I first met CP3 earlier that day at the Wake Forest practice facility to watch him play some pickup ball.

“Elective,” Jada repeats, smiling as she explores each syllable. has a chance to answer, though, CP3 teases: “Aw, he don't know-he just saw that it says cash on it and decided, I'm wearin' that.” ambles over, I glance at the kid's outsize Johnny Cash T-shirt and ask him what his favorite song is. game in D.C., thank him for that trip to Vegas.

The room is jammed with cousins and aunts and uncles, and once Paul sits down, relatives queue up to josh him about being stranded at “the kids' table,” remind him about those tickets to the Team U.S.A. Later on, the man known as CP3-Charles is CP1 Chris's big brother, C.J., is CP2-will assure me that despite his NBA fame, “I'm still my father's son.” Yet when he arrives, he walks to the head of the main table, strolling to the spot as confidently as when he walks the ball up court for the Los Angeles Clippers. But everybody just seems happy to be inside. But it's 105 degrees this June afternoon-“hot enough to make you cuss,” Chris says-so instead of Grandma's fatback, potato salad, and corn bread, we're pushing rubbery fried green tomatoes around our plates in a beige banquet room at the local Marriott. Today's thirtieth wedding anniversary party for Charles and Robin Paul, the parents of NBA All-Star point guard Chris Paul, was originally planned for their backyard in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Sixty one chris paul