Richard Williams mapped out Venus’ and Serena’s lives before they were born. Tiger Woods was a toddler when he putted with Bob Hope on “The Mike Douglas Show.” Wayne Gretzky scored 378 goals when he was 10.

Breanna Stewart was … tall.

That was the only reason she was asked to join her first travel basketball team. She was the only player on the Syracuse Stars who couldn’t dribble between her legs. She was the 10-year-old whose coach was most uncomfortable when the ball was in her hands.

“I say this with love: ‘She wasn’t very good,’” said former Stars coach Bob Zywicki. “She was trying her best, but the coordination wasn’t there yet. The confidence wasn’t there. She was timid, withdrawn, introverted. She just didn’t feel comfortable. Those first couple years, she’d have two points, four points, maybe a couple rebounds a game.”

At 12, Stewart was 6-feet tall. As an eighth grader, she was placed on Cicero-North Syracuse High School’s varsity team, offering no hints she would soon give the school national recognition.

“We were just trying to get her to catch the ball,” head coach Eric Smith said. “She was very awkward as a young kid. I kept her on the varsity team because she had really long arms and had an ability to put her hands up and block a shot.”

As a high school senior, Stewart was the top-rated player in the country. As a college freshman, she was overwhelmed and overmatched, most infamously held scoreless in seven minutes of a highly anticipated NCAA Tournament tune-up loss to Brittney Griner and top-ranked Baylor.

“I remember saying, ‘If I didn’t play you at all, we would have won that game,’” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “In that seven minutes she singlehandedly cost us the game. The kid she guarded, I think, scored 12 points in seven minutes. It was probably the lowlight of her basketball career.

“Somebody else could have lost it or said, ‘I’m transferring’ or ‘I’m out of here,’ and to her credit, she got through it and kept working at it.”

Stewart became the best player in college basketball. Then the world. One day, perhaps, of all time.

She won four national championships while becoming the only player in history to be named Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Tournament on four occasions. She became the second woman to be named a three-time Naismith College Player of the Year. She’s won the WNBA MVP, two WNBA titles, two Finals MVPs, two Olympic gold medals and two EuroLeague championships.

This season, Stewart, 28, is the WNBA MVP front-runner, the superstar of the league’s newest superteam, the reason the Liberty — the only original franchise without a championship — could finally win it all.

Stewart is already a fixture off Flatbush Avenue. About two blocks from Barclays Center, she stands on a massive billboard, showcasing her newest Puma sneaker.

She is dribbling. She is smiling. She towers above all.

“It’s crazy, I mean, this is Beans we’re talking about,” said high school teammate Abbey Timpano, referencing her slender friend’s former nickname. “I went to the Nike Store in New York and she was on an ad in the dressing room. I sent her a [message], like, ‘Hey, what are you doing in here?’”

Stewart was born Breanna Baldwin, the daughter of a single mother, Heather, who supported them by working multiple jobs. Heather was a waitress at an Olive Garden. She clocked in at a supermarket, Wegmans, where Heather Baldwin met Brian Stewart. They began dating when Breanna was 2. They married a few years later, and Brian adopted Breanna.

Basketball first entered the picture when Stewart came home from second grade with an application for a basketball program. Her parents assumed it was just another activity, soon to be replaced by another.

“She played softball as a kid, but she kind of outgrew that, literally,” Brian said. “The volleyball thing, she tried it for a couple of years, but she never really caught on with it. Basketball was just something she fell in love with and conveniently had a good body for it as well.”

Her interest in the sport grew while attending Syracuse games at the Carrier Dome and taking weekend trips with her father to the downtown YMCA, where Stewart filled in during adult runs and played one-on-one against men “20 years older,” Brian said.

He encouraged her to work on her ball-handling, to be more than a big body who lives in the paint. She spent winters dribbling in her basement. Beginning in the fifth grade, she made daily loops dribbling around her neighborhood. She took four laps: One with the right hand. One with the left. Through the legs. Spin moves.

“I would go and put my headphones on and dribble around the block, and it was just a moment where I don’t have to think about anything else,” Stewart said, “except this ball and making sure it’s not going into the gutter.”

The routine would not be broken.

“Even if we were hanging out, dribbling around the block was always a part of her routine,” said Ally Zywicki, a childhood friend and the daughter of coach Bob Zywicki. “Her work ethic has never changed. She didn’t miss a workout, even before it was required. She was always self-motivated and never satisfied. There’s always something she wants to get better at. And that’s why she’s as successful as she is.”

Stewart wrote her goals in a notebook. No bar was too high. 

She wanted a triple-double in every game. She wanted 25 blocks in one game. But she didn’t need — or want — praise for them.

“When she was playing in high school, she was able to block a lot of shots — I’m talking 8, 12, 15, this huge number — and when the crowd would applaud, she would put her head down,” Brian said. “She didn’t like the attention. I can remember once telling her, ‘Don’t put your head down. I admire you for not thumping your chest and screaming, but you don’t have to put your head down, Bree.’”

Coaches implored the timid kid to keep her arms up because instinct placed them at her side. Off the court, she was a happy-go-lucky kid who loved Candy Land and Skittles, who enjoyed Nintendo Wii and wandering around Walmart, who provided endless entertainment for her friends.

“She’s the goofiest person you can ever imagine,” Ally Zywicki said. “The same kind of personality she has now, always doing something funny. Goofy. Goofy is the best word I can think to describe her.”

