For teammates and strangers, from New Orleans to Durham, Sion James always shows up

Sion James helps up Kon Knueppel during Duke's road game at Boston College.
Sion James helps up Kon Knueppel during Duke's road game at Boston College.

Duke was 24 points ahead of Miami when the Hurricanes prepared to inbound the ball to begin the second half in Cameron Indoor Stadium. Any chance of an upset was already gone. Still, Austin Swartz was smiling.

Sion James' 220-pound frame defended Swartz as the visiting guard readied himself to get open by the sideline. But James’ menacing size doesn’t match his endlessly pleasant demeanor, the kind of personality that had Swartz, in a blowout, on the edge of laughter.

Nor does his play. James, in his coach Jon Scheyer’s words, “is a dog.” In that very Miami game, the graduate guard clocked three blocks and a steal to put down one of his best defensive performances of the season. It was not, however, an anomaly for James, who has made his impact clear since day one at Duke. Scheyer has said repeatedly that James belongs in the NBA, perhaps most because, as he quipped at a Jan. 23 availability, “Sion is the ultimate connector.”

James is a big guy to play point guard, but he thrives at that spot because of this “connector” spirit, a kind of instinct that makes him an intuitive passer and playmaker. Indeed, James boasts the second-most assists on the Blue Devils, with 58.

Of course, when Scheyer calls James a “connector,” he’s talking basketball. But connecting is the Sion James M.O., the very core of his commitment to giving back. Though he would never tout it as an accomplishment, nor bring it up unprompted, James thrives when he’s serving the underserved.

Sandwiches on Saturdays

Despite the frequent behest of a friend, Sandy Ryan had no interest in being a basketball manager until he met James. After that, he thought to himself, “I’d be okay with wiping up someone’s sweat if that’s the caliber of human being that’s on that team.”

Ryan, two years his elder, was James’ freshman resident assistant at Tulane. They met on a walk to the mail room in the early days of James’ career, the newcomer looking to an older student for guidance. Both their lives changed on that walk to the mail room. As he got to know James, Ryan decided to apply for a manager position on the basketball team, a choice that ultimately earned him a walk-on spot and now a career in Tulane athletics. James, in return, met the friend and future roommate who would launch the passion for service he has since carried to Durham.

Tulane’s 2022-23 season ended, in a word, poorly. Memphis knocked the Green Wave out of the AAC Championship with a 40-point defeat, leaving Ryan, James and their teammates on a decidedly low note. But with the season over and time suddenly on his hands, Ryan started to notice the people in New Orleans dealing with far worse. He asked James to join him in a McDonald’s run for sandwiches to pass out to the homeless. 

Since Hurricane Katrina ravaged it in 2005, New Orleans has suffered from severe poverty and displacement. When Hurricane Ida hit in 2021, James was a freshman and had to leave Tulane for more than a month while the city once again worked to get back on its feet. According to a count by UNITY last year, there are still more than 1,400 people experiencing homelessness in New Orleans. 

Sugar Hill, Ga., is a “nice, suburban area,” according to James. He did not grow up in a place like New Orleans, where, in much of the city, its high poverty rate is visible. It did not escape James, then, that while he could drive home to Georgia to escape Ida, plenty of others were stuck in its ruins.

So a year later, when Ryan asked him to help deliver sandwiches, James didn’t hesitate to say yes. They bought 12 sausage biscuits and didn’t just pass them out — this was key, for Ryan and James — they used their sandwiches as an opening for conversation with people living on the streets. An hour-long discussion with a homeless man named Harry was what it took to make this Saturday whim of Ryan’s a commitment from the two teammates.

“He was sharing his dreams for how he wanted to reunite with his daughter, how he wanted to get back on his feet,” Ryan told The Chronicle. “It took away all the stigmas that surround the homeless.”

On the car ride back to their apartment, James and Ryan decided they would go see Harry again the following Saturday. Between the two of them — just two college students — they felt the best thing they had to offer was their ability to “show up.”

So they went to see Harry, and others, the next weekend. And the weekend after that. They kept going, just two guys delivering McDonald’s sandwiches bought with pocket money, striking up conversation and listening to people often ignored tell the stories of their lives.

