. I hope you’re somewhere doing what you love. 

JL4L. 

– Ayo