Rock Hill native DJ Burns, darling of NCAA Tournament, much more than a big guy with moves

The questions became as predictable as they were tiresome, all tethered to the same observations: DJ Burns is a large man. DJ Burns can do things no large man should be able to do. DJ Burns — the N.C. State forward, the darling of this NCAA Tournament, overnight (over-week?) national star — is a large man who can do things no large man should be able to do — and therefore ...

Why isn’t he playing football?

Burns and his Wolfpack teammates arrived at State Farm Stadium on Thursday for a day of practice and media obligations in anticipation of the Final Four. The enormity of the moment struck Burns. All the Final Four signage. The Wolfpack’s logo everywhere, covering the door of the locker room and throughout the locker room itself; reminders abound that this was real — that N.C. State, left for dead a month ago, was actually here.

Players took selfies with a photo montage of themselves in the long hallway leading to the court. They scanned the scene with their phones, taking video they might replay one day for their kids or their grandkids. The stage was set for what’s to come — the two national semifinal games on Saturday, and then the final Monday night of the season; the national championship game.

“Oh, man,” Burns said of what he thought when he walked in and had taken a look around. “I thought it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen, basketball-wise. The way they set this place up is like no other. You don’t see this every day. This is not something that I’ll get to do again.”

He will miss aspects of it, undoubtedly. Maybe even the vast majority of it. This has been a once-in-a-lifetime run, with Burns taking his place in the pantheon of March (and early April) tournament stories that nobody could’ve predicted. That’s what makes those stories so special.

And yet for him there’s another side to it, too. The side that manifested through all those football-related questions he fielded here on Thursday. When Burns walked into the locker room, he took a seat near the middle of it. Dozens of media members immediately surrounded him.

So began an inquisition that was indirectly related to his size: that he’s 6-foot-9, that he’s listed at 275 pounds but more likely approaching a bigger number; that he can do things nobody that large should be able to do. And so it went like this, for a while:

Did you ever play football? What do you think about when people say you could play in the NFL? When you played football, what position? How long did you play football? What about football? Football, football, football. Do you have interest in playing football?

“Zero, yeah,” Burns said to that one. “I mean?”

And he paused for a brief beat, as if to think about it some more.

“Yeah, zero.”

Burns remained patient. That’s how Takela and Dwight Sr. raised him. But it was clear that after a while the questions started to wear on him. The answers became shorter. As if the subtext of those answers was: “OK, sure, I might look like a lineman — but, um, I’m here for the Final Four. Two games away from a national championship! Any interest in talking about that?”

During a 15-minute session with that media horde, Burns received no less than a dozen questions about a sport he does not play, has not played since eighth grade, and one he said he has “zero” interest in playing. So the scouts and the football-obsessed football reporters, who sometimes seem to approach the world as if football is the only thing happening in it, can stop taking football.

“I’m a basketball player,” Burns said. “We’re just going to keep it at that.”

Burns is not any old basketball player. He has become one of the stories of the tournament. One of the most-watched basketball players — NBA or women’s or international — in the world over the past two weeks. He has become a sensation, an immensely entertaining phenomenon; a wonder whose moves and grace defy his considerable size; a man who, yes, is adored in part because he’s big.

A few weeks ago, after the Wolfpack’s victory against Duke in the ACC Tournament, Burns said most of the people who’d been cheering State on that night in Washington D.C. weren’t so much rooting for him and his teammates, but rooting for Duke to lose. Well, they’re cheering on the Wolfpack now. They’re cheering on Burns, especially.

And when they are, who exactly are they rooting for? Who really is this marvel of March?

DJ Burns, the Music Man

He’s an artist for one. A musician. A man who makes beats. Who studied classical music.

Who spent years in a program for artistically gifted children at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, not far from the family home. Basketball has always been one of Burns’ pursuits. Music, another. His instruments are still back at home, waiting.

The piano. The upright bass. The saxophone, which he fell in love with and played through his years at York Preparatory Academy in Rock Hill. And here’s the thing about Burns, his mom, Takela, said during a recent phone interview: He plays basketball as if bound by musical notes.

“He plays to a beat,” she said. “He always has. You can see it.

“And no one can stop that rhythm. Like, no one.”

And you can see it. The way Burns backs down defenders. How he might spin in one direction and back in another. How he can go up and under. The soft touch. The footwork, as if he’s dancing. The little shimmy, if it’s an and-one. Burns is equal parts basketball savant and basketball artist. There’s a style there that can’t be taught. Artistry that can’t be coached.

