Sixty-One

Chris Paul had just signed his letter of intent to play college basketball at Wake Forest when a phone call upended everything. His grandfather, Nathaniel “Papa” Jones, had been mugged in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and later died of a heart attack brought on by the assault. Jones was a pillar of the community and had owned and run the first Black-owned service station in the state. His funeral filled the largest church in the county, which holds more than a thousand people. He was sixty-one years old.

The day after the burial, Paul did what he knew best and played for his high school team. He scored shot after shot, then threw his last attempt, an airball, deliberately out of bounds from the foul line and left the game. Local headlines said he finished six points short of the statewide single-game high school scoring record. He had reached the number he came for, though: sixty-one points, one for each year of his grandfather's life.

In this memoir, Paul writes about life beyond basketball and the part his grandfather played in shaping him into the man and father he is today. He describes the faith and family at the base of his life, what it means to be a positive presence in a community and beyond it, and why setting a good example for future generations matters. He also writes about his hometown of Winston-Salem and the close-knit family and village that raised him.