Double Dribble

By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor

Thirty years after their father transferred to Palisades High, twin brothers Olujimi and Elijah Popoola are following in his footsteps. The 6-foot-6 juniors are two of the nation’s fastest rising prep basketball players in the 2027 class and it did not take them long to adapt to a new team and a new city.          

OJ and EJ made their summer league debuts against St. Pius X-St. Matthias on June 14 and five games in the two are already drawing college scouts’ attention. Last week they dominated at both ends of the floor and powered the Dolphins to a 4-0 record in the Fairfax Tournament at Pan Pacific Park. In the semifinal round on Friday versus Inglewood, OJ fed EJ for a layup that broke a 99-99 tie with 1:08 left, then OJ dunked a lob pass from Jack Levey for the clinching basket with 10.5 ticks to go and Palisades prevailed 106-102 despite a big game by Sentinels five-star recruit Jason Crowe Jr. The next day, OJ had 14 points and EJ added eight as the Dolphins routed Santa Monica by 40 points to win the championship.

“We’ve only been in town for two weeks but we like it,” said EJ, a shooting guard. “We’ve been playing since we were very little.”

“Our dad wanted us to play for his alma mater,” point guard OJ added. “So here we are.”

Raised in Las Vegas, the twins aspire to be like their older brother Christian, who led Bishop Gorman to three state titles before graduating in 2017 and went on to play at the University of Utah.   

OJ and EJ each played in four games their freshman year at Arbor View High in Las Vegas and spent last season at Voyageur College Prep in Detroit. They already have two scholarship offers, from UNLV and California, but wherever the two end up signing they insist they are “a package deal.”   

Head coach Jeff Bryant is delighted the twins have enrolled at Palisades.

“They have 4.3 GPAs, they’re great kids and it’s the right place at the right time,” said Bryant, who is expecting a smooth a transition. “It makes sense for them to come to their dad’s old stomping grounds. It’s like a match made in heaven, love at first sight, they fit right in.”

Chris Popoola transferred from Westchester to Palisades his senior year (1995-96) and the Dolphins went 24-3 under coach James Paleno, winning their third straight Western League crown on their way to the City semifinals, where they fell to Crenshaw in overtime. One of his teammates that season was Donzell Hayes, who would later serve as the Dolphins’ head coach from 2016-23. Ironically, 1995-96 was the last time Palisades captured the outright league title (it finished in a three-way tie for first  with Westchester and Fairfax in 2011-12). So Popoola’s sons are plenty motivated to end a drought that began the year after Chris graduated (he went on to play two seasons at UNLV).

Bryant would like that a lot.

Helping the twins achieve that goal will be another transfer, BJ Evans, who attended Taft last season but did not play basketball. He scored 16 points against Santa Monica and is the younger brother of James Evans (now at UNLV), whom Bryant coached for four years at West Ranch High in Stevenson Ranch.

Bryant took over Palisades’ program in the spring of 2024 and in the middle of his first season the Palisades Fire destroyed several players’ homes and left the team without a gym on campus to practice or play in. Bryant scrambled to find alternate sites and navigated the Dolphins all the way to the semifinals of the City Open Division playoffs, then to the CIF Southern Californa Division III regional semifinals.

Palisades is currently practicing at UCLA but Bryant said he is “100 percent confident” the team will play in its own gym next winter. The Dolphins are expected to be one of the top teams in the City.