Yves Missi was 4 years old when his brother, Steve, left their home in Yaoundé, Cameroon, for the United States.
Steve had hoops dreams. He played at Montverde Academy in Florida and then earned a scholarship to Harvard, where he captained the last Crimson Tide team to make the NCAA Tournament in 2015.
Yves made a similar leap more than a decade later. As a 16-year-old, he enrolled at a prep school in Maryland. A Cameroon flag was one of the items he brought with him. It originally belonged to Steve.
“That was his flag he used whenever he was younger,” said Yves, who is 12 years Steve’s junior. “I stole it from him. I was looking through his stuff. I found it. I was like, ‘I am keeping it.’ I don’t even know if he knows it.”
Steve was a math major at Harvard who now works as a data analyst in Paris. Yves is a rookie center on the New Orleans Pelicans, the team that took him with the 21st pick in last summer’s draft out of Baylor.
The Pelicans’ interest in Yves in the pre-draft process was not a secret. The team felt fortunate he was still on the board when they picked.
In his first two NBA games, there have been signs that Yves can be an NBA contributor sooner than anyone expected. The 20-year-old scored 12 points, grabbed seven rebounds and blocked three shots in his NBA debut Wednesday, after which his phone was lit up with messages from friends and family across the globe.
“It’s like 4 a.m. in Cameroon right now,” Missi said. “There are people in France. My friends in the States are texting me.”
‘Redshirting?’
At lunch one day last year, Bill Peterson wanted to know more about Baylor’s freshman center. Peterson, a basketball lifer who spent seven seasons as an assistant in Waco, Texas, worked closely with many of the Bears’ big men. Yves was one of his pupils.
Yves showed Peterson a series of clips, the first one from when he was 15 years old. Yves was playing basketball against his cousin. The two of them shot at a basket with a wooden backboard and no netting in Cameroon. In the next clip, Yves was state-side playing for his prep school in Maryland. In the next clip, Yves wore a mask in a game he played during the pandemic.
In four years, Yves had shot up from 6-foot-5 to 6-11. In that time, he had moved across the world, lived on both U.S. coasts and chose to attend college in Central Texas.
“You can’t say, ‘He can’t do this right now,’ ” Peterson said. “Well, he’s only played three years of organized basketball. He’s so smart, he can pick things up.”
In January, Baylor lost to Texas by two points. At that point in the season, Yves was shooting 48.5% from the free-throw line. In Baylor’s next game against TCU, Yves shot 5 of 7 on free throws. From that point on, he was a 74.3% free-throw shooter for the rest of the season.
Maneuvering dribble hand-offs with perimeter players was one of the concepts Peterson worked with Missi on. Centers have the option to either flip the ball to their teammate or keep it for themselves and attack the basket. Peterson was expecting Missi to dump the ball off to one of Baylor’s guards. Instead, Missi unexpectedly tore through the defense in a three-on-three drill and nearly tore off the rim.
“He just rips it and goes to the middle,” Peterson said. “He just dunks the heck out of it on somebody. It was explosive and quick. It was like, ‘Woah, where did this come from?’ “
Baylor’s coaching staff loved that they could show Yves something once or twice on film and he would implement it into his game.
“Whatever it is, you don’t have to explain it 18 times for him,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said. “You can do it once and he picks up stuff. That’s rare in today’s day and age.”
When Yves arrived on campus, Baylor’s coaches thought Missi might need a redshirt year to develop. As winter started turned into spring, Drew realized Missi’s time in Waco was going to be measured in months — not years.
“By the start of the season, we were like, ‘Redshirting?’ ” Drew said. “By the end of the year, we were like, ‘He’s not coming back.’ “
‘You see?’
In one of the Pelicans’ first training camp practices in Nashville, Tennessee, Yves had a tip dunk that was eyebrow-raising enough, New Orleans general manager Bryson Graham texted Drew the highlight.
At the NBA draft combine in May, Yves recorded a 38½-inch vertical. It is his combination of athleticism and capacity for learning that enticed the Pelicans into drafting him.
In three preseason games, Yves blocked six shots in 50 minutes. He also fouled 11 times.
So far in the regular season, Yves has been able to protect the rim while cutting down on his fouling. He has blocked five shots in his first two games. On Friday, Trail Blazers guard Anfernee Simons appeared to beaten Yves off the dribble, only for Yves to recover in time to block the shot into the second row.
YVES MISSI WHO ARE YOU pic.twitter.com/wBBdIpe5vD
— Pelicans Film Room (@PelsFilmRoom) October 26, 2024
“Right now, for him, there is no line,” Pelicans coach Willie Green said. “Go block every shot you can. He’s doing a great job of competing his tail off. When he touches the floor, you can feel him right away.”
Before Wednesday’s home opener, Yves noticed that backup guard Jose Alvarado received one of the loudest ovations of anyone on the team. Alvarado told Yves that the New Orleans crowd appreciated effort.
When Yves checked out of the game for the final time Wednesday, the Smoothie King Center crowd gave him an ovation.
“You see?” Alvarado told Yves. “Now they are going to love you.”
Yves still has the Cameroon flag he brought with him to the U.S. as a teenager. It hangs in his New Orleans apartment.
Steve told The Times-Picayune in a text message he was unaware Yves had swiped it from him.
“I must admit that I have been looking for that flag for years,” Steve wrote. “I did not know he had it 😅. It was fun watching the game.”
