Growing up in North Carolina right along “Tobacco Road” (as they called it), basketball was my first favorite sport. We always had a hoop up in the driveway, I played on teams all of the way through my teens and then again later in graduate school. In fact, when I think back I realize several of my favorite memories from childhood are basketball-related, either playing or watching.
Having that hoop in the driveway, I probably spent just about every day from ages six through sixteen shooting hundreds of shots. Like poker players who after playing tens of thousands of hands necessarily absorb fundamentals that become second nature thereafter, so, too, did I develop a decent shooting eye through all of those many hours practicing.