For the Bookers, basketball, life provide incredible bond

Devin Booker had a choice. He was one of the best shooters in the nation, a prize for any college basketball coach, and as he sat before a crowd at his high school Moss Point, Mississippi, he could have picked anywhere in the country to play college basketball. UNC. Duke. Michigan State or Michigan, in the state where his mother lived. Or Missouri, where his father starred on the basketball team in the 1990s.

The teenager looked dapper in a suit and a tie and a pocket square. He thanked his two hometowns — Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he spent most of his life, and Moss Point, where he'd only lived a few years — and then he pulled out a baseball cap.

It was a big choice: Which school would best prepare him for his dream of playing in the NBA?

"It's been a tough decision, but I've really enjoyed it," Booker said, then he popped a Kentucky hat on his head.

Today, Devin Booker may be the most crucial player on the court for a Kentucky team that's chasing not just a national title but also history, looking to become college basketball's first undefeated team since Indiana accomplished the feat nearly four decades earlier. In the past five months, Booker has gone from a guy who was expected to be returning to Kentucky for a sophomore season to a surefire one-and-done player, a likely lottery pick, the best shooter available in the 2015 NBA Draft as well as a someone who has become a more complete basketball player.

But deciding on which university to attend was not the biggest choice this young man has made.

It was the decision he'd made years before choosing Kentucky that would set into motion his meteoric rise as an elite basketball talent:

Would he stay in Michigan, living with his mother and siblings, living near all his childhood friends, in the place where he felt most comfortable and where the two big state schools had him on their radars since middle school?

Or would he move to a place on the bottom of the map, a place he only knew from trips in the summer to visit his globe-trotting father, a place that might as well have been a different country from Michigan?

Would he take his father's advice and go to Mississippi, train alongside that father who, once he saw the enormous basketball potential in his son, decided to end his own basketball career early in order to help his son's fledgling career?

Would Devin Booker upend his life in order to chase his dream?

This is the choice Melvin Booker presented to his son when he was a freshman in high school: Do you want to be a good Division I basketball player?

Or do you want to be something special?

Melvin Booker had met Veronica Gutierrez when he was chasing his own dream.

A recent graduate of the University of Missouri, Melvin was the 1994 Big Eight Player of the Year and had been named a first-team All-American in a season where he led the Tigers to the Elite Eight.

He'd thought he'd done everything he could to prove he deserved a shot as an NBA point guard. And yet when the 54 names were called at the NBA Draft that year in Indianapolis —€“ Glenn Robinson and Jason Kidd and Grant Hill and Jalen Rose —€“ Booker's name was not one of them.

Dreams aren't always easy, and Booker decided he would keep chasing his, which is how he found himself in Grand Rapids, playing for a CBA team and trying to get the attention of NBA general managers.

That's when he met Veronica. She showed him around town. They had fun. It was a foreign place for this Southerner, and she was his tour guide.

The pregnancy was a surprise, to say the least. Booker was 24. He liked Michigan, but the life of a guy trying to make a go at the NBA meant he wasn't about to settle down and plant his roots here.

"I was trying to figure out, 'How am I going to be in this child's life being so far away and still having my professional career, which at the time was all over the place?'" Booker said.

The parents made a decision: Somehow, they would make this parenting situation work for Devin.

And so Booker's basketball career continued — a cup of coffee in the NBA, 32 games in all for the Houston Rockets, Denver Nuggets and Golden State Warriors. That's as far as his NBA dream took him. 561 minutes of playing time. 166 points. And staring in the face of a difficult road of 10-day contracts and bouncing back and forth from the CBA to the NBA.

And so Melvin Booker made his own big decision: He would play overseas, where he could make good money, chase his own dreams while taking care of his son financially back home. He played in Italy, Turkey, Russia — a decade of life abroad and summers back in his hometown of Moss Point, Mississippi.

And every summer, Devin would come visit his dad.

"It was just trying to make up for lost time to be honest," Melvin Booker said. "I missed a lot in Devin's life. I'd bring him back to be around my family so he could have an understanding of the Booker side of his family."

Devin looked at his dad with awe. Sure, the Detroit Pistons were his favorite team, and Chauncey Billups was his favorite player, and Rip Hamilton was the guy he tried to model his own game after, but Dad — his pro-ball-playing Dad —€“ was his idol.

So Devin wanted to visit his father abroad. Veronica was not about to allow him to visit his dad in Russia. No chance. When he took a contract in Milan, Italy, she changed her tune. So Devin, at 12 years old, took his spring break from school and visited his dad in Italy.

Devin watched practices. He got to hang with players. He got to play one-on-one with one of his dad's teammates, future NBA player Danilo Gallinari. And most importantly, for the first time in his life, he got to see his dad play pro basketball in person.

"Just knowing your dad is a professional basketball player, it just makes you feel like you're destined for," Devin Booker said. "There's just nothing like it. To see him in that moment, you know, it just made me want to work even harder. That was the best spring break of my life."

