R.J. Hampton's Whirlwind Path to the NBA

If there’s an immediate area of improvement for Nuggets rookie R.J. Hampton to focus on, it may be his powers of deduction.

You see Hampton, the 24th pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, happens to be the godson of NFL legend Deion Sanders, who is close with Hampton’s father. Hampton knew the two-time Super Bowl champ as “Uncle Prime” growing up. Except he didn’t quite understand where the nickname came from.

“For the first eight or nine years of my life, I never knew why I called him Uncle Prime,” Hampton explains. “And then one day, my dad was out of town. I think my mom was at work. And [Sanders] comes to pick me up from school. He’s in the carpool line, and my teachers are going crazy. I'm…