How Kingston Flemings Keeps It Real — Sticking Up For Reporters, Staying Loyal To His Originals and Making His Own NBA Path at the Draft Combine

It is a little thing. But after every Big 12 or NCAA Tournament game, as reporters crowded around Kingston Flemings’ locker, he always made sure that college-aged and women reporters could get a question in. If their question got drowned out or spoken over in the bustle of the scrum, Flemings would call on them. Almost effortlessly taking control of the postgame interview scrum as easily as he took charge on the basketball court for the University of Houston.

“The bigger reporters who are there just some of the times they think they can kind of just ask all the questions over everyone,” Flemings tells PaperCity. “Especially the younger (student) reporters — Camryn (Alberigo of Cougar Sports), all of them. They’ve been here — they’re at practices every day. There were a few times when they’re trying to ask questions and the bigger reporters are trying to go over them. . .

“I’m the one answering the questions. So I’m telling them, ‘You can wait a little bit. Let Camryn ask a question.’ Obviously, I take mental note of that. Just knowing who’s always been there. Got to go with your people first. I’m going to answer all the questions. But some can wait their turn.”

This is a 19-year-old who played one season of college basketball thinking about what even few seasoned professional athletes ever consider. Kingston Flemings takes care of the youngest reporters. Sure, it is a little thing. But sometimes the little things say plenty. With Flemings, the blur of a point guard from the University of Houston, the little things just keep stacking up. Flemings is not going to be a Top 9 pick in June’s NBA Draft because of the little things. He didn’t shatter both the single-season freshman scoring and assists record at UH — a school that boasts Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler among its basketball alumni — because he is considerate.

But don’t tell Houston coach Kelvin Sampson that it does not matter. Or Kingston Flemings’ mom Shayla.

“That does my heart good,” Shayla Flemings says when she hears about her son making sure younger reporters get their chance to ask a question too.

Shayla Flemings went to the NBA Draft Lottery in Chicago with her son on Sunday. The ABC cameras captured Flemings wearing his suit and a For the City UH pin. Like all the other sure lottery picks, Flemings is not participating in the live action offense-vs-defense drills and the Wednesday and Thursday scrimmages of this Combine week. But everyone is required to undergo anthropometric measurements (hand length and width, height without shoes, percentage of body fat, standing reach, weight and wingspan), get their full medical records evaluated and go through shooting drills. Flemings is doing a number of interviews with teams too.

Kingston Flemings trained for this week and the long draft process with largely the same small team he’s used for the last six years. Though Forton Wimbush, Fleming’s godfather and an experienced lawyer who is helping the family during this draft process, notes that specialists are brought in as needed to supplement the training.

“They know him,” Shayla Flemings tells PaperCity. “So it just made sense to stay with the same group that actually helped him to get to where he is now.”

This Flemings’ loyalty is part of his story now too. Kingston stayed with his original high school (San Antonio’s Brennan High School) and the same AAU team (SA Futures) all the way through. Contrast that with projected No. 1 pick AJ Dybantsa and projected No. 2 pick Darryn Peterson, who both played for three high schools and multiple AAU teams.

A little thing. That means plenty.

Flemings Corp, No Fancy Anything

Shayla Flemings wants to make one thing clear though. Staying with one coach (the intense Koty Cowgill coached both Brennan high and the SA Futures) and the same training team is anything but blind loyalty. These long timers have all proven themselves in the Flemings world.

“We’re not loyal to a fault,” Shayla Flemings says. “We kind of pick the people around us that are equally kind of for us. So it’s been kind of a journey. So those people that have been with us forever it doesn’t make any sense to switch it up and bring in all new people that don’t know him.”

One new member of Flemings Corp is his agent Erika Ruiz, a former college basketball player at Saint Mary’s and video assistant at USC who started in the mailroom at CAA before moiving to Rich Paul’s Klutch Sports. She also represents Houston Rockets point guard Fred VanVleet, helping secure that three-year $130 million contract for him. Ruiz fits in with the family’s understated ethos. She came to Kingston Flemings’ NBA Draft announcement press conference at UH, rolling her own suitcase through the Fertitta Center after a straight-from-the-airport arrival, making anything but a big deal about herself.

The Flemings interviewed a ton of agents before deciding on Ruiz.

“Honestly Ericka and them, they came towards the end,” Shayla Flemings says. “They just fit us. . . We’ve never been ones to pick fancy anything. We’re used to getting it out the mud. So it kind of felt that same way with them. We felt like we could something really big and amazing with them.”

An unexpected test already came in the first day of this NBA Draft Combine week, with some would be NBA Draft gurus almost comically freaking out over Flemings’ official height without shoes (6-foot-2 and a half) and his modest (by NBA standards) 6-foot-3 and a half wingspan. Then came Day Two when Flemings finished first in the 3-point star shooting drill, second in the shooting off the dribble drill (hitting 26 of 30 shots), second in the three quarters court sprint and second in the shuttle run, displaying the elite athleticism that will make him one of the fastest guards in the NBA from day one.

So much for that manufactured concern. Not that Kingston Flemings himself ever seemed caught up in any worry. He and his Duke basketball bound sister Bella Flemings made a funny video in which Bella poses the question to him: “How does it feel to be the forgotten Flemings sibling?” Bella is barely able to get the question out before cracking up.

“How does it feel to be the forgotten Flemings sibling?” 😂

Bella Flemings got jokes for her older brother @K1ngFlemings ahead of the 2026 AWS NBA Draft Combine. pic.twitter.com/waW8o7fuyh

— NBA Future Starts Now (@nbafuturenow) May 11, 2026

“I’m for sure going to go through an adjustment period,” Kingston Flemings says of his transition to the NBA. “I’ll learn in practices. As the year goes on, I’m sure I’ll get better and better.”

“We’ve never been ones to pick fancy anything. We’re used to getting it out the mud.” — Shayla Flemings, Kingston Flemings’ mom

Choosing Batman

This is a student of basketball, a fanatic about the game, who does not care much about the trappings of the NBA hype machine, the fancy, either.

“People asking whether he wanted to be one and done or whether going in the first round mattered to him (coming into UH),” Wimbush tells PaperCity. “It never has. It never will. It’s always just about being the best player he can. .  . He loves basketball. He loves playing with his teammates.

“Those are things you can’t put on paper. You can’t see it in the boxscore.”

Little things. That means plenty.

Kingston Flemings is very much the son of his nurse mom and firefighter dad Dee Flemings. “His father is an alpha,” Kelvin Sampson says. “His mother is an alpha. Bella is an alpha. (Kingston’s youngest sisters) Kadey and Ro-Ro, they’re going to be alphas too.

“They raise alphas in that Flemings’ house.”

Kingston Flemings is already setting up his future in an alpha way. Making sure young reporters get to ask their questions. Sticking with one high school, one AAU team, his original crew of trainers. Picking an agent who is anything but the flashiest. Turning doubts into fuel overnight.

One of the more revealing games of Flemings’ historic freshman season at Houston came when he faced off against natural point guard rival Darius Acuff Jr. and Arkansas and refused to make it a one-on-one duel. Instead Flemings put up 21 points, five assists, six rebounds and three steals while only committing one turnover in 36 minutes. He’d post the best-plus minus rating of anyone on the floor in a high-octane game that UH controlled from start to finish.

“Not everyone can be Batman,” Houston assistant coach Hollis Price, who knows what it takes to be the best player on a Kelvin Sampson coached team, the responsibilities and burden that come with All-American status, tells PaperCity. “Kingston was Batman from day one.”

It turns out that there is nothing little about this after all.