In the Central District, residing in an unassuming gray building a little ways down the street from the Afro Mini-Mart, is the Rotary Boys and Girls Club. The place is a little shabby and has a faint musty smell, but during my visit I find myself intensely jealous of the kids there.

It’s right after school, and boys and girls are pouring in, chattering, buying candy bars and choosing video games and leaping on the couches. I recognize several kids from Garfield, and there’s this strong sense of community that I kind of desperately wish I had.

There’s a trophy case near the entrance of the building, and among the dozens of photographs and awards is a picture of Tony with the heading “Youth of the Year.” I can tell that it’s from a little while ago, because Tony only looks about nineteen in it. There is no mention of his relation to basketball; nothing about his number-one ranking or AAU victories. To the kids and adults at the Rotary Boys and Girls Club, Tony Wroten is nothing special. They’ve known him since he was five and they love him for all the right reasons. The little kids flock around him when he arrives after school, and he plays tag and video games and chess with them. He loves little kids, his mom tells me, even though sometimes he argues with them about Connect Four.

I talk to Darryl Hennings in a room that can only be described as the Lego Room. Huge troughs full of plastic blocks overflow on their shelves. Each wall is painted red, yellow, green, or blue; and tiny, immobile yellow plastic knights grimace at us from atop their four-color castles. Hennings takes a seat in this room, leans back, and silences his phone for the third time since we made our introductions. It’s Rick Pitino, head coach at the University of Louisville, he says, but it’s no big deal. He calls all the time.

Hennings started the Rotary basketball program with recently ex-Garfield coach Dan Finkley, and has coached Tony since he was in second grade, but Tony didn’t play in the kindergarten to second-grade league. “For the most part,” says Hennings, “that league is to, you know, just kind of get some kids out there, introduce them to basketball, get them some social skills, and most of the kids just run around. I mean, we couldn’t allow him to do that to those little kids when he was in second grade. He just knew what he was doing; I mean, when he came down, he was looking for someone to dish the ball off to when he went to the basket.”

“And you could just see the frustration,” says Mrs. Wroten.

Instead, Tony played on the fifth-grade team while he was in second and third grade, and he continued playing two years up after that. But Hennings is adamant that Tony is just one of the kids. He gives him credit for what he’s accomplished, but emphasizes that he has a long way to go. When I mention how humble Tony seems to be, Hennings explodes into laughter.

“You think so?” he chuckles. “He knows how to play the game every now and then, but he knows…he knows he’s the stuff. We’ve had to have a few talks about some of the comments that he makes in other interviews. He’s confident — right on the brink of being cocky.”

The Rotary Boys and Girls Club is largely responsible for making Tony who he is and helping him progress, but its biggest job right now is keeping Tony in check; reining him in every once in a while. He comes in after school, sits on that run-down couch, plays checkers with seven-year-olds and bickers over video games with kids who have known him since before he could dunk or make a basket from behind half-court or was offered a scholarship to UW. And maybe, for a little while, he can forget what some rankings guy in Kentucky tells him he is, and what he needs to be.

Tony has traveled in the AAU summer tournaments for years, but somehow all he has to say about it is that they play basketball all day long, and that there is a breakfast buffet. What exactly do you do every day, Tony? Wake up, eat, play basketball all day long.

After trying to drag something out of him for a good five minutes, I am ready to give up. “Tony,” I say. “What is the most memorable part of the summer tournament?”

He gives the ceiling a once-over. Then he takes his hat off, slaps it down at a slightly different angle, and says, “The girls.

“Lots of girls. They’re always there. Especially night games…they stand there, they act like they aren’t there for us, but they know they are.”

The girls can be fourteen, or they can be seventeen or eighteen or twenty-two. Last summer in Houston, a girl named Diane approached him and asked him how old he was. He said fourteen. She was seventeen.

“Did she think you were lying?” I ask.

“No,” he says, “she knew it would be in that range because it was an eighth-grade tournament.”

But Hennings tells me how strictly the players are monitored on these trips. “They don’t get to leave the hotel — they can go the lobby, and that’s about it. Everything is pretty strategic: they go to the room, they go to the gym, they go to a movie, as a unit, you know, supervised. You know, you’re in a new city, a lot of these kids can be mistaken for grown men, and they can get in trouble.”

“Well,” says Tony, “we know we can’t bring the girls back to the house, so we try to stay at the gym as long as we can; watch as many games as we can.”

Diane had a brother who was playing in the tournament. But the coach was like, ‘You know you can’t bring them back to house, so say what you have to say now.’ We got mad and we just left.”

The girls in the middle school circuit are less excited about jersey numbers or rankings, Hennings says, than they are simply about a fresh batch of boys in town to ogle. It’s not some kind of adolescent groupie scene; what takes place mostly consists of giggles and awkward conversation.

Summers now will be different. “He’s just about to step into the real — the seriousness of it,” says Finkley. “The high school circuit is a whole other level. They know who the stars are, so they’ll find a way to say hi to Tony or walk in front of him, and catch somebody’s eye, whether it be at the gym, whether it be at the restaurant, or whatever. They’ll know. They will know who the stars are.

“I’ve told him always, I’ve said, keep the circle around you tight. Because everybody’s gonna be pulling at you. Keep the circle around you tight. Because you don’t know who’s who.”

Tony has a lot to deal with nowadays, and it doesn’t look like he’ll get a break anytime soon. He’ll get taller, stronger, better; he might even start shaving. He’ll have to suss out who’s who in the oncoming blitzkrieg of people: new girls, new coach, new team. He’s a sophomore now, so all the colleges that have been beating around the bush since middle school can now openly and relentlessly recruit him. There are people who want him, and there are people who want him gone. He’s a target, and all he can do is handle himself with grace and integrity.

Tony will have to get used to the crowds, because everything is changing, and everyone is pushing in around him. Everyone wants something from him. The trick is knowing how much to give, and how much is his to keep. He has everything to gain and everything to lose.

If Tony Wroten does sign that ten million dollar contract, though, there had better be a five-star dining experience with my name on it. I know how to hold a grudge.