Big Baby Steps

Part the curtains and cue the funk. "Get UP! Get on UP!" � The footage from the 1998 talent show at Capitol Middle School in Baton Rouge is no better than public-access quality, but there is no missing the charisma of the colossal sixth-grader who commands the stage. Mike in hand, wearing a black suit and one of his grandmother's wigs, Glen (Big Baby) Davis--all 5'11", 225 pounds of him--is channeling James Brown, nimbly mimicking the Godfather of Soul's slide steps and feverish gestures and bringing down the house. � Now a sophomore at LSU, Davis's persona and frame are still XXL, but he's taken his act to a bigger stage, fronting the Greatest Show in the SEC. A 6'8", 315-pound power forward blessed with soft hands and light feet--he says he took a ballet class in high school "to chase a girl"-- Davis was the Southeastern Conference's leading rebounder though Sunday (9.9 per game) and ranked second in scoring (18.3 points). With Big Baby putting up double doubles despite facing double teams in eight of his last nine games, the Tigers (22-7) won their first SEC title outright in 21 seasons and have emerged as a dark horse to reach the Final Four. "There's not a team in this league that hasn't tried to devise ways to stop Glen," says LSU coach John Brady, "yet he's been dominant down the stretch."

With a shooting touch from midrange and nifty spin moves in the post that belie his heft, Davis--who has slimmed down from his freshman weight of 363 pounds--has proved that he's not an oversized novelty. "The guy's an athlete," said South Carolina coach Dave Odom after Davis had 24 points and 10 rebounds in LSU's 64-61 win on Feb. 28. "I don't care if he's 310 pounds or 350. It's tough to wear him down."

Davis got his nickname as a nine-year-old peewee league football player who, because he was hardly peewee, had to play against kids at least three years his senior. "Stop crying, you big baby!" his coaches would shout when Davis complained that his elders were picking on him. Now 20, Davis inflicts his damage on the hardwood with a cherubic smile. Ari Fisher, his coach at LSU's Laboratory School, says Davis has "an infectious personality that completely sets him apart." At the ABCD Camp in Teaneck, N.J., in 2003, which featured 200 of the top high school players in the country, Big Baby stole the show with his showboating. During the camp's senior all-star game he pretended to be a point guard, and his postbasket boogie was so smooth, "it was like [he was] Fred Astaire or Gregory Hines," says director Sonny Vaccaro.

On the LSU campus Davis has also become known for his big heart. After Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast last September and LSU's Pete Maravich Assembly Center was turned into a triage unit, he spent several nights inside the arena, unloading supply trucks, setting up hospital beds and even holding an IV bag as doctors operated on a severely injured man. Yet below Davis's genial surface lurks that nine-year-old who learned just how tough life can be. "When you first see me--a guy who's always positive, who has such a pure heart," says Big Baby, "you'd have no idea what I came from."

Slightly before 10 on the night after the Tigers' win at South Carolina, Davis is driving through the drug-infested Eden Park neighborhood of Baton Rouge. This is where he lived from the fourth through eighth grades, five miles from the LSU campus but worlds apart. He stops at a corner on 44th Street where a group of men in baggy T-shirts are drinking Heinekens. "Bay-bee!" they say as he rolls down the window. "Saw you on TV last night! You killin' 'em!" Some were Davis's classmates at Capitol High, but he's not here to see them. He's here to see his mother.

Earlier that evening Davis was laid out on a padded table at Effum Body Works, a tattoo parlor in South Baton Rouge. An artist's needle repeatedly pierced his right breast, drawing the outline of a striking young woman's face, that of his mom, Toyna Davis, at 19, 11 years before he was born. "This is how I want to remember her," Glen says of the sepia-toned photo that served as the tattoo's template, "from when she was in her right state of mind."

Toyna was the original entertainer in the Davis clan. A star in basketball, track and softball at Capitol High as well as a majorette, she was a dance team member at Northwestern State and later became a model in New Orleans. "All my flair, all my personality, comes from her," Glen says.

As he continues down 44th, a woman approaches the car. "There she is," he says. Toyna is staying on this block with a family friend. For the past 24 years--since the fast pace of the modeling world caught up with her--she has battled drug addiction, which has regularly pulled her out of Glen's life. "Mom," he says, "I've been looking for you. Get in, I want to show you my tattoo."

Glen drives to his grandmother's house nearby, where he removes the gauze covering his new artwork. Toyna's eyes widen when she sees the tattoo. She gasps and then retreats, weeping. Later she says it's a blessing that "the curse stopped" with her, that none of her three children--Toy, 29, Glen and LaJazzia, 18--inherited her weakness for chemical substances. "I taught my children not to trust in me," says Toyna, wiping away tears, "because I would fail them. I taught them only to trust in God."

Glen and LaJazzia spent most of their early years with Toyna and LaJazzia's father, Donald Davis, in Edgewood, Md. (Glen did not know about or meet his birth father, Donald Robertson, until his sophomore year of high school.) "When Mom got home, everything was about us," Glen says. But after Donald and Toyna separated when Glen was seven, her drug problem escalated and she began disappearing for days. The family lost its house and the kids were sometimes compelled to steal food from the neighborhood store. Glen and LaJazzia were shuttled between a foster home, a shelter and Toy's custody before being sent back to their grandmother's in Eden Park. "If I could ask God for a different life, I wouldn't," Glen says. "The wrongs that my mother did made me a stronger person, and I wouldn't change that for anything."