Ask the Chicago playground hoopers, the Pac-10’s finest and the overseas ballers, they’ll tell you the same thing: Jerome “Handle” Randle’s game is the real deal.

Growing up witnessing the best of Chicago’s physical playground runs, the Windy City native locals dubbed ’Rome quickly sought to create his own legacy as a well-respected hooper in the community.

Don’t let his undersized 5-9 frame fool you. Randle ran the point with ease, boasting a combination of masterful movement, shiftiness, elite handles and a relentless dog mentality that consistently embarrassed older competition. His game caught the attention of a woman named Ms. Foster, who became his first organized basketball coach. Randle credits Foster with shaping the direction of his career and giving him inspiration to give back to the next generation of hoopers.

“We didn’t play to be the best. I’m saying we wanted to be respected by the older guys, you know? The people in the neighborhoods,” Randle says. “So the way we approach the game is like, I want to be so good that everybody’s like, Man, that dude right there is a dog, that dude right there I respect him.”

On the heels of a decorated high school career, Randle struck gold at the University of California, Berkeley. His name sits proudly in the record books as the program’s all-time leading scorer and holds the title of Pac-10 Player of the Year for the 2009-10 season that saw Golden Bears’ first title in 50 years.

After graduation, Randle embarked on an overseas journey that saw him hoop in 17 different countries. His career resume is loaded. Titletown in Lithuania and Tunisia, NBL MVP, All-Star nods across the board.

But when the tape from his countless highlight mixtapes stops rolling, his expertise of the overseas game becomes crystal-clear.

“They’re teaching kids backdoor cuts. They’re teaching them how to come off down screens shooting without the dribble, all these things, these small intangibles that help you win basketball games,” Randle says. “This is what overseas basketball is. It’s the art of movement.”

Randle lived, worked, breathed and excelled in it. Now, he’s made it his goal to instill all that knowledge in the next generation.

Those who know him know that teaching and training aren’t anything new for Randle. During his playing career, he held camps in every country he visited, and still does to this day alongside his friend DaShaun Thomas. The only difference: it’s now his primary focus.

“I’ve always had, like, the heart of just doing camps for kids. Like, during the season in Australia, I was doing camps throughout the year, so I would play on a Friday, and my camps was on Saturdays,” he says. “My passion for the next generation is always going to be next level because I will never be where I am if it wasn’t for someone who helped me: Ms. Foster.”

It was this passion that led him to form UNLMTED, his basketball development company that focuses on unlocking the full potential of hoopers. The company hosts camps and private sessions in Los Angeles, with an emphasis on both the physical and mental side of the game.

The letters in his company stand for Uniquely Navigating Life Molds Tenacity, Endurance and Determination—a combination of the principles that shaped Randle’s life, career and client training regimens.

Breaking down each word is easy, he says. Uniquely embodies how each person possesses their own skill set. He notes how navigating represents pushing through the tough times with the help of others and within yourself, further segueing into dealing with the volatility life brings. Molding, he says, is more a personal aspect, representing how others around him helped him become the person he aspired to be. He describes how tenacity portrays a strong will to achieve your goals, complemented by the endurance of channeling all your energy to reach that goal. Lastly, he explains that determination symbolizes his mission to be the best basketball player and person he can be.

With UNLMTED, Randle sees himself as a teacher, rather than a trainer. He’s never been in the business to take credit for others’ successes. Instead, he wants to see the self-improvement from all the work his clients put in, with the appreciation and respect for shaping their game.

He teaches the game through his own eyes, showcasing his scoring bag that tormented opposing defenses in every country he played in. As an elite scorer for his height, Randle says he’s been able to identify areas of struggle and work with each hooper to help them get to their spots.

Using his overseas experience, Randle coaches fundamentals, everything from proper footwork and backdoor cuts to a polished midrange game. He says especially for the younger generation, he prefers to present the knowledge of the game to build up traits that win basketball games, rather than solely centering on physical skills.

It’s why Randle also considers his role to be a movement specialist.

“Everybody wants to be shifty, but you know, it’s not just what you do with that. Basketball is what your body is doing,” Randle says. “Your movement has to match, and it has to align with the basketball. That’s what I try to teach.”

His Instagram, @handlebyrandle, is filled with drills and motivational pep talks, effectively practicing what he preaches.

He presents a litany of defensive styles of ballhandling, showcasing how he moves his body with the ball on a quick crossover to change direction and blow past a defender reaching for a steal. Numerous cone drills help emphasize the importance of leg strength and positioning toward enhancing shiftiness and exploding in different directions with the ball.

For off-ball movement, Randle uses chairs to mimic curling off a screen for catch-and-shoot triples and works tirelessly with his clients to master a fluid pull-up game. For each drill, he posts the full learning process: initial attempts, mistakes, coaching and the successes after clients put the work in.

“I’m very patient with how I react when it comes to certain things. I want them to know that, Yeah, I’m doing this right,” Randle says. “And then the excitement that they have from the improvement. Once you get to this point, then you got it. And then they start to correct themselves. It was like, Ah, I messed up. I’m like, There you go. Now you’re teaching YOU!”

Randle’s results and clientele speak for itself. He’s worked with many high-profile hoopers, including Davion Mitchell, who logged career-high assist per game totals this past seasonwith the Miami Heat. There’s D’Angelo Russell, who’s moved with a silky handle package since he stepped foot in the League, and OG Anunoby, who recently stepped into the national spotlight with the New York Knicks.

That doesn’t include the thousands of other hoopers Randle has coached and trained with worldwide during his playing and post-professional career.

But, ultimately, aside from the training and results, Randle wants to bring the world together through UNLMTED.

“My goal is to create my own curriculum to how I teach and how I mentor kids, and have a representative from every different country to follow,” he says, “so all of us can follow the same regimen on how we teach and how we develop and how we love on the next generation. I want to be able to travel the world and take underprivileged kids who’ve never seen the world, to be able to experience culture somewhere else and just enjoy the artistry of basketball.”

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Photos via Jerome Randle and Getty Images.