GREGG DOYEL

Doyel: The Brothers Dunham; Little Tikes no more

Gregg Doyel
gregg.doyel@indystar.com
Kenton Dunham, left, and Cole Dunham, right, teach ball handling drills during an open gym at Pendleton Elementary School, Feb.y 24, 2016.

PENDLETON – It starts on a Little Tikes basketball goal.

I mean, we have other options. It could start at Butler, where senior forward Kellen Dunham is on pace to become the Bulldogs’ third 2,000-point scorer. It could start at Pendleton Heights High School, where his younger brother, Kenton, is a senior who scored 44 points – one off Kellen’s school record – earlier this season on senior night. And where freshman Cole Dunham is a pass-first point guard with quite the knack for scoring himself.

Heck, it could start at Pendleton Elementary School, where I’ve watched the youngest of the four Dunham boys – Jamison – crossing over sixth-graders and stepping back to bury 22-footers. He once scored 37 points in a game, little Jamison did. This story could start with him.

But, no. We’ll start this story on the Little Tikes hoop in the living room, because that’s where it all started. I’ve seen the picture, and it looks like this: It’s 1995, and Jim and Christy Dunham have just bought the plastic goal for their first son. Kellen is standing under the goal, with a basketball in his hands. He’s wearing a diaper. He’s 1.

Things are about to get broken.

“My mom and dad knew what they were getting into,” Kellen says.

No, Kellen. They did not.

* * *

So many things, shattered. Artwork on the wall. Pictures on the wall. OK, the wall – that was broken, too. The Dunham boys grew up with that indoor basketball goal, that Little Tikes, and they still have it. Same one. Still in the house. The peg that supports the adjustable backboard snapped years ago, so someone wedged a plastic clothes hanger where the peg should be. Today there are four hangers wedged in there, keeping the thing upright.

“Probably the best purchase we ever made,” says the patriarch of this basketball family, Jim Dunham, a coach at Brian Hahn’s Academy of Basketball.

One after another, the brothers Dunham grew up on that goal. When Kellen became too big, his brothers made him play from his knees. When he was a 6-4 sophomore at Pendleton Heights, they made him stop blocking shots. All he can do today – and yes, he still plays on it today – is defend and hope his brothers miss.

Dunham boys rarely miss.

FILE – Pendleton Heights' Kenton Dunham averaged 14.7 points as a senior.

Kenton has averaged 14.7 points and 4.0 assists this season for Pendleton Heights. When he left the Northeastern game earlier this season bleeding from the chin, Kenton had the cut glued shut and finished with 16 points, five rebounds and seven assists. Then he went to the hospital for five stitches.

“Probably our toughest kid,” Jim says.

Try being a Dunham boy. You better be tough.

“Older brothers beat on the younger ones,” Kenton says, knowing he became the older one himself. “Oh absolutely. Older pride. I did it to Cole.”

Cole’s the aberration in a family of pure scorers, “the one and only Dunham who doesn’t look for his shot,” Jim says. “He’s told me, ‘I don’t care if I shoot at all.’ ”

Life had other ideas. Cole is part of an exceptional freshman class at Pendleton Heights, and most of his classmates play for the junior varsity. At 5-4 and close to 100 pounds, Cole’s usually with the freshmen.

“Those (great classmates) are no longer on his team,” Jim says. “So now Cole needs to score.”

And so he does, with a season high of 18 for the Pendleton freshmen. When Cole gets his inevitable growth spurt, watch out.

“Huge upside,” Kellen Dunham says.

And then there’s Jamison, the best of them all. No, really. He’s better at this age than Kellen ever was. All the kids enjoy basketball, but Kellen and Jamison were the ones waking up, finding a ball and dribbling it through the house – Jamison still does that, actually – and Jamison has been ranked as high as No. 6 in the state and No. 38 nationally by scouting services that rank kids that young. He scored 40 points in a sixth-grade game last week, going 11-of-13 on 3-pointers.

When the Dunham family moved from Mt. Vernon to Pendleton in 2008 – Jim’s in business when he’s not coaching; Christy’s a teacher – Jamison joined a preschool league with a 50-foot court. And Jamison, this littly bitty Dunham, he was lighting it up.

