ORLANDO, Fla. — Mo Bamba returned from a preseason workout with the Orlando Magic to a full apartment. He was greeted by three friends, whose sole business is the business of Mo Bamba, and by several employees of Wayfair, the online home goods company that had furnished his new downtown penthouse as part of an endorsement deal.
All Bamba needed to do was pose for pictures.
“This is excellent, guys!” Bamba, 20, said as he tumbled onto his new bed and spread his arms, which nearly extended into the living room.
Bamba, a rookie center from Harlem, has a new home in Orlando and a new job with the Magic, who will play the Knicks on Sunday at Madison Square Garden. He is seven feet tall, with room to grow. He wants to develop a consistent outside shot. He wants to become one of the league’s sturdiest defenders.
But he also has ambitions that go beyond basketball, and he wants to do things his way.
“One thing that drives me crazy,” Bamba said during an appearance on “The Shop,” a real-talk show from LeBron James on HBO, “is when people tell me that I sound good for an athlete.”
He continued: “They be like, ‘You don’t sound like you from Harlem.’” What, he wondered, is that supposed to mean?
Bamba is riding a wave of rebellion in professional basketball, powered by talented young athletes who are determined not to let others’ expectations constrain their ambitions. The N.B.A. is big business, and players — even unproven ones like Bamba — are small corporations unto themselves. But Bamba wants to be in charge of his future.
He does not, for example, have an agent, a rarity among N.B.A. players. What he does have is Lenox Partners, which he co-founded with Greer Love, 36, a childhood mentor who left his job in private equity last spring to launch the company. Love described it as “the umbrella entity that manages all the various facets of Mo’s life,” ranging from investments to philanthropy to sponsorship deals.
“It’s about trying to surround Mo with the best experts possible,” said Love, who has an M.B.A. from Michigan and recently bought a home in Orlando. “If he sees something that interests him, we try to find the best expert to get him from Point A to Point B.”
Beyond the business stuff, there is a unique partnership at work here — a bromance, even. Love has known Bamba since Bamba was in the fourth grade.
“He’s been pretty darn consistent as the years have gone on,” said Bamba, who first came to know Love as a volunteer basketball coach at his elementary school. “I remember when this dude was begging me to send him my math problems so he could help me out.”
Lenox Partners has two other employees: Noah Coslov, whom Love brought on for marketing help, and Denario Watkins, Bamba’s best friend since the third grade. After Bamba was picked by the Magic, Watkins drove a U-Haul full of Bamba’s stuff from his training base in California to his new home in Florida.
Now, out on his balcony, Bamba was struggling with the midday glare as the Wayfair people set up their photo shoot. Love handed him a pair of sunglasses.
“Dad shades,” he said before handing them back to Love, who shrugged.
Another thing about Bamba: While he leans on people like Love and Watkins, he tends to do what he wants to do.
“Mo trusts Greer,” said Shaka Smart, who coached Bamba during his lone college season at Texas. “Greer has been a real rock for him in terms of stability and guidance in some aspects of his life. But in other aspects of his life, Mo is incredibly self-sufficient: ‘I’m good. I don’t need help with this.’”
Growing up in Harlem, Bamba shared an apartment with his mother and three siblings. (His father moved out when Bamba was 7, but they remain close.) They lived across the street from public housing, which Bamba’s mother discouraged him from visiting. Bamba’s parents are from the Ivory Coast, and he recalled getting into scuffles with other boys.
“The children of African immigrants were always getting hazed,” he said.
But the courts at the projects had the best hoops, so Bamba evaded the watchful eye of his mother. He caught the attention of the neighborhood, though, eventually becoming somewhat of a local legend who would inspire a rap anthem, the viral “Mo Bamba” song by his friend Sheck Wes, before his first professional game.
Bamba built his legend as he began to shoot baskets at P.S. 208, where Love, then a 26-year-old investment banker, was volunteering on the weekends.
