Barbers keep Tigers ready for primetime
Boogie Ellis is staring at his phone. Damion Baugh is, too.
The Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins game is on one TV. The Indianapolis Colts and Tennessee Titans are on the other three screens inside CUTZ at Wolfchase Galleria.
The popular Memphis barbershop is full on this Sunday afternoon. The half-dozen on-duty barbers’ chairs are occupied and there are more clients patiently awaiting their turn.
Shun “The Barber” Smith, who has been working with most of the newcomers on the Memphis Tigers basketball team since they enrolled in school last summer, is putting the finishing touches on Ellis’ high-tapered fade – a couple of final swipes of the electric razor, another spritz or two of Toppik, a pass with the hair twist sponge.
Baugh switches seats with Ellis for the 25 minutes he spends with Smith each week.
“There’s got to be a high level of trust,” Baugh said. “Basically, it’s just like a regular relationship with your girl.”
Smith, who started work as a barber professionally in 2013, has some experience with Memphis players, including Antonio Burks. Memphis rappers Turk and Blac Youngsta are also part of his clientele.
“I try to make those guys feel like it’s more than me just cutting their hair,” said Smith, a lifelong Memphian and longtime Tigers fan. “I want to be
a confidant. I want to be your friend and make you feel like you can talk to me about anything. Because the barbershop is like a man’s cave. You watch sports, talk about sports, speak about personal things you may have going on.
“We build a relationship.”
Hair today for the future
The relationship, and others like them, may have never been more important for Memphis basketball than they are now. After all, the Tigers – with their No. 1 recruiting class, their projected No. 1 overall NBA Draft pick (James Wiseman) and their four-time NBA All-star coach (Penny Hardaway) – are already the most high-profile team in program history.
Whether it’s walking to class on campus, live streaming on Facebook to tens of thousands during an exhibition game from the Bahamas, showcasing their skills at Memphis Madness on ESPN+, or just trying to blend in at the mall, plenty of attention is constantly being directed toward them.
The season hasn’t even begun. “Everybody’s watching us,” said Ellis, one of seven freshmen largely responsible for Memphis’ return to the national stage.
“It’s really important to look your best at all times, because you never know what you might walk into just walking out your door these days,” freshman wing Precious Achiuwa said. “That’s something that’s really big right now.”
Achiuwa, along with other newcomers like Ellis, Baugh, Lester Quinones – the first to notice Smith’s work via his Instagram account, where he goes by @mr6_foot_5 – and Isaiah Stokes, have made him their barber of choice in Memphis.
Across town, Chris Styles owns and operates Christyles Celebrity Salon. That’s where Styles and his team of barbers have been cutting hair for Tigers past and present for years. Wiseman, Alex Lomax, Ryan Boyce, Malcolm Dandridge and Jayden Hardaway are regulars there. Derrick Rose, Supreme Bey (formerly Chris Douglas-roberts), Tyreke Evans and Antonio Anderson once were.
Styles, whose shop’s walls are adorned with graffiti-style portraits of current clients Zach Randolph, Yo Gotti and Penny Hardaway, has been the latter’s personal barber for 15 years. In addition to cutting Hardaway’s hair three times a week (“because he’s such a big icon”) at a shop he built inside Hardaway’s home, Styles also works with Lomax and the younger Hardaway.
Hardaway, in his second year as coach at Memphis, agrees there is farreaching value in how everyone – but especially the players – portrays and carries themselves in public and on camera.
“They’re obviously more prepared, because they know there’s going to be a lot that comes along with being who we are,” he said.
Emmanuel “Rook Tha Barber” Morris, who occupies the station to the right of Styles’, cuts Wiseman and Boyce’s hair. Like Smith, Morris strives to create a sense of normalcy for the attentiondrenched stars.
“We don’t talk about if they had a good game or a bad game,” Morris said. “We’re watching football or talking about something that happened in the city. This is a place to unwind and relax.”
Morris has cut Wiseman’s hair since the Nashville native moved to Memphis before his junior year of high school. He said the key to maintaining Wiseman’s look is the hairline.
“Now, the style is just hair – the hair that hangs,” Morris said. “So, I’m very particular about his hairline. I’m going to make sure his hairline is exactly straight and boxed. Not pushed back. That has to be right.”
After wrapping up his session with Baugh, Smith starts getting his station back in order, sweeping the floor before returning the hair twist sponge and bottle of Toppik to their spots on the counter.
“Damion gets the taper fade,” Smith revealed. “Sometimes he gets a drop fade. Lester gets, like, a mohawk, and he does that twist thing himself. Precious, I give him a taper and line. Lance (Thomas) got it even all over.”
Wiseman, who joined Hardaway and Achiuwa as Memphis’ representatives at AAC media day on Monday, spent more than four hours being interviewed in front of dozens of cameras big and small. The 7-foot-1 freshman center and preseason All-american left the Philadelphia Airport Marriott’s grand ballroom lamenting the fact that he’s been too busy the past couple of weeks to get a haircut.
“I need to get a haircut ASAP,” he said. “I usually get it cut probably once a week, but I’ve just been slacking off because I’ve been so busy. But, my regular haircut, that defines me. Just being presentable and being a brand is really important.
“I mean, you don’t want to be on camera and you’re looking messed up.”
While the aesthetic is crucial, the players and their barbers contend it goes beyond that.
“A-LO, he says it makes him play different,” said Styles. “When every kid gets up and goes to school, if they have new shoes, a new outfit, a nice looking, fresh haircut, they feel like they can conquer the world. It just makes them perform better.”
Smith agrees.
“If their look plays a role – which we know it does – in how they play, I don’t see them losing a game,” he said.
Reach sports writer Jason Munz at jason.munz@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @munzly.