James and his teammates made the trek to Tucson, Ariz., in November.

‘How do I help make this happen?’

It was New Year’s Eve, and the Blue Devils were giving Virginia Tech a pretty nasty end to 2024. James drove from the 3-point line on the right side of the court until he was underneath the basket, then passed the ball, dart-like, to an open Tyrese Proctor, standing ready on the other side of the arc. The Hokie defense had lined up to prevent James’ layup, though the point guard found Proctor open. Even when Proctor missed his three, James was one step ahead of the defense: He lunged for the rebound and put the ball straight into the basket, wasting no time with a dribble.

“He’s incredibly smart,” Scheyer said. “He’s a very cerebral, smart player, and he makes others better on the floor in many different ways.”

So much of James’ appeal as a basketball player goes hand-in-hand with his appeal as a community member. After several weeks of sandwich deliveries, James and Ryan started looking for funding to keep their operation alive, and then to grow it. They lucked into a huge donation from Walmart, and stacked the front room of their shared apartment with so much stuff that it reached the ceiling. James made a spreadsheet to budget their resources for the rest of the semester, putting their vision and supplies into real help for the homeless.

“He really brought the order to Ryan's Giving Tree,” Ryan said of James. “That's just consistently something that he's good at: Hearing a dream, hearing a vision and then asking the question of, ‘How do I help make this happen?’”

Ryan’s Giving Tree is what Ryan and James ultimately dubbed their organization, en route to getting it certified as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Their distribution numbers soared from 12 to 200 sandwiches a weekend — a number that allowed a serious impact without becoming so big that James and Ryan didn’t need to sacrifice the conversations that had inspired them in the first place.

To be a Duke men’s basketball player is no small feat. James’ commitment as a starting guard on the No. 2 team in the country means full-time, full steam ahead. Yet he also runs his own foundation, on top of taking classes (“all over the place,” he said, subject-wise) in his continuing studies program.

“I think he's blessed with a knack for self-reflection,” Ryan said. “He's not afraid of … dealing with whatever he has to deal with within himself, to become the best he can be.”

At just 22, James has the kind of discipline that makes him as versatile with his time as he is on the basketball court. He did most of his planning for service events before this season started so that his charity work does not take away from his team commitments. James runs on routine and strawberry protein shakes, waking up early on mornings when he doesn’t have class to give his energy to various service endeavors. If anything, his community involvement has brought his teammates closer together — they’re always asking him how they can help.

“Playing sports is really, really cool. I'm glad we get to do this for a living,” James told The Chronicle. “But there are a lot of things a lot more important than a ball going into a basket.”

James at Duke's home game vs. Pittsburgh.

‘Our responsibility’

Before Ron Hunter ran the men’s basketball program at Tulane, he coached at IUPUI, now IU Indianapolis, where he got involved with a young nonprofit called Samaritan’s Feet. The organization, which supplies shoes to children suffering from poverty all over the world, was founded by Manny Ohonme, who grew up in Nigeria and didn’t receive his first pair of shoes until he was nine years old. Ohonme won that first pair in a shooting contest hosted by a missionary; nine years later, he used those same skills to earn a basketball scholarship to Lake Region State College. In 2003, he founded Samaritan’s Feet with his wife.

Hunter’s program in Indianapolis was the first connection Ohonme made with a basketball team. In 2008, Hunter coached one of his games barefoot. In 2009, 300 other basketball coaches, ranging from the high school to the Division I level, went shoeless on their sidelines, too. More than a decade later, Hunter’s dedication to raising awareness for Samaritan’s Feet was still going strong: In the summer of 2023, he brought his Tulane roster, which included James, to Puerto Rico for a service trip to provide more than 1,000 children with a new pair of shoes.

Kathy Slyder, head of regional development and sports initiative manager for Samaritan’s Feet, was on that trip with James.

“After one of the distributions … he just had this huge smile on his face,” Slyder said. “You could tell he was just really loving this.”

