Inside The Huskies

Why UW and Rainier Beach Phenom Might Not Be Right Fit

Tyran Stokes puts on a show whenever he plays for the local basketball team.
Dan Raley|
Tyran Stokes, center, poses for an image with Rainier Beach coach Mike Bethea and KING-TV's Chris Egan.
Tyran Stokes, center, poses for an image with Rainier Beach coach Mike Bethea and KING-TV's Chris Egan. | Egan

Five miles from the University of Washington and Alaska Airlines Arena, the top high school basketball player in the country regularly puts on a show and has verified himself to be everything as promised.

In front of capacity crowds, Rainier Beach's 6-foot-7 forward Tyran Stokes typically throws down windmill dunks on anyone and everyone, steps behind the 3-point line and sends shots rippling through the nets with ease, and swats away opposing shots without a conscience.

He's a a franchise player, a bonafide talent, somebody who completely controls the narrative surrounding himself, not to mention he eerily resembles Jimi Hendrix, who attended Garfield.

Is there anything this kid can't do?

We can think of maybe one thing: While he seemingly has his choice of every college program nationwide -- with Kansas and Kentucky, in particular, regularly in attendance for his games -- he probably is not a good fit for the Huskies.

Stokes is such a traveling circus, mugging to the crowd, dancing, and pointing and drawing attention to himself, it just seems that he and UW coach Danny Sprinkle and wouldn't be a good pairing.

Oh, the UW has shown plenty of interest in this newcomer to Seattle, with assistant coach Quincy Pondexter watching Stokes and Rainier Beach play while firmly planted in a front-row seat last week.

Yet as this gifted kid preened and pranced on the sideline during a recent Rainier Beach game, footage showed an older woman, presumably a school official, tugging on his arm to get him to tone it down and she was ignored.

Sprinkle has a reputation as an old-school coach who prefers to run things. In his two seasons in Montlake, he has left no doubt who's in charge of his program. He's passed up top talent before, envisioning potential issues.

Stokes really can't be faulted if he hasn't had a lot of boundaries placed on him. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and has been constantly on the move, going to San Diego, Atlanta, back to California in the Bay Area and now to the Northwest, largely in pursuit of basketball opportunity.

He's probably in the perfect place to finish up his high school career by playing for Rainier Beach's always congenial coach Mike Bethea, who has managed to deal with all sorts of basketball personalities and give them a lot of room to do their thing.

Nate Robinson, Jamal Crawford, Dejounte Murray, Terrence Williams, Kevin Porter Jr. and MarJon Beauchamp, to name a few. Crawford's son, JJ, is a ninth-grader, witn wondrous talents, now playing for the Beach, as well.

Wherever Stokes ends up on the college level, it likely will be for just one season. He's that good. Maybe Seattle will grow on him and he'll see the advantage to his game in playing for a hands-on coach such as Sprinkle.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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