Bates was on a magazine cover at 15. He was playing Division I college basketball at 17. Now he’s 19, his college career may be over, and N.B.A. success is anything but guaranteed.
YPSILANTI, Mich. — From time to time, Emoni Bates shows flashes of the player he was supposed to be. Like the moment in a recent game when he received the ball near the 3-point arc and took a couple of hard dribbles toward the basket, a 6-foot-10 bundle of kinetic energy, his spindly arms and legs flailing in rhythm with his bobbing, bundled-up braids.