When a mixtape of a player goes viral, oftentimes it can mean the end of regular life for oftentimes incredibly high ranked prospects. They become the center of their respective towns, schools, and cities, and similarly will oftentimes have almost insurmountable expectations placed on them. They say pressure makes diamonds, but it can also be suffocating, and this has never been more true than for this week’s athlete: Seventh Woods.

Seventh was only a freshman when his first hoopmixtape titled “Seventh Woods is the BEST 14 Year Old in the Country” went viral, pulling in millions of views within the span of a few months and forever changing the life of a kid who had just started high school. The title didn’t exaggerate, as in the video Seventh dunks on and humiliates more opponents than I can count while at the same time the crowd at his local South Carolina high school loses their minds. Everyone viewing the video online was impressed as well, and Seventh began receiving national attention and with it, high expectations.

You see, when people see a player at such a young age dominating the competition to the extent that Woods was, they often forget to factor in all the other factors that go into a basketball player’s performance(personality, size, etc) and tend to focus more on hyping the player up as the next big thing, and this is what happened to Woods. Seventh was all of a sudden lumped into a category with high school phenoms like LeBron James, Andrew Wiggins, and Jabari Parker, and in some cases, like Seventh’s, the expectations are too much.

After his freshman year, Seventh never recaptured some of the same hype that initially followed him around his high school career. He was always an incredibly talented prospect receiving interest from and eventually committing to UNC, but the comparisons to LeBron and the other high school legends that used to follow him around have greatly diminished. Now, not many remember the once great freshman, despite his playing for a national power, but if you’d like to see the video that started it all, I highly recommend giving it a click.

“Imma Go off. Imma go off right now”

It was these words in his senior year that transformed Austin Rivers almost overnight from the son of an NBA coach to a viral sensation and one of the nation’s top prospects. Though now he’s a point guard for the Los Angeles Clippers, in high school Austin Rivers wasn’t even ranked until his senior year, but once the video of him destroying his competition came out, it was hard not to acknowledge his talent.

As a younger kid, Austin was always around the NBA because of father, Doc Rivers, who spent a decade in the NBA as a player and then for most of Austin’s childhood as a coach. Though now he plays for his father in the NBA, as a child Austin was always hampered by high expectations that he felt like he had to live up to. But in high school, he had no problem living up to the hype.

After the high school mixtapes, its debatable whether or not Austin actually lived up to his expectations. He was selected 6th in the NBA draft, and he’s played around 6 seasons in the NBA as to this point, so although he hasn’t lived up to the dominance he put on display in high school, he’s still a good player.

Basically, if you like athletic posters, swagger, and a legacy of basketball, give Rivers’ mixtape a click. Why not?

When we talk about the greatest individual scoring performances in basketball, oftentimes we think of Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 point game in the 60’s, or perhaps Kobe Bryant’s 81 point game in 2006 against the Raptors, both individual scoring performances the likes of which are incredibly rare in basketball, not just on the pro level, but on any level. However, this February a high school kid named Lamelo Ball from Chino Hills, California gave us a performance to rival any in high school history when he scored 92 points in a 146-123 win against rival Los Osos at age 15 to cap off an already highly publicized season which saw Lamelo go from simply being the younger brother of  former UCLA star and now Laker Lonzo Ball, to now having 2.6 million followers on social media(more than most NBA players) and being the first high school player to ever have his own signature shoe. So what is it about Lamelo that’s drawn so many eyes at such a young age?

<> at Galen Center on February 24, 2017 in Los Angeles, California.

Though Lamelo is now best known for his 92 point performance towards the end of his sophomore season, he really began to blow up earlier that year, when during another game as he was bringing up the ball he pointed at the half court line to let the defense know where he’d shoot from, drilled it, and walked back as calmly as if he made a layup. That video went viral too, as people from all over began wondering who this kid was and how and why he could have so much confidence to rise up from half court with impunity.  Little did they know, Lamelo is probably the flashiest high school player in the country, he comes from the Ball family, whose basketball pedigree is almost unparalleled (Lamelo’s brothers, Lonzo and Liangelo, play for the Los Angeles Lakers and UCLA Bruins, respectively), and that his team his one of the best in the country. In short, people love Lamelo because he’s brash, confident, flashy, and he’s got all the potential in the world. If you like to be entertained by watching basketball, watching Lamelo Ball is possibly the best way to do so at the high school level. After all, how often does anyone score 92?