The Many Faces of Asa Thomas, the Ace of Lake Forest Boys Basketball
The Scouts senior balances basketball, celebrity, golf and his faith while embarking on one final season and playoff run in a Lake Forest uniform
They all sit in the gymnasium bleacher’s front row, waiting to hear the sound of the game’s final whistle.
When the whistle blows, the dozen or so middle school-aged boys, all wearing white basketball jerseys over hoodies and t-shirts, leap from their seats and run across the court.
A few of the boys can’t wait for the postgame handshake to conclude. They whip out their phones and circle around the object of their affection, snapping photographs or, not out of the realm of possibility, live streaming the encounter.
After all, there’s status to be gained and mingling with the famous is one fast track to more followers.
The pack eventually dispenses and Asa Thomas, done with his meet and greet obligations, quickly scurries out of the gym. His team, the Lake Forest Scouts, easily beat Zion-Benton High School on this night. In the first half, the 6-foot-8 senior scored his 1,500 career point on a four-point play.
There is a post-game celebration to get to and Thomas’s coaches and teammates are waiting for him.
“They’ll ask for autographs, to sign a basketball and t-shirt,” said Thomas, who accepts each inquiry with a “hello” and gracious smile. “Tonight is feeder night and I know how special this night was for all these kids.”
Greatness in any pursuit takes on many forms. Success leaves clues.
The best typically possess a humility towards the game’s pedagogy and a hunger to master all that playing at a high level entails.
On this night against Zion, Thomas personifies these qualities. He does almost every night. And this basketball season, he’s on his final journey as a Scout.
On Jan. 31, the Scouts hosted North Suburban Conference rival Stevenson.
Trailing by two points, 45-43, with eight seconds left in the game, Lake Forest had the ball and inbounded into its half court.
Everyone knew the ball would end up in the hands of Thomas. It was just a matter of how.
Thomas got the ball at the top of the three-point line after receiving a pass from senior guard Jocum Schabacker. He took one dribble, spun towards his left and drove towards the basket. The Patriots defender shuffled with Thomas, held his ground and Thomas’s attempt at a game-tying shot bounced off the glass and fell short. No foul was called.
Four days after becoming the school’s second-leading all-time leading scorer (behind 2015 graduate Evan Boudreaux), Thomas did not shoot the ball well against Stevenson. He made only one three-point basket and the Scouts rarely win when Thomas has an off-night.
“I tried to get to the basket more, work midrange and floaters, stuff was falling just not at the three-point line,” Thomas said. “I just have to get back to my mechanics and get back to the gym, keep shooting it.”
The next day, a Wednesday, Thomas had a study hall period in the afternoon.
He hopped in the car and drove a couple of miles south, to Lake Forest College. In an empty gym inside the college’s sports and recreation center, he starting shooting.
Thomas shot off the dribble, off a bounce move (the one that fell short against Stevenson). He mirrored coming off screens, catch and shoot. Something just felt a bit off in the Stevenson game and for Thomas, off can’t linger.
“It’s the same routine every day, I work on fundamentals and basics,” Thomas said.
For basketball shooters, it all starts with the lower half of the body.
Strong legs, a strong posterior chain (ankles, calves, hamstrings), generates force for the body’s upper half. If a muscle, tendon or bone is inflamed or bruised, it throws off the entire action.
“You get your power and pace and distance, especially for three point shooters, from the lower half of the body, not the upper half. You are not shooting with your arms,” Thomas’s travel ball coach, Mike Mullins said. Mullins is the founder and coach of the Illinois Wolves AAU program. “When you have a shooter of Asa’s ability, when you have a bad ankle or you sprain your knee or your hip is bad or you have a hip pointer you start to over compensate with other parts of your body.
“Learning to self-correct is one of the great rescue switches an really elite shooter can make.”
Multiple times this season, Thomas has fallen on his tailbone. There’s the ankle sprain on the final play of a December game against Glenbrook South. Those ailments combined with the constant double teams––the pushing, the pulling, hard fouls by defenders––have forced Thomas to play through pain for a good portion of the 2022-23 season.
