David Craig would like nothing more than to be treated just like anyone else. That’s very difficult, considering he’s 7-foot-1 and just turned 18 years old.
He has seen the stares as he walks into gas stations, even fielded numerous conversations about his height.
Moments after an interview with the Times Free Press during an AAU basketball tournament in Louisville, Kentucky, a man walked up to him and started a 10-minute conversation about how he knew Craig was “going be in the league,” a reference to the McCallie senior’s NBA prospects. The man got Craig’s schedule for the rest of the weekend and promised to come see him play.
That’s fine, but Craig wants to be seen as more than just a tall person. His height came as a surprise to him and his family, and some struggles came with that. He’s a deep thinker who came to Chattanooga from Johannesburg, South Africa, with the hopes of playing professionally someday, but he also happens to have grown 16 inches in the past four years.
Yeah, 16 inches. Craig was 5-9 at the beginning of 2017, when he was still in South Africa. By the end of that year, he was 6-5. When he arrived at McCallie in January 2019, he had grown to 6-9, and he has tacked on at least four inches since.