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Yahoo Sports wrote: As a young star at Wake Forest, Chris Paul would listen to his coach, Skip Prosser, raise his name over and over. Here's how David West played the game. Here's how David West worked. Here's how David West acted.

"David West," Chris Paul sighed on a cell phone Thursday. 'He was all I ever heard about."

Prosser had moved to the ACC out of the Atlantic 10, but his heart was forever with a self-made player who stayed four years at Xavier and made himself the National Player of the Year. A different breed of college coach, the late Prosser was a sincere, self-deprecating high-school history teacher who never played the part of the used-car salesman. When a kid connected with Prosser, it spoke something of his soul.

"When Coach Prosser first got to Wake, he kept telling me about the young guy he got there," West said Thursday. "And I know the kind of guy that Coach recruited."

For West, he was still waiting his turn on the Hornets bench. New Orleans had an old sage, P.J. Brown, starting at power forward. He took time to teach West to be a pro. Once Paul arrived in his third season, Hornets coach Byron Scott moved West into the starting lineup. They clicked. Part of it was the connection to Prosser, part of it was childhoods spent growing up in small North Carolina towns, and part of it just was just two young players resolved to transform a loser into winner.