From self-outcast to leader, Baynes is what Penn Wood needs

NORRISTOWN — It was mid-January last year when Shamir Baynes decided varsity basketball wasn’t working for him.

The Penn Wood junior guard was part of the Patriots’ bench rotation. He’d played in 12 games, averaged 5.3 points per contest on a team that would end up winning 15 games and go to districts.

But something about the situation didn’t feel right, so Baynes abruptly quit the team.

“I wasn’t feeling it anymore, so I just stopped playing,” Baynes said Wednesday night.

The decision perplexed Penn Wood coach Matt Lindeman at the time. Baynes was never lacking in passion on the court. But in other aspects of how Penn Wood wanted to play, their team concept and his maturity to accept a role within that, Baynes wasn’t quite there yet.

“He just wanted to not keep playing with that team at that time,” Lindeman said. “No hard feelings, he’s a good kid, he’s always been great to us. He just made a choice after one game that he didn’t like how his season was going. He just wasn’t ready last year.”

Eleven months on, that decision feels distant. Baynes is the leading scorer for Penn Wood, its vocal leader on and off the court. Saturday, he hopes that’ll be enough to lead them to a District 1 Class 5A championships when the seventh-seeded Patriots (16-8) take on No. 1 West Chester East at Temple University’s Liacouras Center in a 3 o’clock start.

Lindeman points to maturity as a factor in the decision and how Baynes has changed on either side of it. Whether it was questioning his playing time or how Baynes fit in a crowded backcourt or Lindeman’s style that doesn’t depend on individuals taking over, it just didn’t work out last year. But it’s a testament to both sides that the break didn’t bolt the door closed forever.

Baynes said he came to regret the decision, finding the new routine of not having basketball to occupy him as unsettling. Lindeman acknowledged that a decision like that “could’ve went a lot of different ways,” but Baynes didn’t use it as a pretense to get into trouble.

Baynes’ second act at Penn Wood was made possible by a frank conversation. At season’s end, he sat down with Lindeman and Baynes’ cousin, 2019 grad and point guard Zac-Chae’us Williams, to talk it through. Lindeman was willing to give Baynes a clean slate heading into the summer, and Baynes hasn’t done anything since to tarnish it.

“It was just like, basically I texted him, ‘Hey coach, I want to come back,’” Baynes said after a 56-51 win over Penncrest in the District 1 semifinals. “… We had a talk together talking about what would happen. In summer, I came here and started working hard. And from there in summer leagues, we started getting close.”

“I think he saw over the summer what we were preaching and teaching him paid off, and I think that helped him buy in,” Lindeman said. “But his effort level has always been a leader for us because kids see how hard he plays. He just needed to get a little experience, and I think listening more, and it’s all worked together.”

Baynes has been a consistent performer this year. Not only does he lead them in scoring at 18.0 points per game, he’s been in double-figures every game but one. He also leads with 35 3-pointers. But against Penncrest, he influenced the game without hitting a triple and only attempting two, choosing to spend most of his energy in an 11-point performance on defense, shadowing Penncrest’s Marquis Tomlin.

“I didn’t really care about scoring,” Baynes said. “People in school, they came up to me like, I need 30 (points) today. And all I kept telling them is, I just want to win. I just want to get to Temple. Whatever I’ve got to do for my team to go to Temple is what I’m going to do, whether it’s scoring or playing defense.”

“I think he really played great,” forward Jerry Flynn said. “He really stepped up on the defense. We know they’ll play close to him, so he had to play more on defense. “

It seems peculiar to watch Baynes play — always hyping up teammates, especially on defense — and contemplate him willingly stepping away from it. But it’s equally odd to think of a trajectory where a player can go from quitting one year to an unquestioned captain the next. Yet that’s what transpired.

It perhaps helps that Penn Wood had to replace 78 percent of its scoring from 2018-19. And it speaks to a dynamic this season where three of its top four scorers weren’t on varsity by the end of last year: Baynes, Flynn, who played as a sophomore on JV, and sophomore Abdullah Dublin.

“From Day 1 he’s been our captain,” Lindeman said. “That kind of started in the summertime with just how hard he plays. It doesn’t matter if it’s practice (or) scrimmages, he just gives it all. (His) shirt’s drenched. And everyone needed to see that because we have so many new faces, they don’t know how hard you have to play on varsity. And he was the one guy that we had that we could be like, look, that’s what it looks like.

“We needed him to be a leader, we asked him to be a leader and he kind of took the role on himself.“

That path back — to the 16 wins, to states, to the team’s first District 1 final in a decade — started with Baynes making the courageous decision to admit he was wrong. So often, those decisions are one-way paths: Once out, banishment is permanent.

But Baynes and Lindeman made sure that wasn’t the case, and both are better for it.

“I put my pride to the side and knew how much I loved basketball,” Baynes said. “I knew this basketball season was coming up and I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and I know (Lindeman) is a great coach, so I went to him and swallowed my pride and told him how I felt.”