Kemba Walker’s extraordinary footwork has its origins in dance

All-NBA point guard Kemba Walker’s footwork has been renowned since it helped him put UConn on his back for the national title in 2011. But few may know that footwork has roots in the dance troupe that helped shape the young Walker’s future.

Boston Celtics point guard Kemba Walker has long had amazing footwork, but he didn’t pick it up on a basketball court, surprisingly.

At age eight, a young Kemba rocking braided locks showed up in a dance studio belonging to Marilyn Patterson already able to do the “Bogle”, a Jamaican dancehall reggae move resembling the undulating waves of the Caribbean his family hails from.

Today, Walker, coming off an All-NBA season where that footwork helped him shake defenders with ease, looks poised for another extraordinary season inflected by those dance lessons, now two decades distant.

“He was a dedicated dancer,” said Patterson (via the Wall Street Journal’s Aditi Kinkhabwala). “Every time he had to go to practice, he’d come to me and say, ‘Miss Marilyn, I have basketball.’ And then he’d make up for it and come another day to dance.”

The Bronx native found his dancing legs as young as four years old, when he’d make a habit of poking into a local laundromat on University Avenue that regularly played reggae.

Walker would size up a captive audience among the patrons washing their clothes, and once he had their attention, would try out his moves, sometimes even getting tips according to his mother Andrea.

The former Husky still remembers joining Patterson’s dance troupe all these years later: “We had a little dance group, two boys and I wanted to say eight or nine girls,” he offered (via MassLive’s Tom Westerholm). “We just went around the city, dance competitions and stuff like that.”

Quite a lot of them, actually — one of them being at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem. Unable to afford a video camera in the days before everyone walked around with one in their pocket, there is no video record.

“There wasn’t no YouTube, there wasn’t nobody recording. And I was a nobody, so nobody knew”, he explained, while being demure about if the performance was a success.

Asked by ESPN’s Zach Lowe if the audience might have booed the young troupe, Walker replied, “Never. They can’t boo people our age. They can’t boo young kids. We were like 10 years old.”

In some ways, it was a prelude to his basketball life, where he would replicate that footwork honed on the stage of one of New York City’s most hallowed stages for the craft that would give him a crucial edge in his evolution from dancer to hooper.

“[I]t’s like [being] a basketball player playing in [Madison Square Garden],” he explained. “As a dancer when you’re 10, the Apollo is huge … That’s a legendary place.”

“That’s where it all comes from,” his father, Kenya Walker, said of his extraordinary footwork. “The dancing.”

It’s not just his friends and family who noticed the connection. An anonymous NBA scout noticed in 2011 ahead of Walker’s legendary run to an NCAA title, stating “He has tremendous balance, his body is always totally under control and it starts with his feet.”

Patterson, his dance teacher, sees the mark of his time with her in how he uses elements of popping — a style of dance employing rapid, jerky movements — to shake defenders in the NBA.

It was that footwork that helped him shake a defender on now-teammate Brad Wanamaker’s Pitt team to sink a game winner sparking that historic run.

The hours and hours of practice at dance helped instill the ethic that transformed that cute kid throwing down in a laundromat into one of the game’s shiftiest players, producing a will to win that has taken on a life of its own.

“He’s a perfectionist,” said Minnesota Timberwolves reserve Shabazz Napier (via Slam’s Alex Squadron), a former teammate at UConn. “He wants to perfect everything he does. He wants to be one of the greats. He wants to get after it every time.”

“He understands that he has to have that mentality where he just continues to push and work at whatever he needs to,” added the two-time NCAA champion.

Nearly two decades after that performance at the Apollo, Kemba’s footwork is still getting us out of our seats.

Though the audiences might be a wee bit bigger.