Shawn Kemp may have been known for his basketball talents, but the former NBA’er was better known for planting his seed far & wide. And Luke Winn of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED checks up on the growth of Kemp’s eldest wild oat sown - Shawn Kemp Jr.

The 17-year-old Kemp is currently a high school junior living in Georgia with his mom. Although the younger Kemp has gotten high marks from scouts, he’s recently struggled during summer camp games. However, scouts still see a lot of potential in Junior, and doctors expect him to grow to 7 feet tall by the time he turns 21.

Despite possessing his dad’s on-court skills, Kemp Jr. hasn’t had much in the way of contact with his famous father.

Li’l Shawn was born in Seattle in 1991 to Genay Doyal while Big Shawn just finished his second season with the Sonics. Mom & Son would see Dad play for the first few years of the kid’s life, until work got in the way:

When Kemp was 5, his mother relocated to the Atlanta area for a job with Nordstrom’s, her employer in Seattle. He said he didn’t have contact with his dad again until he attended a game between the Hawks and the elder Kemp’s second NBA team, the Cavaliers, in 2000.”That was the first time I remember seeing him since I was 3 years old,” Kemp Jr. said. “We got to talk to him after the game before he got on the bus, for like 15 minutes. I don’t even remember what about; I was just like …”

And it was another six years before Dad came calling again:

It wasn’t until 2006, after the elder Kemp’s final NBA comeback bid, and his second drug-related arrest, that he reached out to Shawn Jr., calling him in hopes of fostering a relationship. Kemp’s father is married now, has three children with his current wife, and splits time between the Seattle and Houston areas. Kemp Jr. and his father have since been talking periodically, with Doyal’s blessing. “He still loves his dad and respects him,” she said, “and I feel it’s better late than never that he’s going to try to be part of things.”

Maybe absence does make the heart grow fonder. After 17 years of fatherly indifference, Shawn Jr. is starting to embrace his father’s b-ball legacy:

Just last week, he said, he was wearing a throwback jersey of his dad’s — retro green-and-gold Sonics, number 40, the name KEMP stitched on the back. And on Kemp Jr.’s right shoulder is a tattoo of a basketball with “S.K.” and “40″ inked inside. He’s finally switching his high-school number to 40 this season to match his dad’s old Sonics digits. “I’ve been wanting to wear [40] for a while now,” he said.

In return, Shawn Sr. appears to finally want to be part of his eldest kid’s burgeoning basketball career. He’s invited his son to participate in some workouts this summer in Houston:

“His father said he wanted to basically work with him, on basketball,” Doyal said, recalling the conversation. “Which, I think, is a very good thing. Because he said he doesn’t want his son to be compared to him. He wants his son to be better than him.”

Does this also include teaching Junior to drive up the national birth rate, just as dear ol’ dad did?