Beyond the X: 'God of Dunk' Malik Monk leaves poverty, strikes gold, beats buzzers in land of Walmart

Malik isn't the first to move from northeast Arkansas to Bentonville to follow his dream. Entrepreneur Sam Walton did the same almost 65 years ago. Walton's drive to revolutionize the variety store business by putting more items, at lower costs, under the same roof eventually led to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the world's second-largest publicly owned business. Malik's drive to create his own style of play — based on a unique combination of athleticism, long-range shooting ability, court awareness and mastery of basics — could one day revolutionize the industry he wants to enter.

Malik lives with his mother in a two-bedroom apartment only blocks from the site of Sam Walton’s first store in Bentonville. It’s now The Walmart Museum, paying homage to the growth of a company which in one way or another affects every person living in the area.

Sometimes, for instance, Malik and his teammate Jake Caudle ride bikes on the wooded trails around the nearby Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, a world-renowned museum funded by Walton family money. Other times, Malik and teammate Tyrik Dixon practice at the Walton Life Fitness Center by the Walmart world headquarters. Dixon said they get in as guests through one of his mother’s friends, who is a Walmart employee.

In the morning, Jackie leaves the apartment to work as an assistant activities director at a nearby senior nursing and rehabilitation center. Meanwhile, Malik’s teammate Tyler Robinson picks him up and they ride to Bentonville’s roughly 4,000-person campus. They enter a school that has become a statewide powerhouse in almost every sport but basketball.

Walmart has played a direct role here through advertising dollars that go into the athletics booster club fund. But its presence is felt more profoundly in indirect ways.

Many local Walmart vendors (or, suppliers of the store’s merchandise) “pour money and products and things like that into our program for us to be able to get the things we need,” McMahan said.

Ozark, a natural spring water sold in Walmart, is one of three “platinum” sponsors that each funded Bentonville athletics with $15,000 this year, Athletic Director Scott Passmore said. Corporate sponsorships and donations can provide post-workout protein supplements or nutritional meals before games, for example.

Sometimes, the companies supporting Bentonville athletics employ the players’ parents. McMahan estimates that 80 percent of the parents of his players over the last five years have been employed either with Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., or one of its vendors. Their contributions to the program help toward new practice jerseys and shoes almost every year. Every player got a new pair of Air Jordans at the start of this season.

Bentonville basketball has soared to new heights since last spring. Last March, the Tigers made the state semifinals for the first time since moving into the state’s largest classification in the early 1990s. This season, with a younger cast, Malik led Bentonville to a 19-6 record and its first conference championship in Class 7A. The regular season’s highlight came in back-to-back games against conference rivals. In each game, Malik hit impossible game-winning 3-point shots (see video of each below).

On the first he took an inbounds pass with less than a second to shoot against Springdale. While falling out of bounds with two defenders draped all over him, he somehow swished the ball through to win 57-56. Three days later against Fayetteville, he resembled Kobe Bryant dribbling down the final 20 seconds while being chased frantically by two defenders. He finally pulled up well past the top of the key and made a spectacular, hanging 25-footer to win 52-49.

"The buzzer-beaters were kind of crazy," he said. "Being mobbed by the student section was kind of fun. But when I fell after the Fayetteville one - yeah, they were all over me. That kind of hurt a little. But I liked it."