Unfazed and unstoppable: Standout freshman forward Onyeka Okongwu isn’t distracted by the limelight

Nine miles from Hollywood, in the second largest city in the United States and the epicenter of the current basketball landscape, there’s a 6-foot-9 freshman who’s perfectly content whether the cameras are trained on him or not.

But based on the way USC forward Onyeka Okongwu has taken the Pac-12 and the NCAA by storm this year, it’s hard for the cameras to look anywhere else. Okongwu has grabbed college basketball by the horns, posting 16.2 points, 8.7 rebounds and 2.7 blocks per game en route to becoming a possible Pac-12 Freshman of the Year selection and high NBA Draft lottery pick. 

Most players in his situation would take the time to bask in their glory — after all, much of it is justified.

Okongwu? Not so much.

“Media outlets and all that — I’m not really for it at times, but I’ll do it,” Okongwu said. “But it’s not something I’m eager to do. I’m just not like that. I just play basketball, man, that’s what I’m here for. Not for the spotlight, none of that.”

The attention is nothing new for Okongwu. He didn’t exactly come out of nowhere when he burst onto the collegiate hoops scene — he had been making a name for himself since well before his Trojan debut.

An alumnus of Chino Hills High School and its wildly successful basketball program, Okongwu came to USC with three state championships and back-to-back California “Mr. Basketball” awards under his belt. He was also the No. 2 overall recruit in the state, trailing only Trojan teammate and fellow forward Isaiah Mobley. 

Dennis Latimore, Okongwu’s coach at Chino Hills for the last two years of his high school career, has watched his success brew for a while. 

“He wasn’t a guy that played around — he wanted to come right in and he wanted to work hard,” Latimore said. “When we were in our practices, he listened, he wasn’t talking when the coaches were talking. He did the drills hard, watched hours and hours of film, especially throughout the playoffs both years … very hard worker.”

Okongwu’s Chino Hills teams were consistently among the best in the country. He played with all three of the Ball Brothers: Lonzo his freshman year and LiAngelo and LaMelo his freshman and sophomore years. Chino Hills won the California Interscholastic Federation state championship in Okongwu’s freshman, junior and senior years, and the team put together a 60-game winning streak across his freshman and sophomore years.

After experiencing that kind of spotlight throughout his entire Chino Hills career, Okongwu was unfazed by the even brighter lights of the NCAA.

“I’m just now used to big matchups,” Okongwu said. “I’m used to being in the limelight. I’m used to being in a big atmosphere, you know, all the attention. So it transferred over here to college ball, so I’m not really afraid or tame or nervous like I would be or any other incoming freshman would be.”

Okongwu jumped onto the national stage in January of his junior year when Chino Hills traveled to Springfield, Mass. to take on current New Orleans Pelicans forward Zion Williamson and Spartanburg Day School. 

Did Okongwu falter in the shadow of the eventual No. 1 NBA Draft pick? Not at all.

Okongwu racked up 35 points — 1 fewer than Williamson — in a 6-point Chino Hills victory. He added 14 rebounds and five blocks to Williamson’s six and two, respectively. 

“The pressure never really got to him,” Latimore said. “He would do the same routine every game. He’d be the last out of the locker room. I believe he would say a prayer or have some type of reflection … He had the same responses to me and that same preparation whether we were playing Zion Williamson’s team or whether we were playing Rancho Cucamonga or Upland High School.”

Latimore, who played Division I basketball himself, would often work with the post players in practice. It was then that the 6-foot-8, 230-pound former Arizona and Notre Dame forward knew he had something special on his hands.

“When he and I would do one-on-one drills, and he was even doing this as a junior … he’d put his shoulder into me and I would literally be back on the wall,” Latimore said. “The amount of power and quickness he had? Oh, man. It was amazing.”

So it came as no surprise that Okongwu didn’t skip a beat when he stepped foot on a college court for the first time.

“He adjusted very quickly,” USC head coach Andy Enfield said. “You have the physical tools and the basketball IQ that he has — he just came in here and started playing his game.”

But though Okongwu often makes remarkable basketball feats look effortless, his life off the court has been anything but easy. On July 15, 2014, Okongwu and his family received news that would change their lives forever.

That day, the Okongwu family learned that Nnamdi, Onyeka’s older brother of four years, had been in a skateboarding accident in Chino Hills. 

