THE MALCOM X-FACTOR: New Rap Game For Harvard Hoops?

“There ain’t no limit” to what they can do.

At least, that’s the case for next year’s USC basketball team. The Trojans recently received a commitment from teen-rap sensation Romeo (he dropped the Lil’ over a year ago), meaning that the son of hip-hop mogul Master P will be teamed up with the nation’s top incoming freshman—prep phenom O.J. Mayo—come the 2007-08 season.

It’s all pretty exciting, except for the fact that, here at Harvard, we’re dealing with our own bit of thrilling news. No, Tommy Amaker has never sampled a Jackson 5 song, has never had his own TV show on Nickelodeon, and his dad never made ‘em say uhh, but he did win an NIT title in 2004.

Okay, so it’s not quite the same. But Amaker did coach at Michigan just a decade after the Fab Five played there. And it was just three years before Amaker’s 2002 arrival that we saw the release of the underrated debut album from Chris Webber under the moniker “C. Webb.”

The past has shown us that Amaker is attracted to universities with histories in the rap game. And while it’s a struggle to scrounge up an abundance of hip-hop heads in Harvard’s history (no, Natalie Portman doing her take on “Lazy Sunday” on Saturday Night Live doesn’t count), Amaker has a unique opportunity to spark a little bit of role reversal.

Instead of following the rappers, as he did at Michigan, Amaker should do his best to get the rappers to follow him. And with the precedent set in Romeo’s commitment to USC, he doesn’t even have to go after the rappers themselves—he should recruit their sons.

The most obvious first choice is the self-proclaimed best rapper alive, Lil’ Wayne.

Despite the fact that his dad was never a famous rapper (and Weezy is almost seven years older than Romeo), he has yet to drop Lil’ from his name. If that weren’t enough, his 2006 collaboration with mentor Baby, “Like Father, Like Son,” features a number of references to the Birdman as his father.

So in essence, Wayne is a rap son. And what could be better than a starting backcourt of Drew Housman and Dwayne Carter for next year’s Crimson? Dropping dimes to Evan Harris in the post, it would give new meaning to the phrase “The Block Is Hot.”

But Lil’ Wayne, as we all know, is pretty busy on the mixtape circuit, so he might not have time to balance expos and stuntin’ like his daddy. So where should Amaker go if he can’t get Weezy to commit?

He should head south to the Queensbridge housing projects in New York, the birthplace of Nas. I know, his dad didn’t rap either, but he is a famous jazz musician. And jazz, of course, is often considered the precursor to hip-hop.

Nas would bring an experienced defensive presence to the Crimson, and would help make up for the departure of center Brian Cusworth. Nas’ full name, Nasir, after all, means “protector” in Arabic. Plus, Nas already has experience playing with a team—The Bravehearts—and he’s shown an ability to defer to his teammates despite earlier beliefs that he was a superior player (see the Jay-Z collaboration, “Black Republican”).

The problem is that Nas, at 33, might be just a bit too old. But that doesn’t mean that Harvard doesn’t have other options.

If Amaker wants to start early and try to pick out a rising star long before his college years, he can always get in touch with Cam’ron, who starred on Manhattan Center High School’s basketball team with fellow rapper Mase.

Long-time Dipset fans will remember that Killa Cam appeared on the cover of his 2002 album “Come Home With Me” holding his son, who could come into his own as a player in the next few years—with the right tutelage. Amaker only signed a five-year contract with the Crimson last week, but all he needs is a bit of early success to still be here when Cam’s son hits high school. I can already hear the cheers from the proud father in the stands: “Crimset! Crimset! Crimset!”

But no matter what Amaker does, it’s clear that if his plans for a postseason birth are to become a reality, he needs to follow the lead of Tim Floyd at USC and infuse some rap influence into Harvard’s basketball program.

Jay-Z, whose anti-Crimson sentiment was registered when he proclaimed in 2003 that he was “far from a Harvard student,” isn’t a believer. Maybe so, but I’m willing to bet that the Crimson makes it to the postseason sooner than the Brooklyn Nets. Show me what you got.

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.