I read a powerful, powerful article today; one that should be required reading for all of us who care about prisons and about transformative justice.

Chris Paul is a super-star player on the Charlotte Hornets. I haven’t been a fan of his in particular though I am a longstanding basketball fan. After today, Paul will become my favorite player in the NBA. The article in question is titled the “Lessons of Nathaniel Jones.”

Nathaniel Jones was Chris Paul’s grandfather and by all accounts the two were extraordinarily close.

The man everybody called “PaPa Chili” was the first black man to open a service station in North Carolina and both Chris and his brother worked at it. PaPa Chili was known to let people run tabs when times got tough. Plenty of times, he’d hand people money out of the cash register to get by. Paul called him “my best friend.”

This man who Paul obviously adored was murdered by a group of teenagers in 2002:

On the moonless night of Nov. 15, 2002, five young boys ran across a park, jumped a 61-year-old man, bound his wrists, duct-taped his mouth, and beat him with pipes until his heart stopped.

All for his wallet.

The article describes that youth who killed Mr. Jones as follows:

None of the five boys were particularly hardened criminals. Only Cauthen had been previously arrested — twice for running away and once for stealing his mom’s car. They decided they wanted to rob somebody. Around the corner, in his white van, came that somebody — Jones. He’d closed the filling station and was now getting grocery bags out of his van. “Let’s go get him,” one of them said. They sprinted across Belview Park and jumped him.

Using tape they’d bought that day at a drugstore, they bound his head, neck and hands and began a “relentless, remorseless, conscienceless” attack, according to the judge who sentenced them. Jones died in his carport.

One can only imagine the grief that Paul must have experienced when he heard the news of his cherished grandfather’s death. In fact, the article suggests that Paul held his grandfather’s obituary in his hand during the national anthem for every one of his college games. The writer of the article describes the grief that Paul felt as “bottomless.”

Now, Chris Paul has this to say about what he would like to see happen to the young men who killed his grandfather:

“These guys were 14 and 15 years old [at the time], with a lot of life ahead of them. I wish I could talk to them and tell them, ‘I forgive you. Honestly.’ I hate to know that they’re going to be in jail for such a long time. I hate it.”

He wants the young men who killed his grandfather to be freed:

“Even though I miss my granddad,” Paul told me, “I understand that he’s not coming back. At the time, it made me feel good when I heard they went away for life. But now that I’m older, when I think of all the things I’ve seen in my life? No, I don’t want it. I don’t want it.”

I offer no commentary on this. Paul’s words deserve to stand for themselves.