Watching Isiah Harwell play basketball is a little like watching Michael Jordan appear in Space Jam. Century’s star freshman doesn’t have the same talent, but he sticks out in the same way, almost cartoonishly: He’s a 6-foot-5, athletic forward, towering over most of the players who are three years his elder.

It’s impossible not to notice Harwell on the court. He stands out because of his build, but also because of his savvy, his ability to make plays that look better suited for a star college freshman, not a high school one.

On Wednesday night, in Century’s home-opener win over Bonneville, Harwell kicked off the second half with an array of eye-poppers. He cashed a mid-range jumper over a defender. Moments later, he came up with a steal and flushed down a dunk on the other end, a spectacular play that Harwell made to look routine. He threw down another a few minutes after that, this one off a nice dump-off pass around the basket.

He didn’t need to play much of the second half — the Diamondbacks secured a 54-24 win — but he capped off his night with another steal and a block for good measure. He never looked like he was exerting himself too much, either, which demonstrates Harwell’s otherworldly talent and basketball IQ.

Again, he’s a freshman.

“He’s not a typical freshman you see in Idaho,” Century coach Ryan Frost said. “Just looking at him, you see those things. I expect good things from Isiah. I think he expects big things from himself, too. Everyone around him knows he’s special.”

You don’t need to be Dick Vitale to see that. Harwell makes it obvious, from the way he tallied 23 points in his team’s home-opener to the way he made his high school debut an anticipated event, like he was LeBron James signing with the Miami Heat. And to think: Months before he slipped on a Century uniform, he held offers from Idaho State and Cal Poly.

That’s the thing about Harwell: He’s finally playing competition that can challenge him, at least at the high school level. Last year, as an eighth grader at Franklin Middle School, he actually did look like Michael Jordan. He was so much better than his opponents that he looked like he was toying with them, reaching around for steals and hammering down dunks, earning technical fouls because officials just didn’t know how else to react to a 14-year-old unleashing such a play.

Now, for Harwell, the challenge will be standing out in similar ways. How will he fare in the high school scene? Can he make high school foes look as silly as he did middle school ones?

This week alone, he answered those questions with a resounding yes. He put up 23 against Bonneville — “and didn’t really play much in the fourth quarter, so it could have been more,” Frost said. Then, against Logan (Utah) on Friday, Harwell put up 13 points in a narrow loss.

“I’ve just been working for this, really, my whole life,” Harwell said. “God put me in this position to do whatever I can to be the best I can. So I’m just trying to take that opportunity.”

He hasn’t always had the easiest time doing so. Last year, in an eighth-grade tournament in Las Vegas, Harwell’s team won the title. He was ecstatic. Except officials with the tournament suspected that Harwell might be an “older kid” — in other words, a player who was an eighth grader because they were held back a year — so they denied the team their championship rings.

That spawned a wild goose chase. Harwell eventually supplied his birth certificate to prove his eligibility for the tournament, but officials deemed it fake.

“We still ended up getting the rings, though,” Harwell said with a grin.

Harwell hears the whispers a lot. He looks like an older kid. He plays like an older kid. “But I’m really young,” Harwell says. “So I feel like it’s good to me. They think I’m playing good.”

Harwell isn’t just playing well — he’s playing like he belongs on a college court already. He’s only a high school freshman, though, which leaves room for development. Right now, Frost likes Harwell’s defense, including the ways he gets his hands on passes and changes plays with deflections. “That’s a hard thing to teach a kid,” Frost says.

The other hard thing Frost wants Harwell to learn is to be a leader. He realizes it doesn’t make a ton of sense — how many freshmen feel comfortable enough to tell their new teammates what to do? — but when you’re already one of the best players in the area, it comes with the territory.

“I think that just comes with some time,” Frost said. “I think he’s just going to get better by the experience of playing basketball games. I know he’s played a lot of club basketball, but he hasn’t played high school basketball, and there’s differences to both. Just getting him in the gym more is going to progress that basketball IQ and that skill exponentially.”