It does not matter: He will not break that baby-faced stare. When he looks ahead, his eyes don’t pierce so much as they study. Perhaps that is where the paradox of Jordan Scott begins.

He is a top-100 recruit and a product of Northern Virginia public schools, which have not featured a four-star talent since 2006. His physical and mental makeup have spurred more than a dozen high-major scholarship offers — he’s a 6-foot-7 springboard who guards every position, shoots lights-out and scores from any spot — and yet he remains the quietest player on the court.

Teammates liken his game to that of Kevin Durant and Giannis Antetokounmpo; he models his play after Candace Parker and wears a sleeve on his dominant leg and arm because of A’ja Wilson. His mom, WNBA and NCAA basketball broadcaster Christy Winters-Scott, has endeared him to the women’s game.

“He knows he can be himself, and he respects that in others because he was given that respect,” Winters-Scott said. “He’s free-spirited. He’s not watered down or filtered out. He’s had that freedom to experiment who he is. He can be the person he wants to be, who also happens to play basketball.”

Scott is the modern product of his local basketball roots. Last winter, he followed in the footsteps of his mom, sister and dad, all South Lakes graduates, by earning All-Met honors. (His mom was the player of the year in 1986.) His dad, Jerome Scott Sr., was a three-year starter at Miami; his mom played and coached at Maryland; his sister, Brianna, is one of the catalysts in Georgetown’s strong start.

At South Lakes, just two jerseys hang on the walls: those of Winters-Scott and Basketball Hall of Famer Grant Hill, who is endearingly called “Uncle Grant” in the Scott family. (His actual uncle, Dennis Scott, played in the NBA for a decade.)

Scott seems on track to add his No. 20. And, with a gifted roster by his side, the No. 8 Seahawks (8-1) are within reach of the first state title in program history. Maybe then he’ll talk back — though only within the walls of his home.

“He told me when he was an eighth-grader that he had to be better than ‘Uncle Grant,’ that he was winning us a state title and Grant never did,” Desmond said. “I’m being dead serious. He wants to be the best player to ever go to South Lakes so he can talk s— with mom and dad, his brother and sister and Uncle Grant.”

“He wants to break all our records,” Winters-Scott said.

But what made Scott, a paradox of a player, so great?

Winters-Scott raised her son with a different type of basketball education.

As an assistant at Georgetown, she zipped and yelled around the bench, coaching while seven months pregnant. As an infant, Scott bobbed in a pouch on her stomach, facing outward toward her practices. He would eventually graduate to a seat on the floor, peering behind her right leg with Goldfish and a juice box in hand.

Through the years, as Scott soaked up his surroundings, she encouraged him to lean into what appeared to be a creative and competitive disposition, a penchant for experimentation. When he was 5, he regularly stole his mom’s whiteboard in huddles and drew up plays for her teams. (They often worked, she recalls.) Since middle school, he has kept — and is still adding to — a book of his own plays.

In elementary school, he picked out a blue-and-white ball from a bin at Target. For months, he dribbled it around the house and bounced it off the walls. Though it irked his dad, Winters-Scott would pull him aside and encourage him to keep it up. In middle school, he eschewed movie nights, preferring to stay up late watching film of the South Lakes girls’ team, which Winters-Scott coached to a state tournament appearance.

These days, now preferring to experiment alone in the gym, he continues to test his limits. He also ends every game day with a film review.

“You can tell he’s been around high-level basketball his whole life,” AAU coach Thomas Gadson said. “The game is really kind of easy for him. He understands things beyond the high school level. It’s at the high-major level.”

In an early December game against reigning state champion Hayfield, the court still seemed like his playground. He charged down the lane and spun around a defender tossing a no-look assist. He tripped on a player’s foot and, before he hit the ground, added another 180 degrees, palmed the ball and tossed an underhanded pass. He played aggressive, catch-up defense, falling for a pump fake before pivoting back to the hoop and sending the layup attempt off the glass. Several minutes later, a player tried to test him from three-point range; he blocked that, too.