Thomas spends a portion of most days in the company of an athletic trainer. They massage his back and help stretch his legs. He scored 33 points in a victory over Niles North four days after the Stevenson game and three days after his Lake Forest College shooting excursion.
“(After ankle injury) he was told four to six weeks (by a doctor) and he came back the next week,” Scouts coach Phil LaScala said. He thought about resting Thomas for the Zion game, a winless team. It was a fleeting thought. “He wants the ball, he wants to play and gets pissed when I take him out of practice for a rep.”
An insatiable competitive streak is another shared personality trait amongst elite athletes.
There’s never a linear explanation or a single anecdote.
It’s often an answer with equation multiples equal parts nature and nurture.
The set of golf clubs are of the brand Titleist.
While in middle school, Thomas’s parents, Brandon and Ann, bought the clubs for him. He wore them out, playing in Illinois Junior Golf Association events all over Chicagoland.
Thomas has grown almost 12 inches since then. But his clubs have stayed the same length.
“My clubs are small but I’ve adjusted over the years,” Thomas said.
He was probably five or six years old when his father first took him to a driving and putting range. When Brandon, a hockey and football player while attending Brown University in the 1980’s, would take Asa and older brother Jed to the range or to shoot baskets, he made a point of purposeful practice. Experiencing joy is best derived from the process of getting better at something, Brandon believed, and his sons were eager students.
Like so many younger brothers, Asa shadowed the actions of Jed, who himself became a point guard for the Scouts.
“He was a good player,” Asa said. “(I watched) his vision, his ball handling, scoring and ball handling skills.”
By the summer of 2019, Thomas stood well over 6-foot (Thomas gets his extraordinary height from his mother’s side. Ann Thomas is 5-10 and has tall brothers and cousins). LaScala knew he had a Division 1-level talent coming up through the feeder ranks.
He called Mullins, an old friend.
Mullins’ Wolves program has a reputation for turning out high major prospects. Amongst its recent graduates: Max Christie (current Los Angeles Laker), Drew Peterson (former Libertyville star and this season, USC’s second-leading scorer) Jaden Schutt (current Duke freshman) and Braden Huff (current Gonzaga freshman).
Brandon Thomas encouraged Asa to surround himself not with sycophants, but with teachers of the game who would push him to reach his maximum ability.
“I knew I wanted to play for (Mullins),” Asa said. “He’s not always going to sing my praises but tell me what my weaknesses are and give me lessons on how I can get better.”
In the same environment as other players equally ambitious, Thomas thrived. Practicing against Christie, a five-star recruit who spent one year at Michigan State before declaring for the NBA draft, made Thomas a better defensive player.
That carried over to high school, where Thomas typically guards the opponent’s most dangerous scorer. Everyone wants the glamour that lofty offensive stats bring. But it’s a player’s ability to consistently guard that makes them elite.
That’s as much mental attitude as physical tool.
“Every game helped me grow and how there are levels to basketball and there are levels I need to get to perform at the highest level,” Thomas said. “Playing with the Wolves on that circuit helped me be a leader on my high school team and people around me and help them understand that there is a mentality you have to have going into the games.”
Said Mullins: “Asa is so poised but he never gets down. You are going to have a game when you do not shoot well. It doesn’t mean your team can’t win so what else can you do? Players like him understand you may have off nights but they have successful seasons. Those are life skills as much as basketball skills. Lazy don’t cut it, being entitled don’t cut it and resting on what you did yesterday don’t cut it.”
In June of 2021, while in a summer league game with the Scouts, Thomas scored 37 points at a Riverside-Brookfield tournament. Within days, offers from DePaul, Illinois, Northwestern, Oklahoma and Virginia Tech rolled in (Marquette had already extended a scholarship offer prior to the Riverside-Brookfield shoot out game). Later that summer and fall, of 2021, Ohio State and Minnesota jumped in with offers.
Thomas now had options.
While on college visits with his parents, he toured the facilities, met with academic advisors. Thomas spent time with coaches and players––potential future teammates––and began to form opinions about each school.
