Seeking to offer others the opportunity once provided him, 2010 No. 1 overall NBA draft pick John Wall's "Breakout" camp sponsored by his shoe company invited underrated prep players to Philadelphia the summer after his rookie season.
Among the 100 prospects selected was a bouncy 11th-grader from three time zones away named Zach LaVine.
"I just saw how freak of an athlete he was," Wall said, "and you could tell if he ever figured out how to knock down shots, he could have an opportunity in this league.' "
He's figuring it out.
Six years and about a billion shots aimed in gyms and Seattle-area backyards later, the third-year Timberwolves guard is transitioning from breathtaking athlete and two-time, All-Star dunk champion to bona fide NBA star.
Force-fed at point guard parts of his first two pro seasons presumably for his own long-term good, LaVine has found his place this season playing for new coach Tom Thibodeau at shooting guard.
LaVine is second in the league in average minutes played, a fraction behind Toronto's Kyle Lowry, and his shooting percentages have improved along with his shot selection. He has joined Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns as the team's third 20-point-a game scorer.
He also, Thibodeau said, is "making strides" defensively, even if the demanding coach deems LaVine still has miles to go.
"I liked him better his rookie year," said Scott Brooks, who now coaches Wall for the Washington Wizards after a season away from the game. "You could guard him a lot easier."
In 2007, Wall drove unknown from his North Carolina home to Chicago for that same camp and made it his big break on the way to stardom at Kentucky and then the NBA.
In 2011, LaVine made that week more fuel for a fire that has crackled since he was a second-grader both gifted and driven enough to play in a league with fifth-graders. He was considered good enough that week to play in the camp-ending All-Star Game, but not good enough to make an exclusive group that played nightly with Wall, Jason Terry and other NBA stars.
Groomed for success by his pro-football-playing father and oozing with confidence since he was a boy, LaVine always considered himself underestimated by those who only saw his hops and dunks.
He also considered himself better than those most players ranked far above him by recruiting services when he was in high school or who were selected by NBA teams before the Timberwolves drafted him 13th overall in 2014 after he played just one season coming off the bench at UCLA.
Who else would have had the audacity to call himself a combination of Stephen Curry's shooting, Russell Westbrook's athleticism and Jamal Crawford's ball-handling when NBA teams before that draft asked him to compare his game to a current pro player?
Only those who didn't know LaVine wore a rain slicker and gloves so he could shoot in his backyard throughout Seattle winters. Or that his father, Paul, sent his fifth-grade son out to play church-league ball against firemen, policemen and pastors, and used to pay older kids _ usually $5 a game, sometimes in Gatorade _ to school his precocious son in one-on-one games.
"I wasn't the best college player in the world, I didn't even start," LaVine said. "I was never ranked the No. 1 recruit in the country, you know? I wasn't a McDonald's All-American. I feel like some people didn't understand, so I just let them know I put a lot of work into my game, and I might not be the best in college, but I strive to be great."
LaVine sold that vision of himself to Wolves President of Basketball Operations Flip Saunders, who saw both the spring in LaVine's legs and the look in his eye. So on draft morning, Saunders tucked into his pocket a scrap of paper upon which he had scribbled LaVine's name, wishing for good luck he'd still be on the board when the Wolves picked.
"Some guys know who they are and some guys have no idea who they are," Denver coach Michael Malone said. "They'll say I'm this guy, and it's like me saying I'm like my uncle, Karl Malone. Zach, he has a swagger, a confidence, and it's not arrogance _ there's a big difference in my opinion. That kind of confidence is born from the work he puts in."
Malone coached Sacramento in 2014 when he asked LaVine to compare himself to current players at the NBA's draft combine, and got the Curry-Westbrook-Crawford reply.
"His answer was priceless, and I still remember it," Malone said. "I said, 'Well, hey, come back to Sacramento with us right now because if you're those three guys, you're going to be a heck of a player.' "
The Kings would have been wise had they picked LaVine. Instead, they took Michigan's Nik Stauskas at No. 8 and traded him away a year later. The Wolves took LaVine at No. 13.
If the 2014 draft were held again today, LaVine might be a top-five pick.
LaVine had been groomed by his father for that draft night moment. When he was in grade school, his father interviewed him, asking questions like reporters might do, on car rides together. In high school, father ran son through a shootaround _ just like NBA teams do _ when Zach otherwise would be in phys-ed class the morning of games.
They had also watched the NBA draft together every June. Before the first pick was made, Paul LaVine would play NBA commissioner and "draft" his son, announcing both the team and Zach LaVine as his son paraded through the living room.
"He got drafted every year for about eight years," his father said. "It was always the Lakers and it was always the fifth or sixth pick, never the first. Kobe was everything to him."
Paul LaVine played linebacker at Utah State, in the USFL and for three games in the NFL with Seattle in 1987. When Zach was born in 1995, Paul became father, coach, trainer and motivator who pushed his son, all the way to the NBA and a huge payday awaiting when LaVine becomes eligible for a contract extension before next season.
"He shoves, but I love it," LaVine said, correcting a questioner's word choice. "Me and him, we're best friends. I need that in my life to have someone who's always on me. I push myself, and I have expectations for myself, but when it's coming from a big influence in your life who is pushing you and wants the best for you as well, it helps."
Maybe it's no coincidence that LaVine has thrived under Thibodeau, considered as stern a taskmaster as there is among NBA coaches.
"When Thibs was hired, everybody warned that he's pretty hard, and I'd tell them nobody has been harder on Zach than I have," Paul LaVine said. "Every time he made a mistake, we had to start over. I called it 'going back to school.' I used to tell my buddies I didn't even know if Zach is going to like me when he grows up because I was so hard on him. But we ended up being best friends.
"Zach likes hard stuff. If you're hard on him, he likes it."
Paul LaVine still has stacks of notebooks detailing his son's every shooting workout for years and years. Before the 2014 draft, LaVine watched every basket made by Curry and Westbrook that previous season. Last summer, he went back into the gym with personal-skills coach Drew Hanlen in Los Angeles and in the backyard back home in Seattle, working four times a day, six days a week to get "wiry" stronger and more consistent with his footwork, his defense and his shot.
When 2016 turned to 2017, LaVine chose "better weakside defense" for his New Year resolution.
"He's definitely having a great season, but this is the kind of season we expected," said Hanlen, who has been in the gym with about 75 NBA players and also trains Wiggins. "He works as hard as anybody I've ever worked with."
By Hanlen's count, LaVine dunked fewer than 10 times all summer, because he focused on every other part of his game and former NBA dunk champion Vince Carter told him to save his legs and his dunks.
That might be one small step on that road from a great athlete to a great player who knows the rhythm and nuance of the NBA game.
It's a transition Wall knows well.
"He has put the work in; you can tell he's dedicated to the gym," Wall said. "You always knew he was very talented, a freak athlete, but he could do a lot more. Now he has slowed down. He can shoot the ball. He attacks the rim. He changes his pace.
"Once you see that _ look what he's averaging now, 20-some points a game _ you know the game is just coming easy for him now."