And still, through it all, his expression never changed. Not when he was grabbed and nudged without a whistle, not on a rare miss or a sidestep three with a defender’s hands inches away from his retinas. He finished with an easy 15 points.

“He goes about it quietly, and people who watch a game probably thought he sucked because he’s not taking off from 25 feet and dunking on you or doing any crazy, fancy, ankle-breaking moves,” Desmond said. “So I expect the same hate to be on him this year that was there last year: ‘Oh, he’s overrated and blah, blah, blah.’ And that’s fine. I really just think he’s like: ‘Cool, we won. You can say what you want.’ ”

Says Scott: “Growing up and hearing ‘team basketball; make the extra pass’ five days a week, I guess it stuck.”

Beneath the stoic look, does he like playing this way?

Growing up, when his mom worked on Washington Mystics broadcasts, Scott was a staple at her side. He rebounded before games. One day, after watching Kristi Toliver’s one-legged fadeaway over and over, he poked then-coach Mike Thibault and took a shot of his own, asking if his fadeaway was like Toliver’s. Thibault said yes.

In sixth grade, the Los Angeles Sparks came to town. Winters-Scott knew how much her son idolized Parker, knew that Parker knew of Scott from Instagram and tried to pull strings outside the locker room to let him meet her. She received pushback at the door before a voice called out: “Let Jordo in!” It was Parker.

Winters-Scott put the ensuing photo of Scott, sandwiched between Parker and Nneka Ogwumike, on a sweatshirt that Scott wore to school.

Through the years, Scott figures he has watched more of the women’s game than the men’s, though he remains an ardent NBA fan. But it wasn’t just what he watched; it was the intimacy with which he studied. Coaches said he saw the game differently, more purely, than his peers. He understood angles and how to play below the rim. South Lakes point guard Brian Kennedy said Scott always knows where to be on the court. Miles Franklin, an AAU teammate, said Scott has the best natural game sense he has ever seen. Two years ago, when Scott was a freshman, Desmond called him the smartest player he had coached in two decades.

Now, Scott cites Parker as the biggest influence to his game. She’s positionless and unpredictable, a balanced weapon on offense and a former defensive player of the year. He changed his jersey number in AAU to No. 3, Parker’s number.

Four minutes after a phone interview, he called back to blurt out, “Elena Delle Donne!” She, too, is an influence.

“That knowledge lets him do certain things on the floor that frankly other guys are not even looking at,” said Gadson, who coached Scott this summer and watched him “more than hold his own” during college visits against high-major players. “It’s part of his DNA.”

You’ll only see the dimples after games, once fans have filed out and only teammates, coaches and family are left. It’s a hidden part of Scott, same as his goofy, sarcastic sense of humor, his forte in the kitchen and his love of Marvel movies. Ultimately, it’s a testament to his values, which he keeps close to the vest.

“Obviously family, friends and coaches, and people rooting for you,” Scott said when asked what he values. “And people that you know will have your back at any time obviously on the court and off the court. There’s someone that’s going to be there for you always rooting for you.”

That’s why he trusts Desmond, who brings tougher love than many coaches but also traveled to Las Vegas this summer to watch Scott play — he had 16 blocks in an AAU game — and, like Scott and his mom, is up long past midnight watching film. That’s why Scott stayed at South Lakes with teammates who understand his wiring. When those people have had his back, it has been easy to focus on the controllables.

For the Seahawks, it has been easy to follow his lead. The team is nearly spotless, save for a loss to No. 14 Patriot. Last season, after the Seahawks graduated all five starters and in one player’s words “lacked maturity,” they still made the state semifinals. This year, they’re assured. They’ve added transfers from Bishop O’Connell and another impact transfer from New Zealand. Kennedy and Sol Vita are two of the best undersized guards in the state.

The last step, the Seahawks say, might be making Scott more selfish; he was taking just 11 shots per game and averaging 17.3 points entering Thursday.

That could take some time.

“I mean, I’m trying my best,” Scott said. “It’s just unnatural.”