Don of a New Day

You want vertical leap? The guy from Compton Dominguez High has vertical leap squared.

His brain can jump from calculus to Spanish to government to advanced English to physics.

You want quickness?

The kid will be working for an aerospace company this summer after handing them an essay on fusion power.

You want strength?

Harvard sent the kid a letter wondering if, well, you know, if it wasn’t too much trouble, could he maybe please think about applying.

You want his autograph?

No? Oh, sorry, wrong senior.

This is Prince Esiobu, the Class of 2001 salutatorian who bums rides to school and hangs out in the library and went alone to the prom.

You want Tyson Chandler, the classmate strolling in the courtyard outside the library, new sweatsuit, a 1999 Cadillac, adoring children.

Esiobu will be attending UCLA next fall on a full scholarship.

You want the guy who’ll be attending today’s NBA draft as perhaps the first pick.

Esiobu is only going to be a doctor.

You want the guy who is going to be a pro basketball player.

Everyone does.

“He is special,” Esiobu said. “I totally understand.”

Sadly, so do we.

Jocks are special. Brains are not.

It’s something we learn shortly after single-digit addition. It’s something those parents pleading for their 10-year-olds to hit the next pitch never really forget.

It’s been that way long before Bill Gates was fitted for his first pair of horn-rimmed glasses, and will continue long after Prince Esiobu has completed his last open-heart surgery.

The inclusion of a record six high school players in today’s NBA draft makes this warped priority more clear to those who are affected by it the most.

Particularly for Los Angeles kids, who today will watch our first hometown prep star make the NBA leap.

Be like Tyson Chandler, and you will be famous.

Be like Prince Esiobu, and you will be forgotten.

Even before you have a chance to grow up.

Before watching the 7-foot Dominguez player parade across a New York stage today, perhaps we should pause to pay brief tribute to the 5-foot-10 kid who only dreams of dunking a basketball.

“I know Tyson Chandler, but I don’t think he knows me,” Esiobu said Tuesday in an interview at the school. “I don’t know why he would.”

Yet he smiles, because he gets it.

“I don’t blame Tyson, or anybody, for going pro,” he said. “If someone came up and offered me $5 million to solve some math problems, I would do it in a minute.”

The most money Esiobu has made for his skills is $50 a week as a teacher’s assistant in a calculus class.

While Chandler drives a big car, Esiobu arrives at school an hour early every day because he must ride with his mother, who is a teacher.

“I sit in the library and read,” he said.

While Chandler’s name has appeared in this newspaper in 127 stories, this is the first story in any newspaper involving Esiobu.

“Even the school paper,” he said. “Although I was in some teacher’s bulletin once.”

Nobody has ever publicly mentioned his 3.91 grade-point average, his 1,180 Scholastic Assessment Test score, his first-place award in an aerospace contest, and an annual job writing quickie poems for classmate lovers on Valentine’s Day.

All of this while dealing with a shortage of books and supplies, including attending one class in which everyone shared books that they couldn’t bring home.

There, of course, has never been a shortage of anything on the Dons’ state-champion basketball team.

“Any time you’d see a bunch of guys in new, nice clothing, those were basketball players,” Esiobu said. “They always had lots of friends around them.”

In his salutatorian commencement speech, Esiobu wrote, “These past four years at Dominguez High have been anything except easy.”

Yet he survived to receive offers from virtually every top college nationwide, including some who even recruited him by phone.

He is staying home because it has been his dream to be the first member of his extended family to attend a UC school. Even if UCLA isn’t getting a famous freshman in Esiobu, it is getting a wise one.

“In this country we give people what they want, and people want sports,” Esiobu said. “They like going to football games more than they like going to science fairs. So it’s natural that sports would sometimes seem more important than education.”

Esiobu even recognizes the hypocrisy in stories like this.

“People complain about the special treatment of athletes, but then they pay money to watch them play, which makes the athletes even bigger,” he said.

Esiobu said there has been only one moment in his high school career when he felt as special as, perhaps, a high school sports star might feel every day.

It was during the recent commencement exercises, when he stood in front of his classmates with a speech that no bouncing basketballs could drown out.

“I was thinking, everybody’s listening to me, noticing me, this is a glorious moment,” he said.

Two Compton Dominguez graduates, two futures.

Says Chandler: “I’m not going to be on the bench for long, regardless. I’ve worked too hard and there is no way I can be held on the bench.”

Says Esiobu: “I want to be a doctor because you see someone struggling to hold on to their last breath, and you can figure out a way to help them.”

And today’s standing ovation will be for . . . whom?

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

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TODAY, 4:30 PM., TNT