Myles Johnson might make it to the NBA. But he wants a legacy beyond basketball.
Myles Johnson folded his 6-foot-10 frame into his restaurant seat for a lunchtime repast of salmon rolls, shrimp tempura and other Japanese delicacies, never imagining the menu would also feature a challenge from his mother:
— What are you going to leave your children, what is going to be your legacy?
In many ways, it was an odd question. Johnson was only 21. He was both a budding college basketball star and an emerging presence in the world of engineering, a year away from graduating magna cum laude from Rutgers University as part of a journey that would lead him to UCLA graduate school this fall.
— What is going to be your legacy?
Johnson wasn't even sure what he was going to have for dinner.
Gigi Johnson had intended her query as a way of stimulating more than small talk at the restaurant near their Long Beach home. She knew that basketball players who went on to the NBA usually gave back to their communities and told her son to pick a passion project, something he could sustain.
There were certainly things he wanted to change. In his college classes involving the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, Johnson watched the number of Black classmates dwindle to a handful as he
