NBA All-Star Domantas Sabonis, his legendary father Arvydas -- and the enormous weight of legacy

Suddenly, the quiet of a warm evening is broken by a child's laugh, and a smiling Domantas Sabonis emerges from the other garage -- which doubles as a gym, with weights, an ice bath and sauna -- in gray shorts, a white T-shirt and with an outstretched hand.

The Sacramento Kings' do-everything star forward and the Kings had landed after midnight, and Sabonis and his family returned to his home, about a half-hour's drive from downtown Sacramento, to spend the rare off day as his ninth NBA regular season nears its end.

Sabonis' wife, Shashana, carries their soon-to-be-9-month-old daughter inside, and the then-27-year-old Sabonis takes a seat at a round corner table beside a children's booster seat.

He lifts his 2-year-old son, Tiger, atop his knee.

"What does Daddy do?" the 6-foot-10 Sabonis asks.

Tiger is shy, but smiles. He knows. When he started crawling, he wanted to play with a basketball. His first word was "ball." Sabonis treasures photos and videos of those early days, but it was almost eerie, he says. They hadn't even introduced the game to Tiger; it was as if he was drawn to it, instinctively.

Now, Tiger has toy hoops around the house. He can dribble and dunk and Sabonis works with him on his shooting motion, showing him how to properly follow through. As he sits on his father's knee, Tiger is wearing cream-colored shorts and a matching shirt covered in basketball prints. "He is obsessed," Sabonis says.

Tiger comes to games, cheers and wants his dad to shoot and dunk every time he touches the ball. But Tiger doesn't yet know how good his father is -- that, last season, his father became the second player in NBA history to record 1,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 600 assists in a season, joining Wilt Chamberlain, who did so in 1966-67 and 1967-68 and won NBA MVP honors in both seasons.

And this season, his dad is averaging a career-high 20.8 points on a career-best 62.2% shooting. He's shooting a career-high 42.9% from 3-point range, ranks third in the league in rebounds (12.7) and leads the league in double-doubles (21).

Sabonis, in his third full season in Sacramento, is trying to lift a woebegone Kings franchise that seeks sustained success in a powerful Western Conference, while also representing the continued evolution of the modern big man, someone who can handle the ball, shoot from long distance and serve as an offensive nexus.

Doing all three, he believes, will not only help steady the Kings, currently 12-13 and out of the play-in, but honor his legendary father, Arvydas, who, in many ways, began that evolution decades ago.