Solar Power

Phoenix Suns' power forward Amare Stoudemire is an impressive specimen. He's the kind of cat who had to pull out his ID back in the day, not to convince people how old he was, but how young. Standing 6-foot-10 and filling out every inch of his 245-pound frame, Stoudemire, only 22, is already entering his fourth year in the NBA after going straight from high school to the pros. Unlike nearly every high schooler to enter the League, Stoudemire had virtually zero growing pains, probably because even as a 19-year-old rookie he clocked in as tall as the best of them, and weighed 240 pounds. Where was that ID, again?
Stoudemire is more than just a physical anomaly; his mind runs like a computer on constant auto-save whenever he is learning something new. "I'm a sponge,” says Stoudemire at a press junket for Sony's new NBA '06 video game, which will feature the bulldozing four-man on the cover. "I learn real quick. I just sit back and absorb and it's not long before I'm doing it, sometimes even better than the way I was taught.”