“I was kind of an early bloomer,” Shaun Livingston was saying. “I played all the time, practiced all the time. So it just became habits, really.”

He was speaking modestly. Livingston was, in fact, one of those generational players, an adolescent with the potential to influence and reshape the NBA. He would grow up to become a 6-foot-7 point guard with the speed and skills to keep up with the smaller athletes of his age, and the vision to surpass them.

“Oh, I never knew I was going to be a great player,” insisted Livingston as he sat courtside after a recent morning shootaround with the Golden State Warriors. “I was kind of advanced for my age, just because I started early, when I was maybe 6 or 7 years old. And my dad always had me playing with older groups. But I never knew; still don’t, you know?”

He won state championships in grade school, middle school and high school in Peoria, Ill., not quite three hours southwest of Chicago. He became a household name in his small basketball world, coveted by coaches everywhere.

“When I was entering high school, my dad had me going around to different high schools, playing open gyms,” he said. “A lot of coaches thought I was coming to their schools. If I would have done it over, I would have just stayed at one particular school just to play pickup basketball in the summertime. So everybody would know I’m not, like, parading myself, selling myself. That should not happen as a kid.”

And yet it happens to the teenaged likes of Kobe Bryant, or LeBron James, or Livingston. The law of supply and demand catches the few of them by surprise just as they are learning to shave, before they’re old enough to vote. They must grow up on the court before they’ve grown up. Their approach to the game is steeled.

“There’s pros and cons,” Livingston said. “The pro, obviously, is you experience a lot at an early age, just being able to take that experience with you and continue to strive for more and greater. The cons are peaking too early, or not being able to enjoy the perks of childhood and stuff like that. It’s a trade-off.”

Not quite three years after he left high school as the skinny No. 4 pick of the 2004 NBA Draft, just as he was beginning to make good on his great expectations, Livingston suffered the most gruesome injury to his left knee. One unlucky, off-balanced landing under the basket prevented him from becoming the star he was meant to be.

But the trauma did not change the way he thought of himself or his approach to the game. It did not change his point of view.

Rehabbing, returning and renewal

“I couldn’t tell you how his thinking has evolved, other than the fact that he was a prodigy,” said Warriors assistant coach Ron Adams. “He was an amazing player coming out of high school. What has happened with Shaun -- it’s the path that we follow in life, the twists and turns.”

One outcome of that unpredictable path was revealed last June, after a couple of playoff injuries had sidelined Golden State MVP Stephen Curry for several games, and limited his effectiveness for several more.

“You don't win championships without the entire squad making an impact,” Curry would say after he was held to 11 points on 4-for-15 shooting in Game 1 of The 2016 Finals. And yet his Warriors were able to win that opening game -- on their way to seizing a 3-1 lead over Cleveland -- because Livingston filled in with 20 efficient points while converting 8 of 10 shots inside the 3-point line.

“He still has to manage his body,” Adams said. “It’s not automated. He can get too many minutes night after night. Steve (Kerr, the Warriors coach) does a good job of managing that, and Shaun is good at managing his own body. He tells people when he needs rest. I think that says a lot about Shaun, that it’s important to be on the same page with yourself.”

The great players learn to respect their own limitations. Discipline is built into the daily routine. Whatever needs to be done is done. This is how Livingston has learned to manage himself: as if still pursuing his dreams of basketball at the highest level, even if his body would not allow for it.

“I had him in Oklahoma City when he was hurt,” said Adams, who was an assistant to Thunder coach Scott Brooks from 2008-10. “We wanted to keep him. He could play a little bit, but then he couldn’t play several days after because the knee was acting up on him. So Oklahoma City at that time decided not to keep him. We loved him because he was great for us there, but he was still healing. Then it was fun to see the transformation from that time period to now.”

For the half-dozen years that should have been the best of his career, Livingston was limping through rehab workouts and NBA locker rooms in Miami, Oklahoma City, Washington, Charlotte and Milwaukee, then looping back around through Washington and Cleveland before establishing himself in Brooklyn. During his “breakout” 2013-14 season with the Nets, Livingston played 76 games, starting 54 of them, before he helped Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Joe Johnson and Deron Williams reach the 2014 Eastern Conference semifinals.

Livingston, a free agent in 2014, was pursued by several teams that summer. He wound up in Golden State thanks largely to a chance meeting years earlier in the beginning of his recovery.