When talking to people who know Darius Morris’ game best, one thing keeps coming up.

It’s not that he can jump out of the gym, though he can throw down with the best (just YouTube “Darius Morris dunk”).

It’s not that he’s quicker than everyone else, though his speed is at times mind-boggling.

And it’s not that he’s bigger than everyone. Though he is 6-foot-4, his frame is best described as lanky.

What sets the freshman point guard apart is what his high school coach, Miguel Villegas, saw the first time he saw Darius play — in an eighth-grade AAU game. Darius had just gotten a rebound and was dribbling up the floor. He glanced up at his teammates.

“The way he told his players where to go, looked to pass and then looked to score when the opportunity was there,” Villegas said. “You could tell he just had the natural instincts of being not only a great point guard but a great basketball player.”

What Villegas called “natural instincts” has been described in many different ways, but the truth is, it’s hard to define. Scouts look for cold, hard statistics like vertical leap, height and wingspan. Then, they look at the real physical tools needed to succeed in the sport, such as lateral movement, coordination and speed while dribbling.

But the toughest aspect of a player’s game to evaluate is also the most important. It’s what makes him wait that fraction of a second before throwing a backdoor pass, and not look at his target when he does. It’s that voice that tells him when he grabs an offensive rebound in the paint, when to pump fake and when to go straight up. It’s what makes it seem like he’s watching every possession in tape delay while everyone else is experiencing it in real time.

It’s not all that common to find a player who has developed these instincts to the point where they can compete at the collegiate level.

Maybe Michigan has.

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“Darius dropped everything to go play with his bigger brother,” DeWayne Sr., Darius’ father, says. He remembers how from the age of five, Darius followed his brother DeWayne Jr., who is eight years older, and his friends all over their Los Angeles neighborhood looking for pick-up games.

At first, Darius would only play with his brother when they didn’t have enough bodies for a game. Eventually, he earned his way on the court.

It was there, on the blacktops of L.A., that Darius was forced to develop his instincts quickly, to find creative ways to shoot over taller kids and dribble around wider ones.

“The best part of his game is his handle and his creativity,” DeWayne Jr. says now. “His court vision is something you can’t teach. The stuff he could do on a basketball court when he was ten years old was amazing. A nine, ten-year-old kid should not be able to see the floor that way.”

DeWayne Sr. also noticed the skills his son had at a young age. As an eight-year-old, Darius would go to the YMCA in Inglewood, a hoops mecca if there ever was one, and play against kids at least a couple years older.

“Darius used to do some very” — he pauses — “unnatural things, I would call it, as a youth in basketball,” DeWayne Sr. said.

But it wasn’t until a national AAU tournament in Florida that DeWayne Sr. realized exactly the opportunity his son had.

At age 11, Darius split double teams with ease, found eye-popping passing angles and just flat-out scored the basketball. His father watched all of this from the sideline and had a bit of a revelation.

“I told him, ‘If you really want to pursue this, you have a chance at being really good at this,’ ” DeWayne Sr. said.

Darius listened. By the time he was in eighth grade, he was in a position to play at one of the many big-time high schools in the L.A. area, like Westchester, Redondo Union or Mater Dei. He was even thinking about following his AAU teammate and current Milwaukee Bucks rookie Brandon Jennings to the famed basketball factory Oak Hill Academy in Virginia.

But DeWayne Jr. realized Darius, at 5-foot-9 and painfully thin, would be physically overmatched at these basketball powerhouses.

DeWayne Jr. had heard about a private school called Windward, located in the Mar Vista neighborhood in L.A. It had a very good academic reputation but was looking to build up its hoops program. It was then that DeWayne Sr. contacted the school’s coach, Villegas, and together they went to see one of Darius’ AAU games.