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The announcement on Saturday that Paul will retire at the end of this NBA season will bring down the curtain on his Hall of Fame career.

He played a pass-first style handed down from basketball’s earliest days, a tradition that runs from Bob Cousy and Magic Johnson to John Stockton and Jason Kidd.

He did that job so well that he has tossed the second-most assists in NBA history—12,540, trailing only Stockton—and earned the nickname “The Point God.”

As a high-schooler in North Carolina, he’d been stuck on junior varsity for two years, which he later called “the best thing that could have happened.”

It was there that he learned to lead a team—a lesson he would carry all the way to the NBA.