Think Big

After transforming his body—and his life—Purdue’s CALEB SWANIGAN is the most dominant force in college basketball.

- David Cassilo

W “Where’s Biggie?”

Roosevelt Barnes waited anxiously at the airport. It was 2011, and his life was in flux. Barnes was just recently divorced, his kids were grown and he was about to be a father again—to a 6-2, 360-pound son. But despite Biggie’s size, he couldn’t be found.

It was all set up just a few weeks prior. Carl Swanigan Jr, a former AAU player of Barnes’, called to ask if he would take care of his 14-year-old brother Caleb—aka Biggie. By that point, Caleb, his mother and his siblings had bounced around from Indiana to Utah, living in homeless shelters, all while their father, Carl Sr, was addicted to crack cocaine and in and out of jail.

Carl Jr was himself once a basketball standout and Ole Miss commit but dropped out of high school and later lost his right eye in a shooting. He knew his brother needed a change, and he hoped Barnes could help.

“I told him if he comes out here, I have to adopt him,” Barnes remembers. “I’m going to raise him like my own child.”

Barnes, though, still didn’t know what to expect. Outside of a brief phone conversation, he hadn’t seen or heard from Caleb since he was 6 years old. And when the plane landed, he couldn’t spot his hard-tomiss new family member, who was collecting his own thoughts.

“The biggest thing I remember was being afraid about my future,” Caleb says. “I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen.”