UConn Baby
Khalid El-Amin’s son creating own legacy at URI
His father once “shocked the world.” Ishmael El-Amin is trying to help change it.
Yes, you recognize the name. El-Amin. Still resonates in the basketball world, particularly in Connecticut, where Khalid ElAmin, the pudgy point guard with immeasurable heart, helped lead UConn to its first national championship in 1999.
A quick glance at Ishmael (most call him Ish) and there’s no doubt who his Pops is. A 6foot-3, 180-pound graduate student on the Rhode Island basketball team, he’s definitely taller and leaner, but the facial features, the on-court gestures and body language are clearly Khalid.
“I’m growing into Pops,” Ish said. “For a long time, I wanted to say I look like my mom, but I’m starting to look like my dad more and more, every day.”
Heck, he’s even growing in a beard right now.
“So that’s not helping at all,” he joked.
Not that he’s ashamed of all that. It’s just that there’s only so many “you look so much like his father!” comments he can handle.
Ish, after all, has been trying to live up to his family name, carve out his own identity, practically from the day he was born (Dec. 2, 1998, just a few months before UConn’s national title win over Duke), through his years as a standout at Hopkins High in Minnesota and at Ball State University, to the present.
After four years at Ball State, Ish El-Amin is embarking on his final collegiate season as a grad student at URI — a mere halfhour from the Connecticut border, close enough for the cheers of yesteryear to still be heard.
“It’s been 20 years and he’s still prominent,” Ish said of his father. “He’s still a name that is very big in Connecticut, that a lot of people know and love hearing the name: ‘El-Amin.’ What he was able to do for the program … there’s so many different things you can bring up. That’s something that I want to do one day, as well. When I leave, being able to have my name ring and still bring smiles to faces 20 years after.”
Ish had a fine playing career at Ball State, averaging 13.8 points per game as a junior and 16.2 last season as a senior, earning second team all-Mid-Atlantic Conference honors.
“I gave that school my all, night-in, night-out,” he noted.
But perhaps his proudest accomplishment occurred off the court. In June 2020, Ish led a protest of more than 2,000 people that began on the Ball State campus and ended with a march to Muncie (Ind.) City Hall.
“After the George Floyd killing, our school and the city of Muncie, I felt like they were trying to push that away and not try to bring that incident to the public,” he recalled. “I felt that, with my platform, I was going to be able to (bring it to the forefront). Being there for four years, I felt like that was something that I owed to the community, just because of the attention I draw … I felt like I needed to do that for the city of Muncie.”
Khalid and his youngest son, Isa, attended the rally.
“It was phenomenal,” Khalid recalled. “Basketball is one thing, but that’s something that everybody was able to join in. And for a good cause.”
Part of Ish’s social-justice awareness and compassion for others may stem from living in disparate places like Turkey, France and Ukraine while Khalid was playing professionally. Part of it may be from being the oldest of six siblings who often had to serve as an adult figure while dad was away.
But most of it comes from his mom, Jessica Winnie.
“She has instilled Black history into me and my siblings, since I can remember,” Ish noted.
Winnie, a middle school teacher, poet and founder of MN BlackBox, a website that promotes Black-owned businesses, noted that this wasn’t the first time Ish had organized an event in support of others — poor people, elderly, etc. She said her own awareness was instilled in her by her grandparents Hank and Dottie Garwick, who were missionaries in India and Haiti for half their lives and “gave us an excellent example to live by.”
“To speak out about issues that are plaguing our society,” Winnie added, “it speaks volumes to (Ish’s) character, as well.”
‘OUR GAMES ARE MUCH DIFFERENT’
Ish El-Amin may resemble his father, but his game is very different. Khalid, the 5-10, 200-pound point guard, was the consummate on-floor quarterback and vocal leader. Hardly a great athlete or shooter, he wound up fashioning a 17-year pro career, one with the Chicago Bulls and most of the rest overseas.
“My dad had a lot more of a ‘dog’ mentality, a lot more ‘up-in-your-face,’ ‘rah-rah’ type of guy,” Ish said. “I wouldn’t say I’m a big ‘in-your-face’ type of guy. But you definitely know I’m there. I do my trash-talking as much as he did, but I would say I let my game speak for me a lot more than talking. He talked the talk and walked the walk, but I would say that he talked a little bit more than me.”
Ish also plays off the ball more than his dad did.
“He brings some things to the table that I wasn’t able to bring,” Khalid said. “He’s taller, he has that ability to finish above the rim. Really good shooter. I think our games are different, but we want to win, we play the right way, and we like making everyone better. So, I think our characteristics, in that aspect, are similar. But our games are much different.”
Ish’s favorite story of his father is when he shouted out “We shocked the world!” after the Huskies had completed their national championship game win over Duke. Ish was at the game, just four months old. Winnie remembers her own mom getting mad that Ish wasn’t wearing ear plugs inside noisy Tropicana Field.
“I think some of that championship lore has stuck with him over the years,” said Khalid.
Although Ish is the only one of Khalid and Jessica’s six kids to be born in Connecticut (“he’s our UConn baby,” Winnie said), he grew up in Minnesota in the shadow of his dad, who had won three state high school championships. Ish won a state title as a junior at Hopkins High — the same school that produced UConn’s Paige Bueckers — and was recruited by several schools (DePaul, Wisconsin-Green Bay, Tennessee
State, Denver) before choosing Ball State.
Although UConn had been his “dream school,” and former assistant Karl Hobbs told him he’d keep an eye on him on the recruiting trail, the Huskies were never one of his suitors.
“I was fine with that,” Ish said. “As much as I wanted to go, I wanted to write my own story, be my own man. Let (Khalid’s) legacy always be there. I didn’t want to come and re-write that. I wanted to go write my legacy somewhere else.”
This past spring, Ish entered the NCAA transfer portal. He chose URI over Minnesota when Rams’ coach David Cox told him there were “34 minutes and 15 shots per game leaving” upon Fatts Russell’s transfer to Maryland. Again, there was no interest from UConn.
“I just wanted him to make the best decision for him,” Khalid said.
Not that pops would have minded if his son had ended up in Storrs.
“Oh yeah. In the back of my mind, I always wanted at least one of my children to play for the Huskies,” Khalid admitted. “It hasn’t happened yet, but I haven’t given up on the idea.”
Ish’s younger brother Ibrahim is a 5-10, junior point guard at Minnetonka (MN) High with Division 1 potential — though no interest from UConn yet.
Khalid and Winnie will surely be at some games this season for their “UConn baby.” The couple are divorced after 19 years of marriage, but remain close for the benefit of their kids.
“We’re good friends,” Winnie said. “We’re both thankful that we have the dynamics that we do, centered around family.”
In fact, Khalid will get to bond with his youngest son even more this year. He has embarked on his first headcoaching job, at Minneapolis’s St. Thomas Academy, where Isa is a freshman.
“I just thought it was the next step,” Khalid said. “I’ve always been coaching in some capacity.”
Who knows, maybe someday Isa will go to UConn and “shock the world.” In the meantime, his older brother will keep trying to help change it.