NBA Hopeful Turns Disappointment Into Lesson Plans for Young Athletes

For me,” he said, “basketball is what I know. I’m not an architect or a writer. I’m a basketball player. I’m an expert in the game. I know it. I know all the nuances of it. Basketball is how I want to make my living.”

So Price, 36, is living in Charlotte using his history and his ability to teach the game. He’s started a company, Game Ready Skills and Development ( gamereadysd.com) and is teaching kids how to play and working with companies as a motivational speaker to show how basketball-style teamwork is important in the corporate world.

“It’s staying around the game,” Price said, “but also using the game to promote everything that I’m doing.”

Price said basketball has taken him as high, and as low, as he could’ve ever expected to go.

From Denny’s to Duke

Price was an only child who grew up in Compton and Carson, Calif.

By the time he reached high school, Price was a big-time college recruit. He remembers the first day he could get a phone call from a college coach during his junior year. Under NCAA rules, coaches had to wait until midnight of the first day of recruiting. Price says then-Kansas coach Roy Williams, now at North Carolina, called at 12:01 a.m.

By his senior year in high school, Price was ranked as high as the country’s fourth-best player. He remembers he and his dad went to Denny’s and had a $3.99 Grand Slam meal to discuss picking Duke or Kansas.

Price chose Duke because it was considered the nation’s premier program, and it didn’t hurt that on his official visit his favorite player, Grant Hill, was his host.

“I just knew I would love it there,” he said.

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