Nnamdi died three days later from brain injuries.

He was only 17 years old and had finished his second season playing varsity basketball at Chino Hills less than four months prior. Nnamdi was a gifted athlete who led the school to a then-program-best 29-6 record his junior year and had been scouted by several colleges. 

Just like that, he was gone. 

Onyeka, an incoming eighth grader at the time, wanted to carry on his brother’s legacy. Since then, Onyeka has played every basketball game with his brother’s memory in heart and Nnamdi’s No. 21 on his jersey.

“I wear 21 for him, play for him,” Okongwu said. “I’m just living out his dream through me.”

Onyeka and his mother Kate are close, and they relied on each other to get through the tragedy.

“I just knew my mom was hurting, so I just had to stay strong for her, knowing that everything was gonna be alright,” Onyeka said. “She was gonna be alright. My little siblings were all gonna be alright. We were all hurting, but that’s the way life goes.”

Latimore, who doubles as an English teacher at Chino Hills, was also a part of Onyeka’s support system. He recalled assigning his class a three-page reflective narrative essay about an experience that changed their life. 

Okongwu, then a junior, felt close enough with his coach and teacher to write about the day of the accident — what he was doing before he found out, when the police entered his house, going to the hospital. 

“It was like watching a movie from his writing,” Latimore said. “That horrible, tragic event — but the way he was able to articulate that, it was pretty incredible just to read a 17-year-old at the time writing about the loss of his brother. And, just tragic, but at the same time, incredibly written language.”

Latimore said Nnamdi’s legacy — along with Onyeka’s myriad accomplishments — was the reason the school had the No. 21 jersey retired during halftime of a Jan. 31 Chino Hills game this year. Okongwu was joined at the ceremony by Kate and his younger brother Chukwuemeka, a sophomore on the team.

Latimore said Onyeka never sought out attention in high school, often turning down interviews from local newspapers and TV outlets. This attention, though, was different. 

“This was his former team from last year,” Latimore said. “His brother’s still on the team. We felt like it was something that was good for the community, that it was something that was good for his younger brother to see, for our younger players on the team to see. And I just wanted to make sure he recognized that. That ‘Hey, I know you don’t always like the attention, but it’s not just about you. It’s also about your brother.’”

Onyeka has always been close with his family. Despite living at USC now, he still talks to “Chuku” almost every day and calls Latimore frequently to ask how his younger brother can improve. Staying close to his family was a big reason for choosing USC.

“Every time you see them, you just have a huge smile — I have a huge smile on my face because they’re just such nice people,” Enfield said of the Okongwu family. “They’re very caring and loving. And take the basketball away, their whole family is just someone you just enjoy being around.”

Mobley has been around Okongwu for quite some time. The top two recruits in the state played together with the Compton Magic Amateur Athletic Union team back in eighth grade.

Mobley said Okongwu is the same person now that he was back then.

“You can always count on O, he’s a great guy,” Mobley said. “Always uplifting everybody, putting a smile on everybody’s face … He’s just a great guy, loves to joke, super competitive both on and off the floor.”

Okongwu’s competitiveness — which made him clap back at Mobley about winning more state championships after Mobley said he held the all-time one-on-one advantage between the two — shows on the court, but it’s subtle, not at all in-your-face. He won’t try to make himself the center of attention anywhere.

“I don’t like to be in a lot of drama or nothing like that — I just like to stay in my lane,” Okongwu said. “I see other people’s mistakes, I just steer away from what they’re doing. I don’t be in the wrong groups. You know, I stay true to myself … I’m at school just low key. Just put AirPods in and going class to class, minding my business.”

No, Okongwu doesn’t walk around campus with his chest puffed out as if to say, “Look at me, I’m Onyeka Okongwu,” nor does he do so on the court (although he’s probably earned the right). Like he said, that’s just not who he is. He’s here for basketball. For Nnamdi.

So when Okongwu banked in a buzzer-beating prayer from USC’s own free-throw line to end the first half last Thursday against Arizona, how did he celebrate? By parading around the court, screaming along with the Galen Center crowd, posing for photographers by the baseline? 

Nope. 

After a quick swarm by some teammates, Big O bolted for the locker room, a wide grin on his face, one finger pointed up toward the sky.