As soon as he was back in the U.S., James signed up to be a student-athlete ambassador for Samaritan’s Feet. In June, he had attended an NIL Summit in Atlanta. By the end of that summer, James was learning about using NIL to benefit other people rather than just himself. He sees NIL charity partnerships as an “untapped market”; service is not often part of the NIL conversation. 

“For a lot of us, this is the biggest platform we'll ever have, right?” James said.

In the same summer he registered Ryan’s Giving Tree as a nonprofit, James made his deal with Samaritan’s Feet. In a matter of months, his life had taken shape around a desire to serve those in need. It still holds that shape: James knows that, in one way or another, he will continue this work wherever he goes.

But the summer of 2023 did not come about because of a change in James’ character. Instead, James’ burgeoning involvement in community service bloomed like the natural result of some seed that had always been there.

“Sion was always looking for ways to show up for his teammates and show up for the people around him,” Ryan said.

“He’s one of those selfless people,” Slyder said.

At least some of James’ kindness comes from his parents. His mother raised him on the adage, “What we have is not our own.” Ryan called the Jameses “A lovely family … very kind hearted people, the kind of people that make you feel like family the moment you start talking to them.” Growing up, James' mother took him and his brother, Jehloni, to volunteer at the Special Olympics every summer. As a teenager, James volunteered to read to and mentor elementary school kids.

Service has always had a place in his world, and he could have just left it at that. Instead, two summers ago, James cast community service in a leading role, simply because he realized how much he could help.

Faith fuels him, too. James and Ryan, who still talk on the phone every week, used to ask each other, “How do we practically live out our faith?” Both of them subscribe to Christianity without a particular denomination. 

“I believe in a God who serves and who literally came to earth to serve us, and I feel like it's our responsibility to do the same,” James said.

He and Ryan found the answer to that question — how to live out their shared faith — waiting for them in the McDonald’s drive-thru.

James and his teammates in Conte Forum in January.

‘How to serve others’

Darren Harris was guarding a middle school boy in neon basketball shoes and a Duke-blue trucker hat. James scribbled his signature on a mini Duke-themed basketball and fist-bumped a kid barely the height of his waist. Behind him was a giant, inflatable menorah and a string of Star of David flags.

At the Levin JCC on W. Cornwallis Road, the Sion James Foundation had piled up around 1,800 toys for underprivileged children in Durham. James, in a colorful “One 4 All Toy Drive” T-shirt, spent a December Saturday with his teammates and kids from around Durham, shooting hoops and auctioning off private tours of Cameron Indoor Stadium to add to the holiday haul.

Moving from New Orleans to Durham didn’t halt James’ community involvement at all — on the contrary, the move expanded his impact. In the fall, he was still collecting shoes to send to children in New Orleans while also learning about Durham’s needs. He committed to fundraising for 4,000 pairs of shoes for local children. Recently, he connected with the Emily K Center (educational support) and the 5K Foundation (gang violence prevention). He founded his namesake foundation at the beginning of 2024 with the mission of “strengthening local communities by supporting the most disadvantaged groups within them,” according to its Instagram page. Because he loves working with children, James’ first initiative with the Sion James Foundation is to “remove barriers to advancement for school-aged kids.”

Basketball, James said, “teaches you how to serve others.” Maybe that’s not the most typical take on the game, but it’s certainly typical for him.

James entered Duke's starting rotation early in the season.

James’ style of play reflects this remarkable understanding of the game. Slyder certainly sees it. “He always comes at everything from the viewpoint of service,” she said. “I think that's how he plays basketball, too.”

James’ gift is this ability to see such a competitive sport as an avenue to serve, even when looking at it granularly, at the passes and shots and blocks. What Ryan, Slyder and Scheyer have all identified as “humility” in James seems, instead, the natural product of his radical worldview, one that sees people in need and can’t help but respond. When Ryan asked him if he would help pass out sandwiches, “Why?” never crossed James’ mind. He is hardwired to do good.

“It's all about doing things not for yourself, and kind of forgetting about yourself a little bit and really pouring into the people around you,” James said.

Believe it or not, that’s just what he has to say about basketball.


Sophie Levenson profile
Sophie Levenson | Sports Managing Editor

Sophie Levenson is a Trinity junior and a sports managing editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.

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