Chris Paul's relentless determination formed in his early years as an underdog

By Melissa Rohlin
FOX Sports NBA Writer

Chris Paul remembers the moment as though it were yesterday. 

It was his rookie season in 2005, and he was about to play against Phoenix Suns star point guard Steve Nash for the first time.

The 20-year-old Paul was starry-eyed and overwhelmed by nerves, knowing this would be the ultimate test for him to prove his worth in the NBA.

"I couldn't sleep," Paul told FOX Sports 16 years later.

He still thinks about that restless night. He talks to his teammates about it. He even uses it to his advantage, tapping into the mindset of his younger self so that he'll never take his foot off the gas. 

"A lot of times, I'm playing against a guard who is younger than me, who may have that same type of feeling," Paul said. "I don't ever want that person that I'm playing against to be hungrier than I am."

Paul is a 10-time All-Star and 11-time All-NBA selection, but he chooses to see himself as someone who is underrated. That narrative has always driven him. It's his invisible companion, constantly gnawing at his ankles and pushing him to be better.

To be clear, Paul is far from an underdog. He was recently named one of the top 75 NBA players of all time, and he's one of the highest salary earners, behind LeBron James, Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant. 

This season, he has led Phoenix to nine straight wins and the second-best record in the Western Conference (10-3) amid a league-wide investigation into Suns owner Robert Sarver. Paul is leading the NBA in assists (10.6) and steals (2.6) while averaging 14.7 points per game. 

But like many of the NBA greats, Paul is fueled by a sense of having something to prove. Michael Jordan obsessed over his high school basketball coach sending him to JV as a sophomore. Kobe Bryant replayed negative comments in his head as he shot alone in the gym. 

Similarly, Paul clings to the moments when he felt undervalued. They're indelibly imprinted on his internal whiteboard, a repository where he stores a lifetime of perceived slights and draws on them for inspiration.

"That's why I play with an edge," he said. "And that won't change."

Entering last season, the 36-year-old was widely considered a diminished version of himself, a superstar past his prime. Paul responded by leading a Suns team that wasn't expected to make the playoffs to just two wins shy of a championship. 

After scoring 37 points in Game 4 of the team's sweep against the Denver Nuggets in the second round, Paul was asked what drives him. 

"I wasn't this phenom," he said after that game. "I wasn't necessarily supposed to be here. I played two years of JV basketball. It ain't always been sweet for me."

Paul developed his grind-it-out mentality during his formative years.

It began with competitions with his older brother, CJ. 

Paul's father remembers setting up two Fisher-Price basketball hoops in the basement of their home in North Carolina so the boys — then ages 5 and 7 — could mess around.

But for Paul, it wasn't play time.

"CJ dunked on him," Charles recalled. "And Chris punched him in the stomach."

As a young child, Paul was in his brother's shadow. When Charles coached CJ's 12 & Under AAU team, Paul was relegated to being the ball boy until he turned 11. When Paul played JV basketball, his brother was on varsity. 

That brotherly competition fueled him. 

"Chris was always really aggressive, and whatever his brother did, he wanted to do, too, and he wanted to do it better," Charles said. "CJ was a great athlete, too. Playing with his brother made him tough, made him stronger, made him aggressive."

Paul entered high school at 5-foot-6 and didn't have a growth spurt until he was a junior. Charles insisted that his son play JV for two years so he'd get playing time and develop as a leader. 

At the time, Paul acknowledged, he was upset. How many future NBA players spent two years on JV? But it inspired him to work twice as hard. 

"When you're in high school, you want to be on varsity because, you know, it's a status thing, too," he said. "But when I played JV, I practiced with varsity every day. I went to JV practice, and then as soon as that practice was over, I ran across campus and went to the varsity practice every single day. 

"You talk about grinding and hard work — this ain't nothing."

Paul's JV coach at West Forsyth High, Tim Fuller, immediately recognized his potential. Paul was incredibly smart, quick and deeply dedicated to honing his craft. He'd often call Fuller at 10 p.m. and ask to be let into the gym for a late-night workout. 

Fuller eventually started bringing his former college teammates at Wake Forest to play against Paul. He was shocked by what he saw. Paul would cross them over and drive past them, effortlessly juking guys a decade older than him.

"If you can do those things at this age against those guys, what are you gonna be like when you're 20 years old?" Fuller thought at the time. "It's scary."

Most future NBA stars are highly touted in eighth grade, but Paul didn't explode onto the national scene until his junior year, when he averaged 25 points, 5.3 assists and 4.4 steals to lead West Forsyth to the state semifinals. That summer, he led his under-17 AAU team, Kappa Magic, to a national championship, winning MVP.

Things were finally coming together for Paul. But then tragedy struck. 

His grandfather, Nathaniel Jones, who operated the first Black-owned service station in North Carolina, was mugged and left to die at age 61. 