Love had gotten involved through New York Cares, a nonprofit that pairs volunteers with organizations looking for help. He wanted a break from his 80-hour work weeks, he said, and the school needed someone to run a clinic for 60 or so children a couple times a month.
“They would roll out 20 basketballs,” Love said, “and it was basically, ‘Hey, just make sure nobody kills each other.’ ”
Bamba and Watkins were among the boys who showed up, and Love soon hatched the idea of tryouts for a fifth-grade team. It remains a source of friction that Love cut Bamba at tryouts. Love said it was because Bamba was in the fourth grade. But so was Watkins, and he made the team.
“Yeah, pretty messed up,” Bamba said.
Bamba joined the team the following year, and Love became more mentor than coach, a big brother of sorts who would help all the players with their homework and their problems. Love eventually left for business school but pledged that he would still be a part of their lives.
“My promise to these guys was, ‘Hey, I’m just a text away,’” he said.
Bamba, whose mother pushed him to excel, left New York, too, to attend boarding school in New Hampshire. He was not a basketball prodigy — not yet, anyway. He was studious and curious, with interests in math and history.
Bamba later attended Westtown School outside of Philadelphia, where he emerged as a basketball star. He put Love, who was then working in Detroit, in charge of his college recruitment. They were methodical, creating a spreadsheet of Fortune 500 executives from the schools Bamba was considering. He chose Texas and its enormous pool of alumni.
“Academics were certainly important,” said Smart, his college coach, “but he also wanted to connect with people and build a network that he could utilize and rely on for many years.”
After one season at Texas, Bamba made his way to Barclays Center in June for the N.B.A. draft, where the Magic made him the sixth overall pick. He had his own cheering section that included a group of students from P.S. 208. Bamba has kept in close contact with many of his former teachers.
“There’s so much ugliness in the neighborhoods, so when you have someone who can really make it out, it just inspires everybody — even the administrators,” Jackie Colon, the assistant principal at P.S. 208, said in a telephone interview. “If we can touch the life of one kid, we’ve done a good thing.”
Bamba, who addressed the school’s most recent batch of graduates as a guest speaker, said he wanted to use his cachet to promote and invest in childhood education. He said he had recently spent time with David Robinson, who, since retiring from the N.B.A., has been a driving force behind a public charter school movement in San Antonio.
As for Bamba’s business partnerships, Love is aware that some people might be skeptical of his intentions — namely, the optics of Love latching onto a rising star. It was an issue that surfaced last summer, when one of Bamba’s half brothers accused Love of providing Bamba with benefits that violated N.C.A.A. rules. Love was cleared of wrongdoing.
“It definitely did affect me, because it happened out of nowhere,” Bamba said. “But time kind of heals everything.”
For his part, Love said he just wanted to help children when he met Bamba nearly 10 years ago.
“I had my own career long before this,” Love said. “And if I had to place a bet on somebody becoming this superstar — there was just no way. I wish I was that good at making predictions.”
Bamba, who is the type of person to fill a hand-soap dispenser with water to make it last longer, is adjusting to his new circumstances as a pro living in an apartment with sweeping views of his new city. He is guaranteed more than $10 million through his first two seasons. Before he was even drafted, he used the money from a promotional appearance to move his mother into a new apartment in Manhattan. That was a dream fulfilled, he said.
Still, Orlando’s coach, Steve Clifford, has tried to curb expectations. The Magic are not banking on Bamba from the outset. Through his first 10 games, Bamba came off the bench to average 6.5 points and 6 rebounds.
“I hope people are fair with him, that’s all,” Clifford said.
Bamba knows to be patient, too. Reflecting on his journey, he recalled leaving Harlem and heading to private school.
“I remember when I first got there, I didn’t even know the proper dress code,” he said. “I didn’t really know what was going on. But I eventually figured it out.”
That has been a theme throughout his life. He figured out how to cope with the teasing of neighborhood children. He figured out how to find the most competitive games. He figured out how to navigate the complexities of life in Harlem. And now, with a little help from his friends, he is determined to figure out the N.B.A.
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