He's going right. Everyone knows he's going right, because he's barely 20 with just six years of experience in organized ball, and pretty much all he can do is go right. Makes no difference. The young man goes right, and goes right past John Amaechi, reducing the Utah center to an Easter Island statue. A dribble or two along the baseline, and Salt Lake's Delta Center grows quiet, expectant. He already dunked on 7'2" Greg Ostertag early in the game and now readies for takeoff again. The left foot plants, just a foot or two on the front side of the basket, and the majestically contoured body rises. And glides. And rises some more.

	The Suns, and the league, have been blown away by Amare.

He starts a deliberate midair twirl. His head is even with the rim, and as he turns his eyes to it, he appears to be taking measurements. Altitude. Temperature. Barometric pressure. He is as unhurried as a man in slippers doing a Sunday crossword. He decides conditions are perfect, and his bridge cable of a right arm cocks and stretches and snaps around and down like a catapult. The ball flies out of his hand. Fast. Hard. But with a grace note. His muscled, 6'10", 245-pound body is easily capable of ripping down the rim, yet no part of him touches the hoop, not even his hand. There is no echoing thunk! of a normal NBA power dunk. Instead, the ball goes through the basket brisk and tidy, puncturing the arena silence with a crisp, delightful noise as it flies cleanly through the nylon cords.

Thwiipp!

The Utahans exhale an appreciative "ooohhh." He's not even on their team, but the Jazz fans have seen -- and heard -- the future. They have seen -- and heard -- Amare Stoudemire.

***

In just over two months, Stoudemire has gone from anomaly -- the only high school player taken in a draft dominated by foreign players -- to the talk of the NBA. A combination of power, quickness and hustle, he has helped turn the Suns into the league's hottest young team. Since replacing the injured Tom Gugliotta in the lineup on Nov. 23, Stoudemire has also created a pickle for coach Frank Johnson, who works for two of Amare's biggest fans, Phoenix owner Jerry Colangelo and GM Bryan Colangelo. "Anytime Amare's on the bench," Johnson says, "it's like Jerry and Bryan have a buzzer shocking my seat."

Not that Johnson needs much prodding. The Suns, who missed the playoffs last season, are 19–11 with Stoudemire in the starting lineup, good for fifth place in the rugged Western Conference (through Jan. 16). His rebounding -- third in the league on the offensive boards (3.6) and 10th overall (9.4) -- shotblocking and roof-beam shoulders lend an inside physical presence to a squad that desperately needed one. And his surprising emergence as a third scoring threat (15.1 points a game as a starter, 13.1 overall) behind All-Star point guard Stephon Marbury and the high-flying Shawn Marion has created one of the most exciting trios in the game. And he hasn't even developed a go-to move yet. "Just the thought of Amare down low opens up the defense for everyone else," says Marbury.

Marbury put Stoudemire square in the middle of his feud with Kevin Garnett, saying that comparing the two as rookies was like comparing Michael Jordan (Amare) to Mario Elie (KG). That was after watching Stoudemire go off for 38 and 14 against the T-Wolves, including one sequence when he blocked a KG shot, then dunked over him on the next play. Opposing coaches have used Stoudemire's intensity to motivate such underachieving high school grads as the Bulls' Tyson Chandler and the Wizards' Kwame Brown. Stoudemire stays above the fray, playing with a stony demeanor on the court and refusing to get into debates off it. "If somebody wants to use me to help them play better, okay," he says. "But I don't think about that. I just do what I gotta do."

What he does is get people excited. At various times this season, Stoudemire has drawn comparisons to Zo, Hakeem, CWebb, Moses Malone, Darryl Dawkins, James Worthy, Dennis Rodman (pre-dye), Roy Tarpley (pre-drugs) and Shawn Kemp (pre-carbs). His dunks incite raucous celebrations among even jaded vets. Marbury's grimacing, head-shaking reaction to Stoudemire's transcontinental jam on the Clippers' Michael Olowokandi may be the priceless replay of the season. "He's a freak, a highlight film," says Suns guard Randy Brown, a former Jordan teammate in Chicago. "He gets all of us going."

Stoudemire doesn't say much but makes it all sound so simple. "I just come out and play hard every game," he says. "I'm never scared. It's the way I've been raised by my family: Never fear."

The bravado lasts until the subject changes. Marbury's been touting Stoudemire for an All-Star spot. Asked if he agrees, Stoudemire stops short, and for the first time, looks like a confused rookie. "I don't know," he says. Pause. "I don't want to sound conceited."

Of course, none of this was supposed to happen. Not now. Maybe not ever. Amare Stoudemire was not supposed to turn around the Suns and outshine Yao Ming -- or even Mike Dunleavy. He was not supposed to come in and soak up everything the coaches told him, intimidate opponents with his dunks or light up the locker room with his smile. He was not supposed to drop those 38 points on the T-Wolves, grab 21 boards against Memphis (both Suns' rookie records) or attract the longest autograph line at the Suns' recent open practice. He was not supposed to handle the money, the travel, the life. He was too young, too raw and too ... well, you must have heard about his background, right?

