Father and son remember the stops at Fuddruckers in Columbia, S.C., more than halfway through the five-hour drive back to Charleston from Atlanta, where the son, only 12, had started practicing that summer with a high-level AAU team.
The son realized he was in over his head during warm-ups. The Atlanta players dunked. He wouldn't dunk until the end of sophomore year in high school. He would cry sometimes on drives back.
"I thought I was good," Khris Middleton says. "I realized I was s---ty." His father, James, had picked the Atlanta team to show his son how far he had to go.