(Paul J. Bereswill)
Sunday’s PSAL Class AA semifinal is more than a basketball game to Thomas Jefferson High School’s Kareem Johnakin. It is a symbol of how far he has come.
Johnakin was holed up at the Crossroads Juvenile Center — a prison for minors — from June through December, a year after spending 21 months at Lincoln Hall Boys Haven, a strict boarding school in Westchester for troubled teens. This afternoon against Curtis, he looks to lead the Orange Wave back to Madison Square Garden, where they could win the school’s first basketball title since 1954.
“It would be the true definition of a blessing,” he told The Post after Jefferson’s quarterfinal win over Cardozo at St. John’s last Saturday.
The 17-year-old Bedford-Stuyvesant native, a versatile 6-foot-6 forward, has lived a difficult life, raised by his mother, Latisha Price, a single parent. He lost his younger brother, Braheen Cotton, to cancer and also his grandmother Madeline Johnakin at a young age. His father, Kareem Johnakin Sr., was incarcerated until the future Jefferson star was 8 years old.
“It was a lot of things that triggered him going into that direction,” Price said.
Johnakin was shot during a cookout while in eighth grade, the bullet going through his left arm. It left a scar on each side of the arm and he was without feeling in it for a year. He was stabbed in the back while at a party the next year.
He was arrested four times, once for attempted armed robbery with a BB gun, another time for shoplifting, before being sent to Lincoln Hall in the fall of 2009. Last June, he was picked up with friend Trevor Selby for attempted robbery, which violated the terms of his release from Lincoln Hall, and he was sent to Crossroads.
Those close to Johnakin describe him as a good kid with a sense of humor who is a victim of circumstance and following the wrong people, the classic wrong-place, wrong-time justification.
“His friends and his peers were everything,” Price said. “He chose that over everything.”
Johnakin’s teammates, coaches and his mother say he has changed. He is not hanging around with the friends who got him in trouble, he is less impulsive and more focused on the future. They say he is putting in extra time in the gym or going straight home after school rather than messing around in the hallways at Jefferson or on the corners of East New York. Johnakin said he has told his old friends he is going to steer clear of them.
“I’m hanging around [my teammates] in the gym,” he said. “We’re all doing the right thing.”
He’s done well in school since coming back, getting enough credits to make up for his lost time and get back on the team. Jefferson plans to put in a waiver for Johnakin to be eligible next year, and he hopes to play Division I basketball after graduating next spring.
“The principal just commented the other day, ‘Kareem is a changed guy,’ ” assistant coach Seldon Jefferson said. “The teachers, principals, the school safety agents, everybody is just saying how much more mature he’s gotten, and I think a lot of it has to do with going away.”
Johnakin described his two stints away as “hard living that life … without freedom,” being told what to do and when to do it. At Crossroads, there were bars on the door of his room, which was locked from the outside, and he had to buzz for permission to leave his quarters. Fights broke out often. He alternated between feeling positive and bitter, spending most of his time watching television, working out and sleeping.
“It just humbled me,” he said. “I’m not embarrassed about it. You can’t rewind your past.”
Jefferson head coach Lawrence Pollard, Johnakin’s mother and his teammates kept his spirits up. They showed up for his court dates and talked with him on the phone. He expected teammates to turn their backs when he let them down; instead they rallied around him.
“It got into his head, ‘These people really care about me,’ ” Jefferson senior Jermoine Faison said.
It motivated Johnakin to get out by December, so he could rejoin the team. He’s been a major addition, providing a skilled big body while averaging six points and five rebounds per game. When he arrived at St. John’s last Saturday, he nearly broke down in tears.
“I used to think of this when I would go to sleep,” Johnakin said after the win. “I just want to be back home, I just want to play with my team.”
For now, he’s got his life back on track. But basketball season is coming to an end, either tomorrow, next Saturday at the Garden or a few weeks later if Jefferson reaches the state tournament.
Then the new Kareem Johnakin really will be tested. Will he keep his grades up and avoid falling back into bad habits?
He shakes his head at the question. The 21 months at Lincoln Hall changed him and the six months at Crossroads further scared him straight. He vividly remembers the date he went in — June 7 — and the date he got out — Dec. 13.
“Some things in life you don’t forget,” he said. “I’m different. I don’t want to be in that predicament anymore.”