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George Lawson was talented enough in high school to harbor basketball dreams, but his mother would not sign a waiver granting him permission to play; she was worried that basketball would distract him from his studies.

Marcella Lawson, George Lawson's mother, said she cries sometimes with pride now, thinking about her grandson's basketball accomplishments.

"George would have been that, so now he's trying to put this in his son. And his son looks like he's taken it, and I'm glad about that, because it helps him a lot," said Marcella Lawson, 76, who lives in Cleveland.

But George Lawson's love of basketball and desire to push his son further than he himself could reach did not evolve into a single-minded, "Great Santini" complex. Their summer schedules were packed with AAU tournaments, yet there still was time off the court for other interests.

Jacqueline Lawson still has a duffle bag stuffed with her son's old Pokemon trading cards to prove it. When Ty Lawson was in middle school, his father would drive him four or five hours to Pokemon card tournaments, albeit with gritted teeth.

"We would go to tournaments, and I was usually the only African-American parent there," George Lawson said. "It was boring, and those tournaments would last eight hours."

A son in demand

Several area high schools began courting Lawson during middle school, before the Lawsons chose Bishop McNamara, a Catholic high school in nearby Forestville, Md. There was little grumbling from the upperclassmen when Lawson landed the starting point guard spot as a freshman.

"It was real easy to see that he was probably the best player on the team for two years," McNamara coach Marty Keithline said.

Lawson earned first-team all-conference honors both seasons, but the Lawsons decided their son needed a change for his final two years of high school. Oak Hill offered a national basketball schedule that would help showcase Lawson and hone his skills.

"He needed to branch out a little bit, get some independence," said Jacqueline Lawson, who is a human resources specialist with the Internal Revenue Service.

Nick Watkins, a pre-med student at Morgan State and a longtime friend of Lawson's, said he remembers Lawson calling him from Oak Hill, complaining from the small boarding school in the Blue Ridge Mountains how much he missed home.

"He wanted to come back, but I told him he's got to stay strong," said Watkins, 20.

Lawson thrived as a player, and Oak Hill went 74-3 in his two years there and claimed the No. 1 ranking in USA Today's final poll after Lawson's junior year. Both seasons, Lawson earned team MVP honors, even with Smith having to prod him to be more assertive at the start.

"When he was still a junior, he was deferring to some of our senior guards who he was better than," Smith said. "But I'll give him credit, he respected them enough that he thought, 'It's not my team yet.' It could have been his team from Day One as a junior."

It was definitely Lawson's team his senior year, when he averaged 23.8 points, 9.1 assists and five steals. Smith benched him for seven games early last season, however, for an undisclosed off-the-court incident.

"I just felt like I needed to make a statement to him," said Smith, who declined to reveal the incident. "It was hard for him, ... but I think it really helped him in the long run. It helped him grow up and mature."

On graduation day this spring, Smith noted, Lawson was one of the last students to leave campus because he spent the day thanking everybody for his two years there.

Acknowledging the speculation that their son could be the next Heels standout to limit his college career to a one- or two-year cameo before jumping to the pros, the Lawsons said they hope their son enjoys college.

Jacqueline Lawson said she sees UNC as a four-year stay, and her husband said there is plenty of time to turn basketball into a job.

Lawson and his father already have banked a lot of hours of work into that dream.

(Staff writer Robbi Pickeral contributed to this report.)

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