Tyran Stokes has not even arrived to campus and he is already giving Bill Self a headache. The top-ranked recruit in college basketball spent his 4th of July with rappers Sexxy Red, Skillibeng, and Rob49.
It is not necessarily the company that he chose to keep, but rather, the activities for which he partook.
Perhaps the top freshman in college basketball should stay away from fireworks. You just know the Jayhawks were sweating. There might be a conversation coming in the next few days. Don’t risk an injury for no reason!
Who is Tyran Stokes?
At 6-foot-7, 230 pounds, Stokes was rated as a consensus five-star prospect in the recruiting Class of 2026. He was the top-ranked player in the country out of Rainier Beach High School in Seattle, Washington.
The highly-coveted forward held offers from 25 schools, including Alabama, Michigan, Houston, Gonzaga, North Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisville and USC. Any coach would’ve been thrilled to have him, obviously.
In the end, Stokes signed with Kansas in April and enrolled at the university on June 1 to take summer classes.
The Jayhawks are a legitimate national title contender. Stokes is going to play alongside Leroy Blyden Jr., Keanu Dawes, Taylen Kinney and Christian Reeves in the starting lineup. It features two ball-dominant guards, two bigs who will have an impact on both ends of the floor, and a superstar freshman who can be the primary catalyst of the offense. Shooting would be a little bit of a concern with those five players so Kohl Rosario will also be in the mix as a bigger guard who is better from the outside.
No matter who is around him, Tyran Stokes is going to be the focus. He averaged 31.0 points, 13.0 rebounds, 6.0 assists, and 4.0 steals as a senior while Rainier Beach to a 29-1 record and the Washington 3A state title.
He also led all players with nine rebounds to go along with 12 points, three assists and two blocked shots at the McDonald’s All-American game.
Darryn Peterson was drafted No. 2 overall during the NBA Draft in June. It is expected that Stokes will also be selected inside the top-five, if not No. 1 overall, next summer.
The true freshman Kansas basketball star spent the 4th of July with Sexxy Red, Rob49 and Skillibeng.
Tyran Stokes is only 18 years old. He arrived to Lawrence as a true freshman in college last month. And yet, he is already one of the biggest stars in the sport with more than 300,000 followers on Instagram and more than 250,000 on TikTok.
Stokes is also getting paid a lot of money to play for the Jayhawks. Some reports suggest that he is making $7 million as the highest-paid player in the NIL era but that number is not confirmed. I would guess his deal pays closer to $4-6 million.
Either way, that’s a lot of money.
Stokes can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. He is already entrenched in the greater world of pop culture.
Kansas’ newest hooper spent his Fourth of July in the trenches with Sexxy Red, Rob49 and Skillibeng. Sexxy Red has 5.3 million followers on Instagram. Skillibeng and Rob 49 have 1.3. It looks like they were filming a music video.
The concern is not about who Stokes was with. The concern is about what they were doing.
I am sure Bill Self and the Jayhawks coaching staff did not love to see their best player put his digits at risk.
I can guarantee that Stokes was not the only college basketball player to shoot fireworks on the 250th birthday of the United States but he might want to think twice about these kinds of things moving forward. There is no shame in just hanging out and leaving the roman candles to everybody else! Fingers are kind of important…