Queens’ Finest

Growing up on the island of Jamaica, the only sport Samardo Samuels knew was soccer. Tall and slender, he was a natural. However, at Muschett High School, the team was filled up before he got a chance.
Samuels was stuck - for the moment. Because of his size, basketball coaches there tried to lure him in. At first, though, he was not interested, ducking and dodging them for two weeks. Samuels had no interest in throwing a ball through a hoop; he wanted to kick it into a net.
Finally, he relented and joined the team. Good thing, too - very, very good thing in fact.
Four years later, the massive yet athletic 6-foot-9, 230-pounder is quite a prospect. Rivals.com has the Louisville-bound senior rated No. 6 in his class and the top center prospect in the nation. The soccer pitch and David Beckham are the farthest things from his mind now.
“He has an unusual combination of strength, power and finesse,” said local talent evaluator Tom Konchalski, publisher of the High School Basketball Insider. “He has really soft hands.”
Of course, this did not happen overnight. Samuels was spotted by Jamaican Basketball Development vice president Steve Johnston at the KFC/ISSA schoolboy competitions, just his second year into the new sport.
Johnston was immediately struck by the big man’s athleticism and natural skill, and convinced his parents their son would be better off in America, to further enhance his basketball career and education. Samuels moved to Laurelton with Johnston who was enlisted as his full-time guardian.
“It was tough, but I had to do it,” he said.
He started out at Our Savior New American, a private school in Centereach, Long Island. He did not stay there long. Samuels drew the interest of St. Benedict’s Prep coach Danny Hurley, the former Seton Hall star and son of St. Anthony (Jersey City, New Jersey) coaching legend Bob Hurley, after dominating his three Division I-bound centers as a freshman.
Every season at the Newark, New Jersey powerhouse has seen Samuels improve rapidly. Surrounded by stars, he has become a terror in the paint.
When he first came to Queens, he did not dunk and had to adjust to the game’s faster pace in America; in Jamaica, it is a half court game. Now, he dunks several times in one game, often when contested, throwing down jams of all kinds.
“I was keeping it in,” he joked.
Obviously, Samuels had the natural ability all along, as his basketball mentor Kareem Memminger and Hurley will testify to, but he has had help, too. Samuels credits the close relationship with Johnston, his legal guardian, the way Memminger has nurtured his talent, and of the utmost importance, his two years at St. Benedict’s.
“Every day you leave the gym at St. Benedict’s,” he said, “you feel like you learned something.”
Obviously, Hurley’s no-nonsense approach has rubbed off on Samuels. This summer he started working with a personal trainer two days a week in between AAU tournaments with the Metro Hawks and national showcases.
“I think as a junior last year he would have started at half the Big East [Conference] schools,” Hurley said of Samuels, who averaged 19 points and 12 rebounds per game in leading St. Benedict’s to a top 10 national ranking.
He hears the whispers from scouts and friends that he is a future NBA Lottery pick, that if it were not for the new age limit, he could make the jump from high school to the pros. But it does not faze him.
“It’s a cool feeling, but at the end of the day I don’t let that stop me from working hard,” Samuels said. “The game gives you what you put in. It’s all about being hungry.”
There is one more reason, though. When Samuels departed Jamaica, it was a tough decision, leaving his parents and friends and family behind. But he did it with the hope it could benefit the entire Samuels clan one day.
“If I can keep doing well, one day they can come over here,” he said. “That’s what I work for; I want to make their life better.”