‘The original 30’

Dwight and Takela always demanded he be well-rounded. It wasn’t going to just be sports, not in the Burns household. They both played basketball, themselves, growing up, and Takela, a lifelong educator, said she could take DJ on the court up until he was about 9 or 10. She was DJ’s first coach, the way she has been a first influence to so many other kids throughout Rock Hill.

She spent years as a middle school assistant principal. Now she’s in the same role at a Rock Hill elementary school. She lives in a neighborhood with many of her students, some of whom had just knocked on her door — not long before her interview for this story — and asked if she could come outside.

“I’m an old basketball player,” she said. “I’ll get out there and pretend like I’m dunking on them a little bit. The older I get the more I’m careful. But I still love my school children.”

That was one half of DJ’s parental support system growing up — a mom who’s a teacher and assistant principal who’s firm enough to discipline her students but loving enough to go outside and show them a thing or two on the court. The other half was a father who has made his life work out of helping those who’ve been lost find their way back.

For 25 years, Dwight Sr. has worked in probation and parole. He was the agent in charge of York County for about a decade, and then in the past two years became what he described as “the first statewide specialized program administrator.” He recited his title with a sense of pride.

“For me, helping someone who’s lost their way in their past and get back on track is the ultimate goal,” Dwight said.

After about a 40-minute phone conversation, Takela texted photos of herself and Dwight from when they were much younger. They’re high school athletes in two separate pictures — Takela going around a defender with her left hand, wearing the No. 30 like her son wears now; Dwight in a football jersey, No. 88, on his senior night.

“When the original 30 meets the tight end, what do you get?” Takela wrote. “DJ Burns Jr.”

She ended the message with a string of laughing emojis and some prayer hands.

‘A friend to the friendless’

DJ Burns is a servant, too, and perhaps that’s the most important part of his identity. It’s there on the court, with his ability to pass and share the moment; with the way he stands and cheers for his teammates; the way those teammates talk about him.

Everyone seems to have a DJ story. There was Ben Middlebrooks, his frontcourt mate, smiling on Thursday and recounting how he knew Burns was a different guy from the moment they met — “a unique guy, man,” who “has not lost perspective.”

“And he seems to be the same dude ... making jokes and lightening the mood and bringing everybody up.”

That’s DJ.

Also DJ: the guy who showed up at the Wolfpack basketball facility wearing a robe — and only a robe — when he came to practice the day after State returned from a trip to Las Vegas in November. State had gone to Vegas for the “Vegas Showdown,” and a couple of games against Vanderbilt and BYU. The organizers of the event gave players robes, as a gift.

And here was Burns, “on a random Sunday,” said Jordan Snell, one of his teammates, showing up for practice wearing just that robe. For laughs. To be weird. Because he knew his teammates would find it funny, or that it’d be something they might remember. That, you never know, it’d be a little detail one of them might remember two days before State’s first Final Four game in 41 years.

“It’s something new every day,” Snell said.

Burns has always been wired that way, whether to provide a bit of levity or to give something deeper and more lasting. When he was in third grade, his parents had to sit him down one day for a talk because he’d gone to school with a new coat and come back without it.

Where did it go? He hadn’t forgotten it. Nobody had stolen it.

Little DJ, it turned out, had given his coat away to a classmate who needed it. A friend “other kids picked on,” Takela said.

“DJ couldn’t stand it,” she said. “He’s always the friend to the friendless.”

Still, Mom and Dad had to have a conversation with him. Had to remind him, Taklea said, that “You’ve got to make sure you’re not cold before you can help someone else be warm, as well.”

‘Always have humility’

The desire to serve has remained a part of him. Burns is the on court centerpiece of this N.C. State team, yes, but he’s also the spiritual leader and heart of it. The guy his teammates look toward for comic relief and inspiration. He gives.

In a way it has been wired in him. Takela’s home was something like the team home for Burns’ teammates. Some of them would stay at the Burns house for days at a time. And when Burns was younger, Takela and Dwight took in several other kids and helped raise them, too, along with DJ and his younger sister, Nadia, a freshman basketball player at Newberry College; a sister, her mom said, who’s DJ’s biggest fan of all.

DJ comes from a line of those driven to serve. There’s his parents, yes. But also his grandmother on his mom’s side, who fostered countless children who needed a home.

“There’s so many community children that call my mom grandma,” Takela said, and her mom also led a neighborhood choir.

“Those children that were wayward, she would make sure their hair was done; that they were clean,” Takela said. And then, once that was settled and those kids were taken care of, “she’d make us harmonize.” They’d sing. Gospel music. The same kind of music that DJ sometimes requests on the team boombox after games. The same kind that, at times, has made the Wolfpack harmonize, too.

