George Lawson had his son dribbling figure-eights at the age of 5. He would get on his knees to play Ty one-on-one on the preschool-sized basket he and his wife, Jacqueline, set up in their house at Andrews Air Force Base.

By the time Ty had reached elementary school in Clinton, Md., Lawson paced him through "commando" dribbling drills, ordering full-speed crossovers and other moves with the bark of a father's command. Their one-on-one games were played full court, and every turnover earned Ty -- who is at North Carolina this season as a heralded freshman point guard -- a suicide sprint.

So even when he could not reach a height of 5 feet without a hop, Ty had little difficulty silencing the grumblings of the airmen and other enlisted guys on the Washington, D.C.-area base who did not want to play with the 12-year-old.

"When he first started playing over there, they said, 'He's too young to play,' " said George Lawson, 44, who retired from the Air Force as a Tech. Sgt. and now works evenings as a security guard at the U.S. Department of State. "But then they started picking him first and saying, 'Yeah, we'll take the little man.' "

By the end of his junior year at Oak Hill Academy, everyone wanted the little man, who was by then the top-rated point guard in the 2006 recruiting class. Built like a tailback with broad shoulders and muscular legs carved during years of sprints up his neighborhood park's steep, grassy hill -- another favorite drill ordered up by Dad -- Ty had the physical gifts that left recruiting analysts and college coaches in awe.

Between tot and top recruit, there were countless hours spent honing those natural talents. And Lawson's work is not yet done. On a loaded Tar Heels team ranked second by AP, no one has conceded him the starting job, not even after he had 15 points and three assists in 14 minutes in Saturday's exhibition win over Pfeiffer.

Lawson's combination of speed, strength and scoring lured UNC coach Roy Williams to Oak Hill's campus outside Mouth of Wilson, Va., less than two days after the Heels won the 2005 NCAA title. Lawson's signing with UNC later that summer sparked comparisons with Raymond Felton, the jet-quick point guard on Williams' title team.

Oak Hill coach Steve Smith calls the 5-11 Lawson the strongest and quickest guard he has coached, topping a list of high school stars that includes longtime NBA point guard Rod Strickland, and 2006 NBA first-round picks Rajon Rondo and Marcus Williams.

On Monday, Williams declined to name his starting point guard for tonight. He earlier had said Lawson was not an automatic choice, however, to supplant sophomore Bobby Frasor.

"He's not the anointed one," Williams said last month of Lawson. "He's got to win it. And again, the guy he's trying to win it from led us to 23 wins last year, and he's not exactly chopped liver himself."

UNC does not allow freshmen players to talk with the media until after their first regular-season game. George Lawson said he has no problem with Williams challenging his son.

"You can't accomplish anything if you don't go hard, if you don't put your heart and soul in it," he said.

A dad's dream

The Lawsons have kept stacks of videotapes chronicling their only child's basketball exploits in a collection of cardboard boxes in the basement of their suburban, D.C.-area home. The tapes date back to his elementary-school days, and on most, you can hear Jacqueline Lawson whooping and cheering on her son.

If Jacqueline Lawson was the cheerleader, her husband was frequently the coach.

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.)