Terrence Clarke died three years ago. A tidal wave of elite Mass. basketball players is keeping his memory alive.
Jason Asemota is one of Massachusetts’s brightest young basketball talents. A four-star guard/forward from Lynn, Asemota just finished his senior season at Hillcrest Prep in Phoenix. He’ll continue his ascension at Baylor and have a shot at the NBA.
Clarke’s talent and competitive fire as a 6-foot-8-inch guard put him on the path to greatness. The Greater Boston area has produced plenty of talented players this century: Nerlens Noel, Shabazz Napier, Wayne Selden, Bruce Brown, and Jalen Adams, to name a few.
Clarke’s gravitational pull, especially among kids, was different.
Sebastian Wilkins, a four-star wing from Canton, met Clarke during a basketball camp at the Dana Barros Basketball Club in Stoughton. Clarke was watching him play, and came up to Wilkins after to chat and offer praise.
“For my generation, he’s the biggest thing to come from Boston,” Wilkins said. “For him to say that, I really appreciated it.”
Jaylen Harrell, a four-star guard from Dorchester who plays at CATS Academy, had to do a double-take when he first met Clarke at the Tobin Community Center in Roxbury, but developed a friendly rapport as they frequently crossed paths in the city.
“When he was in the city and you saw him, it was like you wanted to be him, growing up as a basketball player, especially coming from Boston,” Harrell said.
Elite prospects often shut themselves off from local basketball participation given the added injury risk. But
Clarke competed in the Boston Neighborhood Basketball League until he couldn’t.
I was just a kid he used to see all the time, so he could’ve easily looked me off and kept it pushing, and went to the cameras and just gone about his day,” Norman said. “And he took time to chop it up with me, and he didn’t act like he didn’t know me.
Tre Norman, a Boston native and a freshman at Marquette, also grew up running into Clarke at the Tobin Community Center. Norman once traveled with Clarke to a tournament in Indiana, when Norman was in middle school and Clarke was already a national name. Among elite young talent from around the country, Clarke made sure to show Norman love.
“That kind of meant the world to me at the time, because like I said, I wasn’t really anything yet. Just knowing him made me feel like I was somebody.”
Headlined by Dybantsa, Massachusetts boys’ basketball is thriving. Nationally ranked players are popping up from Fall River to Brockton, to Boston, up to Lowell, and west to Springfield.
RELATED: You couldn’t find a seat to watch Cooper Flagg vs. AJ Dybantsa at the Hoophall Classic. It lived up to the hype.
Arlington native Bensley Joseph, who is transferring to Providence after three seasons at Miami, was a close friend of Clarke’s. Dasonte Bowen, a fellow Brewster Academy standout from Dorchester, played his sophomore year at Iowa.
The talent really picks up starting with Norman’s 2023 high school class.
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