Burns learned humility from those stories about his grandma. He grew up watching his parents give kids in need a second chance. He learned, sometime before he gave away that coat, that “no one’s really above you or below you,” he said during a rare quiet moment on Thursday.

“And treat everyone with kindness. You never know their struggle, their story. And always have humility.”

‘DJ ... really loves life’

DJ Burns is the version of himself that everyone sees. The basketball player. The one who makes people wonder, “How did he just do that?” The one with the enviable moves. A ballerina in high tops. The soft hands. The spins. The smile. That oversized, glowing smile.

Takela surmises that’s why so many people have come to love her son.

Because he “keeps a smile on his face,” Dwight said.

“DJ is not easily rattled. DJ is a kid that really loves life.”

DJ is one who does those things despite what he’s constantly reminded of — his size. His body. Undoubtedly, that’s part of why people love him, too. America has something of an obsession for large men who provide entertainment. Think of Chris Farley. Eddie Murphy putting on a fat suit in The Nutty Professor. One of Mike Myers’ characters in the Austin Powers movies.

We like big men. They make us laugh, at times. In sports, we make athletes who are larger into caricatures of themselves. In football, everyone gets all excited when a lineman scores a touchdown, or makes an interception, or picks up a fumble and runs for a while. There goes the big man. Look at him rumble. There’s been a lot of that with Burns this NCAA Tournament.

It’s as if time stops when he’s backing down an opponent. Everyone turns to look.

What will he do this time? The spin? The fake spin and spin-around?

How does he do it?

There are people who love Burns because he shouldn’t be doing these things he’s doing — or so goes the thought — but there’s another side to it, too. An unkinder side. During his high school games at York Prep, his parents heard the jeers, the comments about their son, the name-calling. Same thing at Winthrop, where Burns became his conference’s player of the year before transferring to N.C. State, and yes, the same thing now. It has never stopped.

Because as much as people might love a big guy, others love nothing more than to make fun or try to tear down. To make Burns into something like a sideshow. A circus act.

It bothers his parents. How could it not, to hear some of the things people say about their son?

“We always tell him, don’t respond to foolishness,” Takela said. “Show them with your play. And that’s what he’s been doing. Like yeah, I might be heavy. But guess what, I just dunked on your favorite player, or I just spin-moved on your favorite player, or I just put the ball in the hole and stutter-stepped past your favorite player.

“Now what about that? Now go home.”

Dwight has told his son this: “Keep the noise silent in your head.”

“The more you try to tell DJ that he can’t do something, the more you’re going to push him to do it,” he said. “So when you’re thinking you’re fat-shaming him or you’re trying to get in his head by saying whatever these little names they try to call him ... he’s drawing energy from it.”

Sometimes Dwight hears things during games that he figures DJ hears, too.

In those moments, Dwight makes eye contact with his son. He throws up his fists.

“And when I do that, I’m telling him — go to work.”

Just DJ

And so DJ has been going to work. He has been working non-stop over the past several weeks, a period in which N.C. State went from having no chance at the NCAA Tournament to winning the ACC Tournament to becoming, ever so gradually, America’s Team. And Burns, America’s favorite player. Rock Hill’s favorite son has become a March darling. A story to remember.

Years from now people will be talking about him.

Years from now, he’ll continue to bring joy.

But it’s also obvious how those conversations might go.

Remember that Wolfpack team? With the big guy?

After the football questions died down on Thursday, after the crowd around him became much smaller, Burns considered a question about the fixation surrounding his weight and his body. He knows all that talk is out there. He knows how people see him. He knows maybe it’s the only thing some people see.

“It’s fine,” he said, in a tone that suggested perhaps he didn’t really think it was. “People need something to talk about. If you want to pay attention to what I look like instead of the stats, that’s on you.”

Soon the media horde was gone, completely. No more cameras. No more inane questions about a sport he hasn’t played competitively in almost a decade. No more inquiries about what it’d be like to play against Purdue All-American Zach Edey — a 7-foot-4 wonder, himself, of whom Burns said of the challenge: “That’ll be fun.”

But also: “I don’t care about what his accomplishments (are). He’s gotta lace them up, like me.”

Soon Burns’ world was quiet again, if just for a bit. Just him and his teammates. He could be himself again. The artist and the musician. The dancer. The robe-wearing jokester. Just DJ — the guy who has fueled this Wolfpack run on the court and off it; the one who’s impossible to miss, and yet is so much more than what everyone sees.