How Chris Paul Is Leveraging His Time at Home to 'Train' His Son in Basketball: 'He Loves It'


Chris Paul is itching to get back to professional basketball, but he's using the time he has at home with his family to help his son Chris Jr. fine-tune his own techniques on the court.

"My son loves the game. He loves it," Paul, 35, tells PEOPLE of his older child, who turns 11 later this month. "He can tell you everything about any player, about any team. And another thing that this quarantine has given me the ability to do is, I've never had an opportunity to train him myself."

"I think yesterday was our fourth day working out, because he told me he wants to go Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And so it's funny, yesterday was the best workout we've had, because the other three days he was getting mad, and getting upset," adds the Oklahoma City Thunder point guard. "It was really cool yesterday and probably one of the best feelings that I've had during this entire quarantine."

Basketball is only one of the ways Paul and his family — wife Jada Paul and their kids, son Chris Jr. and daughter Camryn, 7½ — have stayed active while they continue to social distance amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

"Fortunately, we have a weight room with weights and a treadmill," the athlete says. "What I try to do is come up with a circuit for my kids, whether that be they have to jump on the bike for 2 minutes, then get down and do some push-ups, then do some sit-ups, then run a few sprints."

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Chris Paul Says "I Miss Playing Basketball" — and His Wife Is Ready for NBA to Return, Too

"I think they enjoy that. And I try to have them do three circuits, because if they see [me and my wife] training, it sort of motivates them and wants to get them going too," Paul explains.

"The funniest part" of the process for him, the father of two tells PEOPLE, "is seeing my daughter come downstairs in her workout gear. I don't think I'm used to that yet."

Speaking of Camryn, Paul says his youngest child "gets really antsy" during things like Zoom calls, so sometimes Jada "will just have her go outside and run a lap" around the pool to burn off some energy during school time.

"When the school day's over, then usually we all try to get together and work out," he shares. "I think that's been one of the coolest things … most of the time I'm gone or I'm somewhere at the gym working out or training, but because of this situation, we've had an opportunity to have family workouts where we all work out together."

The basketball star says that after spending the last couple of months in isolation, his family life at home runs like "a well-oiled machine" — in large part thanks to Jada, 36.

"Those first couple weeks, I was trying to help with math and P.E. as much as possible. But my wife has been unbelievable, because being the president of the union, I've been on a lot of phone calls, day in and day out," Paul tells PEOPLE.

"So in between my calls, I go up there and check in on Spanish or what's going on as far as school, and I can look at my wife's face and tell that her calling was not to be a teacher," he admits. "She does the absolute best she can, but … it might be that she could be a teacher, just probably not with our kids."

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