There was no rush to sign––Thomas didn’t have to officially put pen to paper until November 2022––but after the first round of visits, no school emerged as a clear favorite.
“I went on a lot of visits, I liked a lot of schools, they were really nice but a lot of them are the same,” Thomas said. “You go through the motions, the facilities, the academics, stuff like that. They talk about the same stuff. Every one in the Big Ten or ACC has nice facilities, nice dorms, stuff you can get anywhere. I was looking for something that really stood out to me in a program.”
There was a part of Thomas––separate from basketball––that no college had yet to tap into. He knew what he wanted. He just hadn’t found the right environment.
It’s a moment before each game, before the national anthem, before the starting line ups are called.
Thomas takes one last warm up shot from the corner, just in front of the sidelines.
While his Scouts teammates keep shooting, Thomas wanders over to the bench.
He sits on a chair and drops his head.
“I pray in the locker room but also before games,” Thomas said. “It’s quiet time, a reflection over our game. I ask for a great game for our team and to get the victory.”
Prayer is as much a part of Thomas’s life as basketball.
He reads from a physical Bible in the morning when he wakes up. During the day, he keeps a copy on his phone.
“Throughout the day between classes or whatever I try and keep praying and then in free time and study hall read my Bible and spend time with God,” Thomas said.
When Clemson University asked him to visit their campus in the spring of 2022, Thomas didn’t know what to expect.
The Atlantic Coast Conference is one of the most historic in the history of college basketball. Duke and North Carolina are two of the biggest brand names in sports and Virginia won a national title as recent as 2019. But the state Clemson resides in, South Carolina, is close to 800 miles from Lake Forest. No Scouts boys basketball player had ever signed with an ACC school (2009 graduate Matt Vogrich was the last player to sign with a high major out of high school, with the University of Michigan). Thomas-to-Clemson just didn’t seem like a fit.
But once on campus, Thomas felt right at home.
“People think its an odd place to go but they don’t know the inside scoop of what’s going on behind the scenes,” Thomas said. “You don’t necessarily have a gut feeling with some schools as you do with others.”
While meeting Clemson players, they talked openly about their faith. The players told Thomas they were involved with their churches and in community-related projects. That impressed Thomas, who himself is a member of Christ Church in Lake Forest. He regularly attends meetings of a youth group associated with the church.
Thomas traveled to the southeast part of the country on a quest for affirmation that an unfamiliar location––Clemson, South Carolina––could provide the space for him to be his true self. He flew back to the Midwest convinced he could be that person as a Clemson Tiger: basketball player, student, and practicing Christian.
A few weeks after his return, Clemson offered Thomas a scholarship. Last July, he accepted.
“When you go on visits you hang out with a lot of other guys and get a feel for what they are about. With some schools you can tell there are some faith-guys on the team and some where I wouldn’t really fit in with that aspect,” Thomas said. “With Clemson, being around the guys and coaches I knew that I could fit in basketball- wise, school-wise and my faith.”
On a hot summer day last August, the Lake Forest boys golf team was playing a tournament at Thunderhawk Golf Club in Beach Park.
Scouts coach Jim Matheson thought he had a pretty good team in 2022, one that likely would earn state qualification. But they were unseasoned. He needed an upperclassmen, one that could put up good scores and mentor the younger players.
On his phone were text messages from a former player, Jed Thomas.
Thomas had a younger brother, Asa, who he said could swing the clubs OK. Matheson may want to ask him if he wanted to come out for the golf team, Jed Thomas advised.
“We didn’t know how we’d be on the season and I told (Asa) if he wants to come out we’d love to have him. He said he’d do it but I was like, ‘OK,’” Matheson said. “At the last minute, he decided to come out.”
That day at Thunderhawk, Thomas shot a 72, good for third place. During the tournament, players could follow hole-by-hole scores via an Illinois High School Association app.
When other golfers saw what their new teammate could do on the golf course, it set the tone for the Scouts season, said Matheson.
“All the kids are like, ‘wow, we are for real and could be pretty good,’” he said. “I think Asa was like, ‘this is not as hard as expected, just hit the ball on the fairway and the green.’ It changed everyone’s mindset.”
