The mailbox is still there on the right wing, though, and so is the thick, stiff grass that also marked NBA three-point territory in the middle of the court. That's where he once displayed his shooting range late at night to the Utah Valley State College coach in the driveway and where, in the equivalent spot, just 25 miles up I-45 from his home, Price drilled his only shot Saturday night in the Jazz's Game 1 playoff victory over Houston at the Toyota Center.
In that moment, it all came together: Those weekend nights when the neighbors would complain about that Price kid bouncing the ball in the wee hours amid the modest, brick homes of the Heritage Park neighborhood; those shooting contests between Big Ronnie and "Li'l Ronnie," as his mother's speed-dial still identifies him; and those days when the boy would shoot by himself because he was not big enough or good enough to play with his older cousins during the summers spent at both sets of grandparents' homes in Hitchcock, 23 miles south.
It was just one shot, during Price's 4 minutes and 13 seconds of relieving point guard Deron Williams, but it meant everything to the tiny pockets of folks wearing blue amid the 18,000-plus Rockets fans in red T-shirts.
Even the next morning, "I was still fired up," his mother, Wanda, was saying Sunday.
To say Price enjoys huge family support is both a qualitative and quantitative statement. His father, Ronald Sr., is the third-youngest of 21 children delivered by the late Katherine Price. That translates into dozens and dozens of cousins - counting both sides of the family - and built-in competition that shaped Price's game and his nature.
"Battles," he said, fondly. "Battles."
All those readily available pickup games produced an NBA player who smiles and says, "I wouldn't change my childhood for anything."
Well, there is one thing, except that few children would ever realize it at the time. Price's parents, who have worked for close to 30 years for NASA contractors at the nearby Johnson Space Center, supported their son's basketball pursuits to a degree he never appreciated.
"When you're a kid, you don't really understand the things that parents do," Price said Sunday morning after the Jazz's practice. "It's important that they know how much I'm thankful."
They were "as broke as you can be," their son now recognizes, but they managed to pay for him to fly to Dallas regularly to practice with an AAU team and travel to tournaments around the country. It could be viewed as a successful investment, now that Price is an NBA millionaire, but nobody was viewing it that way when he was growing only to 5-foot-7 in high school, while breaking his arm as a senior and receiving little recruiting attention.
He landed at Nicholls State, a Division I school in Louisiana, grew to 6-2, and eventually followed assistant coach Sheldon Jones to Utah Valley, then a junior college preparing for a move to four-year athletics. That's how UVSC coach Dick Hunsaker found himself in Friendswood one summer night, watching a televised WNBA game with the Prices - "They knew every player," he marveled - besides witnessing the shooting range that would carry Ronnie to the NBA and getting a feel for his upbringing.
"What was his parents' secret?" Hunsaker wonders. "They're just wonderful people, very grounded, down to earth."
The wide-screen TV was showing the Lakers-Nuggets game Sunday afternoon, while Price and his fiancee, Jenni Bybee of Logan, visited his parents and sister Chelsi, a sophomore basketball player at Clear Brook High School, where Ronnie once starred for the Wolverines.
The only stories they tell that sound like bragging involve how he was riding a bicycle at age 2. "No one would believe that," his mother acknowledged, but she's very convincing.
Price is still in the training-wheels stage as a Jazz point guard, after being a big scorer in college. In the 2007-08 team photo, Price and Williams are together in the middle of the front row, the only players holding basketballs. Their job descriptions are similar, except for Williams' playing nearly 40 more minutes in Game 1.
Yet there are signs that Price's role may grow in the coming years, that he could become the Howard Eisley to Williams' John Stockton, playing more and more. Regardless, his family will enjoy whatever glimpses they get of him, especially close to home in Houston.
The Prices were thrilled when this first-round matchup materialized. As of tonight, the possibility remains for return visits by the Jazz for Games 5 and 7. Yet as much as they love watching their son play, they have no mixed feelings about the potential length of the series. None at all.