Before he was posterizing NBA big men, Stoudemire was the poster boy for all things wrong with American youth basketball. He grew up in Lake Wales, Fla., and in true Florida style, started out as a football player with dreams of playing wideout in Division I. He didn't even play organized basketball until he was 14, after a six-inch growth spurt shot him up to 6'7". But it wasn't long before he was attacking the basket like a defensive end, dunking fearlessly and chasing down every rebound.

And it wasn't long before his size and talent made him a target, and left him chasing a trail of broken promises that rendered him a basketball vagabond. He attended six high schools in five years and hooked up with just as many outside coaches. A few had his interests at heart; more than a few didn't. Among the people who tried to give Stoudemire "guidance" was a minister who was jailed -- for the fourth time in the past decade -- after a bribery conviction. Among his stops was Mt. Zion Academy in North Carolina, where Stoudemire got caught up in a mess that saw all but three players, egged on by head coach Joel Hopkins, desert the school for another prep school called Emmanuel Christian (The Magazine, March 19, 2001). Emmanuel turned out to be a cruel joke, a one-room school in which the entire student body was the basketball team. Stoudemire left, his transcript in tatters. In five years of high school, Amare played basketball for two.

The vultures circled because of Stoudemire's difficult family life. His father died suddenly when Amare was 12. His brother Hazell, a promising athlete who played high school basketball with Peter Warrick and taught Amare the game, went to prison on drug and sexual abuse charges. His mother, Carrie, was in and out of jail for myriad petty offenses and probation violations. Stoudemire became a case study, a media symbol, a victim of the system.

But he stubbornly refused to play that role. Instead, he just kept playing on AAU teams and at camps. After a comparatively normal senior year at Cypress Creek High, where he averaged 29 points and 15 rebounds a game, Stoudemire was named Florida's Mr. Basketball. "With my family, I felt I needed to make it," he says. "No matter what else was happening, every time I stepped on the court, I just did whatever I wanted to do." More than a few NBA teams were intrigued -- the hometown Magic tried desperately to move up in the draft -- and he was taken ninth by the Suns.

He can now smile at the headline pinned on his bedroom wall: "The Best High School Player You May Never See."

***

These days, Amare's 14-year-old brother, Marwan, bounces around the Suns' arena, chatting up the coaches, staffers and security guards like he owns the place. Amare couldn't be happier for him. Marwan's father died a short time after Amare's, and the two faced many of the same struggles together. When Amare signed his $5.7M contract, he insisted his little brother move out with him. "He's like my heart," Amare says. "Me and him stuck together, and even in the rough times, we just made things fun, and we have a lot to share."

On Dec. 5, Carrie joined her sons in Phoenix after serving time for a probation violation. She keeps a low profile, living in a house Amare rents for her and Marwan near the one he bought for himself in Phoenix. It hurts Amare that his mother's past is rehashed in every new story about him. "It gets ridiculous that everything is always negative," says Michael Walker, a friend from Lake Wales who now lives with Amare. "A lot of his strength is from her. Since she's been back, he's had his record games. Nobody else might understand, but his mother is the reason he made it."

Just to make sure Amare made it in Phoenix, the Suns set up a safety net that includes assistant GM Mark West, a former center on the Suns playoff teams of the early '90s, and defensive guru Tim Grgurich. Veteran big men Scott Williams and Bo Outlaw are there to teach him the tricks of post play and life on the road. But, says Johnson, "he's a good kid, and he's really had no need for it. He gets his support from the other young guys on this team, like Casey Jacobsen and Joe Johnson."

	The rookie plays more like a veteran.

Says Bryan Colangelo, "There's an intensity to him, a presence about him on the court, that you can't fake."

That presence was on display in the Suns' Jan. 8 game against the Jazz. When an official mistakenly gave the scorer's table Stoudemire's number 32 instead of Marion's 31 on a foul call, the alert Amare politely but firmly called it to the referee's attention, and the mistake was quickly fixed. "If I get a bad call, I don't complain, but I'll go over later and say, 'Mr. Ref, I didn't foul him,'" he says. "You've got to earn your respect."

Yeah, but "Mr. Ref"?

"Well," says Amare, "I don't know all their names yet."

This deference to authority may explain why Stoudemire leads the Suns with 224 trips to the foul line, remarkable for a rookie. It also explains why he's so popular with teammates -- especially the Suns' stars, Marion and Marbury, the latter being his unofficial PR agent. "I said in the summer he'd be one of the three best dunkers in the league," says Steph. "He's as strong as anyone, but he jumps like a little guard. He flies."

It is not just Stoudemire's dunks that force people to rethink old notions. He is a new combination, so many things that aren't normally thought of together. Strong and quick. Young and mature. Giddy and professional. Humble and fearless. From a rough background but solidly grounded.

People couldn't see it all before, but now the bottom line is obvious, in bold type in every scouting report in the league. No matter what's put in his way, Amare Stoudemire knows how to go right.

This article appears in the February 3 issue of ESPN The Magazine.