Lake Forest won the conference team championship later that year, with Thomas taking the individual first place trophy (he shot a round of 70 to defeat teammate Jack Lamberti by a stroke). The Scouts qualified for the 2022 Class 3A boys state tournament and placed fourth.
Thomas shot a combined 160 on both days to place in a five-way tie for 40th (he used the same set of Titleist golf clubs he’s played with as a much-shorter junior golfer).
His production boosted the Scouts’ 2022 boys golf season. But it was Thomas’s gracious personality that will be most remembered by Matheson.
“We had two juniors and a sophomore that were the best players. (Thomas) didn’t know them at all going into the season and became best friends with them within a couple of days,” Matheson said. “He’d give the kids rides, go out to eat with them, doing whatever he could to make it a good experience for them.”
The sports of golf and basketball are not an obvious association. Swinging a driver is not the same motion as shooting a free throw. But there is a complimentary shared experience between the sports: dealing with failure and the flushing of bad plays.
“Golf is probably one of the hardest sports to play as you can get down on yourself so easily and get frustrated,” Thomas said. “Make that four-foot birdie putt to get your confidence up and that translates to sports like basketball and making your clutch free throws to win games.”
Said Mullins: “All of a sudden you drive nine greens in a row and you make nine threes in a row. He’s really in tune with those feels and nuances of touch and I think that translates. It’s not a big correction but a little correction.”
Matheson said he thinks Thomas is good enough to play college golf. He’s preparing another sell job for the spring sports season.
“I asked him to come pitch,” Matheson said, who coaches baseball in the spring. “No one would want to face him. Haven’t gotten a yes out of him but he hasn’t completely shut it down.”
The scene: senior night, Feb. 10, Competition Gym.
Lake Forest’s public address announcer, Skoo Walker, reads off the starting line up. As per tradition, the line up consists of seniors for each five spots (it doesn’t always work out this way as there are years the team hasn’t had enough seniors to fill the line up).
One glaring non-reference by Walker: Asa Thomas.
In four years, only three previous times has Walker not read off the name “Asa Thomas” in the Scouts’ starting line up. This would be the fourth.
Finally a senior, Thomas earned the distinction by class standing.
As it turns out, Thomas was the perpetrator of his own benching.
LaScala had a dilemma this senior night. The 2022-23 Scouts boys basketball team has six seniors. There’s only five starting spots. One had to sit to start the Mundelein game. But who?
At around 9 pm the night before the game, LaScala received a text message from Thomas.
“He said, ‘coach don’t start me,’” LaScala said.
With his text, Thomas removed that burden of choice for his coach.
“He’s the second kid in 18 years who has done that (before senior night),’” LaScala said. “He said the other guys deserve it. He’s always like that, just an unselfish kid.”
After a slow start (the Scouts fell behind 7-2 with Thomas out of the game), Lake Forest wears down Mundelein and wins handily, 60-46. Thomas finishes with 31 points but the Scouts get contributions from the entire group of seniors.
There is no bigger encourager of his teammates than Thomas.
“When a player like him tells you to go out there and shoot the ball when you are open, you shoot it. That really helps my confidence and obviously he makes the best passes and knows what to do,” senior guard Noah Portalatin said. “He’s one of my best friends.
That’s not an unusual answer from peers when asked about Thomas. He has quite a handful of best friends.
Seconds after completing handshakes with the Mustangs, Thomas is stopped by a young fan. He bends down and aims a wide grin into the phone camera.
It being the final regular season home game, there are many photos left to be taken, many more interactions with well-wishers.
Stopped by a reporter, Thomas is asked about vacating his spot in the game’s starting line up.
“I have a lot of basketball to be played in my career and these guys don’t. This is their one time to have their moment and it was fun to see them so happy out there,” Thomas said. “These memories they will remember forever.”
Forever is a long time but it will certainly be awhile before Lake Forest sees a basketball player and person the likes of Asa Thomas again.
Lake Forest hosts the postseason Class 3A regional beginning Feb. 22.
The Scouts are the No. 1 seed in the Grayslake Central Sectional.