Jontay grew up in Columbia, Missouri, the fourth of eight children. His father, Michael, Sr., worked in Christian ministry, and his mother, Lisa, homeschooled the children. Both had played college basketball—Lisa, as a high-school senior, had averaged a nearly impossible fifty-eight points per game—and they saw the sport as their children’s ticket to college. All eight of the kids eventually got basketball scholarships. By the time Jontay was sixteen, he was six feet ten.