A mother gets up in the middle of the night to watch her son and to worry. Typical story.

Only her son is a continent away. And he happens to have her heartbeat and her jump shot.

Boris Diaw remembers playing pickup games with his mother, Elizabeth Riffiod, several years after she stopped playing center for the French national team.

“She was beating me really easy when I was so young,” Diaw said Thursday in a telephone interview after practice in Phoenix, where he is a reserve for the Suns. “Once I got a little size and quickness and could have beaten her,” he added with a laugh, “she stopped playing with me.”

A mother knows when it is time to step away. Still, even when Diaw grew to match her 6-foot-2 height as a teenager, Riffiod could not envision that he would reach the N.B.A.