Without fail, the fluorescent-yellow ball would whiz across the master bedroom – back and forth, night after night – until the four-year-old prodigy completed the drill 100 times.
Rather than train her young son to hoist a basketball, Jacquie Richardson – a former point guard at Virginia State – created a unique exercise, in which the toddler would repeatedly simulate a jump shot by flicking a tennis ball into her outstretched hands.
“My mother played (basketball) all her life, and she’s the one who introduced me to the game,” said the Kings guard. “I used to shoot the tennis ball like a basketball, and my mom would catch it and throw it back to me.