And during that trip, Melvin saw something in his son, too. This kid —€“ he was going to be taller than his father, and a better shooter, too. He was already a great basketball player for his age. But he could be something more.

"I saw something special in him with the way he was shooting the ball at the time, and I asked him then: 'How good do you want to be?' " Melvin Booker recalled. "And he said, 'Dad, I want to be a special player.' "

This was when the idea came to Melvin Booker. He still had time left in his basketball career, a few more years of making good money doing what he loved. But back home, his son needed him.

"I just knew that Devin was special because he could shoot the ball at 12 from a college three-point line," Melvin Booker said. "And I knew the older he gets, the shorter my career is going to have to be, because I'm going to have to be home to spend time with him. It was a tough decision to make. But it was just a decision that I had to make for him."

When you see Devin Booker fly around the court for Kentucky —€“ spotting up for threes, driving the lane, second in scoring for the most talented team in college basketball —€“ you see a player with natural abilities. But more than that, you see a player with a tough-to-teach basketball IQ. It's what his father saw in him when he was a kid, and when his favorite player, the supremely intelligent Chauncey Billups, was traded for one of the most exciting players in the NBA, Allen Iverson.

What little boy would be disappointed to know A.I. was playing for his team?

But Devin was crushed, because he knew what Billups meant for the team and their chemistry.

That's what John Calipari saw in Devin Booker when he recruited him at the high school at Moss Point, where Devin moved in order to live and train with his father.

"They have a great relationship," Calipari said. "His dad doesn't pull any punches. He tells the truth. He's not trying to be his best friend. He's trying to be his father. He holds him accountable when he doesn't do what he's supposed to. He doesn't alibi. He doesn't enable. And I think Devin needed that."

Not to say the decision to upend his life was easy. It was not. For a year, Melvin prodded Devin and his mother.

"But you didn't have to leave your friends when you were in high school," Devin told his father.

"But you said you want to be a special player," Melvin told his son.

His mother drove him to the airport the summer before his sophomore year in high school. The whole time, Veronica cried. She was saying goodbye to her baby boy.

"That moment in the car right there, I think that's what drove me," Devin Booker said. "Just to see your mom making a sacrifice, letting her baby go down to Mississippi, it just made me want to work that much more. At that moment, when she was crying there I had to make it worth it ...€“ worth it for her."

The training started immediately. Father and son went on morning runs on the beach together. They put up shots in the gym at all hours. They lifted weights together. They ran Devin through the same drills from Melvin's college and pro days.

They played pickup games together with Melvin's friends, who were older and stronger than Devin. Melvin prodded his son's toughness. Once, when the two were on opposite teams, Devin called a foul that Melvin thought was pretty cheap. Melvin was pissed. But he also saw an opportunity to test his son.

"The play started again, and I hit him with an elbow," Melvin Booker said. "I wanted to see: Will he back down from me because I was his father? Or would he fight and push me back? Because I always told him, you never, never back down from anybody. And he played even harder against me. He pushed me. He talked trash to me."

"If he won't back down from his father, who's pushing him and pushing him, I know he won't back down from anybody else," Melvin Booker said.

He watched his son's game grow and grow. He watched him mature. He watched his manners improve; Devin started saying "sir" and "ma'am" just like the others in the South. He became a disciplined kid. He even started to clean his own room.

When father and son look back at those three years together, it's abundantly clear —€“ as Devin's college team chases a national title and an undefeated season, and as Devin's NBA potential soars through the roof —€“ that Devin's decision to move away from everything he knew was the correct decision, basketball-wise.

It was the correct decision in another way, too.

There was their Thursday night date nights, where father and son would pick a restaurant and hang out for a couple hours, talking about basketball and talking about life. There was one rule: Leave the cell phones in the car. 

There were the three-hour car drives every weekend to Montgomery, Alabama, where Devin's AAU team, the Alabama Challenge, was based. The whole time, they talked basketball. They talked about Devin's future. Melvin gave his son advice: Stay focused, keep working, it'll all work out, I'll always be here for you.

It's those car rides that Devin most remembers from his time in Mississippi. It's when they turned from father and son into something more than that: A bond that hovered somewhere between family and friendship.

"It was more than just basketball," Melvin Booker said. "I was making up for lost time. Time that I didn't spend with him in his childhood. The drives, the rides in the cars, the talks, the restaurants, sitting there eating together, just getting to know each other, getting to know each other well. Because we had been apart for so many years. We just spent basically every day together."

After Devin graduated from high school, father and son packed up their car, and they drove back north. Devin was leaving, heading to the most prominent basketball school in the nation, another decision he made in order to chase his dream. It was a 10-hour drive to Lexington. They spoke about a new beginning in Devin's life.

Then Melvin got on a plane, flew back to Mississippi, and walked back into his house. It was empty. Devin was no longer there. His son was growing up.

"It went by too fast," Melvin Booker said. "The day I dropped him off here in college, it was one of my sad days. To come back home and know that my son is not in the house anymore.

"But those three years?" he said. "They were probably the best three years of my life."

Email Reid Forgrave at reidforgrave@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter @reidforgrave.