In Paul's first game after his grandfather's funeral, he scored 61 points before collapsing into his father's arms, sobbing. Even though nearly two decades have passed, Charles, who turned 61 this year, still gets choked up talking about that moment.

"It was a blessing for his memory to go on," Charles said before pausing for a few seconds. "... I'm just getting tear bumps."

Paul's 61-point performance became a national news story. The unknown kid from North Carolina had experienced a meteoric rise over his final two years of high school, and the college letters poured in. But there was one notable omission. Paul didn't get a scholarship offer from the University of North Carolina, where he had wanted to go since he was a child. 

"Here's this kid, top player in North Carolina, best in the state, and he can't even get into his dream school," Fuller said.

Paul chose Wake Forest. It's not widely known, but he actually wasn't slated to start as a freshman. Then he made an explosive spin move and finished at the rim against Memphis in the preseason, and that quickly changed.

"That's when we all looked at each other on the bench and said, 'Oh, my God,'" said Pat Kelsey, a former assistant coach at Wake Forest who is now the head coach at the College of Charleston. 

Kelsey said that a few things about Paul stood out when he was at Wake Forest from 2003 to '05.

He was so committed to his family that he once left practice early because he had promised his parents he'd cut their grass. He was so competitive that he had a different look in his eyes whenever his team played against North Carolina, clinging to his past grudge.

But above all else, Kelsey said, Paul was extremely smart. 

"He's Mozart," Kelsey said. "He was just blessed with a basketball intellect nobody's ever seen before. No offense to any coach — even if he played for [former UCLA coach] John Wooden — he's smarter than any coach he'll ever play for."

The combination of smarts and hunger made Paul dangerous. He was named ACC Rookie of the Year in 2004. As a sophomore, he was a First-Team consensus All-American, with a 3.21 GPA. 

But many still doubted whether the undersized 6-footer could thrive at the NBA level. 

"There was still talk of, 'Is he a pro?'" said Fuller, who also coached Paul as an assistant at Wake Forest from 2004 to ‘05. "’We know he's good, but how good is he, really? Is he ready to go to battle against [6-foot-4 guard] Jason Kidd? Is he ready to do things against the elite players in the NBA?' The thing about Chris is that every time somebody put a challenge in front of him and told him he couldn't do it, then he would go do it. That's really what separates him."

Paul decided to turn pro after his sophomore season and was selected by the New Orleans Hornets as the fourth pick in the 2005 NBA Draft. He might've gone higher if not for an incident that season in which he punched NC State's Julius Hodge. 

Once in the NBA, Paul quickly showed that even though he was shorter than other guards, he could compensate in other ways. His first step was unstoppable, his stutter steps and fake outs were unguardable, and his midrange was silky smooth.

He is now in his 17th season. He has played longer than anybody else his size in the NBA's history. But some still doubt him.

Two seasons ago, when the Houston Rockets traded Paul to the Oklahoma City Thunder, it was widely thought that he'd mail in the season while collecting his paycheck. Instead, he led a rebuild roster to the playoffs. And last season with the Suns, he went from overlooked to an MVP candidate.

When Paul hears criticism, it doesn't faze him. As a kid, he knew people would dismiss him upon first glance. When he's doubted now, he chuckles to himself, just as he did back then. 

"It don't annoy me at all because at the end of the day, I know who I am," he said. "... I say it all the time, but I'm so grateful. I've got so many guys that I came into the league with who no longer get this opportunity, guys who came in the league way after me that no longer get this opportunity. [Suns coach] Monty [Williams] always says this is a ‘get to,’ not a ‘got to,’ which means we get to do this. We don't got to do this."

Paul knows he's widely considered one of the greatest point guards of all time and an eventual shoo-in for the Hall of Fame. But he's still motivated by the times things didn't go his way, even if they were few and far in between in the grand scheme of his career.

It's as if he's always wearing glasses with an erroneous prescription, seeing the world through a distorted lens. But it works for him. 

And it's why when he's flourishing in the playoffs, he wants to talk about how he played JV basketball. It's why even though he has nothing left to prove, he leaves his heart on the court each night, chirping at his teammates like he's playing for a championship in the middle of October.

"I've always liked that get-it-out-of-the-mud mentality, and it doesn't matter what list comes out. I just approach everything with that type of humbleness and hunger," Paul said.

And, yes, he hopes this season he'll finally win a championship. He has been to the playoffs 11 years in a row but fallen short each time.

But really, that's not why he's still hanging around. 

At a recent shootaround, Paul explained that there's only one thing driving him at this point. 

"I can't imagine not playing. I still have the joy," he said, wiping sweat from his brow. "I was excited when I woke up this morning to come into the gym and shoot like I was a rookie." 

A few hours later, he'd imagine he was about to go against Nash for the first time, reliving all the emotions he had when he was nearly 20 years younger. 

Then, once again, he'd dominate. 

Melissa Rohlin is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. She previously covered the league for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, the Bay Area News Group and the San Antonio Express-News. Follow her on Twitter @melissarohlin.