“In his first game, he hit one from halfcourt,” says the coach of that preschool team, Brett Bubalo.

Bubalo found Jim Dunham and told him: “I don’t know where you came from, but your son might be too good for this league.”

Jamison was 4.

“He’s a phenom,” Kellen says.

You weren’t bad, I tell Kellen.

“I wasn’t close to Jamison,” he says. “He’s a special kid and a special player. All my brothers and myself know he’s exceptional.”

Jamison’s only issue is height. He’s built just like Kenton, who is 5-10, which is why he’ll go to Ball State for financial planning, not basketball. Kellen’s surplus of height? One of life’s mysteries. He was in eighth grade, getting a physical for the school year, when he asked the doctor how tall he’d grow to be. She handed him a growth chart and said he’d be lucky to reach 6 feet.

When Jim Dunham walked his son to the car, he heard something ripping. Kellen was tearing up that growth chart. And he was grumbling.

“She doesn’t know,” Kellen muttered.

The next year, Dunham measured 6-0. The next year, 6-4. Today he’s 6-6 and the best shooter in the Big East. He’s an NBA prospect.

It started on that goal.

* * *

Butler's Kellen Dunham is one of the top shooters in the Big East.

There’s a video. It’s a Little Tikes dunk contest between Cole and Jamison, maybe 8 and 5 years old at the time. Jamison is wearing the No. 24 Kobe Bryant jersey he wore every day for about three months, and both kids are dunking on J.J. Redick. Kind of.

The Dunham family dog, a boxer named Emmy, answers to Redick for some reason. Well, you know the reason. This is a basketball family, even the dog, and when Cole and Jamison stop dunking and start shooting jumpers, Redick fetches the ball and gives it to the next kid. Good dog.

In those days Kellen was putting Jamison through daily workouts. Jamison would ask Kellen if they could play “Coach,” and here’s what that meant: drills on the Little Tikes goal, one basketball junkie helping another. Free throws, pull-up jumpers, dribbling drills. Jamison couldn’t get enough.

Kellen was the same way at 5, couldn’t get enough of that Little Tikes goal, including the time his family threw a Super Bowl party in the basement. The goal was down there, so Kellen moved it off to the side and spent the Super Bowl shooting a basketball.

“I’d sometimes reel a grown-up into rebounding for me,” Kellen says.

A few years later there was the boys’ party in the basement. Lots of kids. One goal. Basketball was played. A picture on the wall was broken. The shattered glass was still shooting across the floor when Kellen’s mom was bounding down the stairs.

“Party’s over,” Kellen says.

* * *

Jamison Dunham, right, drives past Ethan Griffin, left, to hit a basket during an open gym at Pendleton Elementary School, Feb. 24, 2016.

Here’s what they do inside the Pendleton Heights basketball program. On senior day they give their seniors a special basketball, painted green with the player’s name and jersey number in white. On his senior day, when he scored 44 points on Feb. 16 against New Castle, Kenton was given a ball with the No. 32.

Christy was standing with Cole and Jamison, waiting to get Kenton’s ball, when she said: “We need to put this with Kellen’s senior ball.”

And then …

“Cole and Jamison both look at me with big eyes,” she says.

See, the Dunham boys play basketball. We’ve established that, right? They play so often, and in so many places, that they’ve gone through dozens of balls.

“Somehow we tend to lose basketballs around our house,” Kellen says. “We find ways to gain resources. I wouldn’t say we steal them, but we come across them.”

Seton Hall offers Butler a chance to strengthen r�sum�

Right. So one day a few years ago, Jamison had stolen, er, come across Kellen’s ball from his Pendleton Heights senior day in 2012. Painted green. Kellen’s name and number, 20, in white. Jamison needed a ball. He was 9. He grabbed Kellen’s senior ball and went to a friend’s house.

And left the ball in the yard.

Two years later, Cole watched Pendleton Heights bring out Kenton’s special basketball and thought: Oh no.

“I just knew Jamison would blame it on me,” Cole says, so here’s what he did: He threw Jamison under the bus. He told his mom what had happened to Kellen’s ball from 2012. Jamison came back with return fire – “He left it there!” – but Jim and Christy Dunham just laugh about the whole thing. So does Kellen. Basketballs come and go.

Brothers, they’re forever.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.

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