Stewart was discovered at a tournament in Brooklyn by high school girls basketball lifer Mike Flynn, who was reminded of Kevin Garnett and hounded Stewart’s parents until they let the freshman spend weekends playing for his AAU national power, the Philadelphia Belles. Stewart also joined the Under-16 national team, at 14, the team’s youngest player as it won gold in Mexico City.

“The transformation with Bree … it was really something to behold,” Bob Zywicki said of Stewart’s pre-teen and teenage years. “Most people won’t ever witness something like that. You look back and you’re like, ‘Did we dream this or did this really happen?’”

“She’s the goofiest person you can ever imagine. The same kind of personality she has now, always doing something funny. Goofy. Goofy is the best word I can think to describe her.”

Breanna Stewart’s childhood friend Ally Zywicki

Stewart also led her school to a pair of New York State titles, and became the Gatorade Player of the Year and a McDonald’s All-American.

“There were moments that took your breath away,” high school teammate Megan Salle said. “There was one game at our rival where she dunked it, and everyone in the crowd is blown away. I remember subbing her out, and here I am, at 5-foot-3, going in for Breanna Stewart. I’m like, ‘I’m not worthy of this.’”

Stewart quietly signed her commitment to UConn on the hood of her car before a practice. The Kevin Durant comparisons became common. Fans stayed long after the final horn.

“Her senior year, she’d spend a half-hour, 40 minutes after every game signing autographs from people in the crowd,” Smith said. “We’d beat a team by 40 or 50 points, and those kids afterwards would ask for autographs and take pictures with her.

“We’d get on the bus and she’d laugh and giggle and do normal kid stuff on the way home.”

Auriemma had seen them all: Taurasi. Bird. Moore. Charles.

But the UConn legend had never seen anyone like the 6-foot-4 teenager with a 7-foot-1 wingspan, who possessed the skill set of a guard, who would be the template for future generations.

“One day at practice, somebody shoots the ball from the left wing, it hits the back rim and she comes flying out of nowhere and her hand and wrist are above the rim and she taps it in, but if she wanted to she could have grabbed it and dunked it,” Auriemma said. “There was a little pause from everybody. The next thing we do is run a little ball screen action, but she’s using the ball screen. She comes off and drains a stepback 3.

“I said, ‘That’s it. Practice is over. There’s no other woman in the world who can do what she just did.’”

The unprecedented was ordinary.

On Stewart’s first day on campus, she told the Hall of Fame coach: “I came to UConn to win four national championships.”

No team in women’s college basketball ever had won four straight NCAA titles. In the previous eight years, the Huskies had won two titles.

“It was like some little kid talking, ‘I’m 5 years old and I want to be an astronaut, I’m gonna be the first person to land on Mars,’” Auriemma said. “So when she said, ‘I came to school to win four national championships, [she’s thinking] why wouldn’t I say we’re gonna win four national championships? Isn’t that the goal?’ Everybody’s goal is to win one. Not four. In her mind, what could go wrong?”

In addition to the rock-bottom loss to Baylor, UConn dropped three games against Notre Dame during her freshman season, including the Big East Tournament title game, in which Stewart scored five points with five turnovers, following a two-point performance in the semifinals. It was her sixth single-digit scoring effort in 10 games.

Auriemma used various methods to unlock the unlimited potential.

He criticized her unlike anyone before or since. He said nothing at all, letting the silent treatment speak volumes. He forced her to run the bleachers for the remainder of a practice, bothered by her effort.

“He definitely knew all my buttons to push,” Stewart said. “But going through that, especially my freshman year, I was like, ‘This sucks.’ All of my flaws were being pointed out. But then also having to realize how to build mental toughness, how to create confidence in how I’m doing things. Looking back, it was the best decision I ever made. If you would’ve asked me when I was 20, I would’ve said that sucked. But it doesn’t happen often. You don’t have those people. He was trying to make me better. Sometimes we’re being too nice in this sport, and he was doing the things he knew that would help me later.

“I learned there was a whole other level that I could get to. And he helped me get there.”

UConn cruised to the 2013 national title as Stewart became the first freshman to be named Most Outstanding Player in 27 years. UConn went 40-0 the next season, and Stewart became the second-ever sophomore to be named national Player of the Year. The Huskies went a combined 76-1 in her final two seasons.

“I’ve never seen her play bad in a big game,” Auriemma said. “Nothing bothers her. The bigger the game, the bigger the moment, the more attention, the bigger her game gets.

“She just plays basketball in a way that you would think they didn’t have uniforms on and they weren’t in a big arena, that they were playing in a pickup game out on some playground.”

The Seattle Storm used the first pick of the 2016 WNBA Draft on Stewart, who won Rookie of the Year, but suffered more losses (37) — in consecutive sub-.500 campaigns — in her first two seasons than she had endured in her life.

Her third season ended with a championship, but her time on top was cut short the next year, in 2019, when Stewart suffered a torn Achilles while playing overseas for her Russian club.

She couldn’t drive. She couldn’t shower without help. She couldn’t walk for 12 weeks.

“At the moment that it happened, you see your career flash before your eyes,” Stewart said. “Am I gonna get back? Am I gonna be able to do everything that I can do?”

She returned for the 2020 season, leading the Storm to another title and winning another Finals MVP.

“I’ve never seen her play bad in a big game. Nothing bothers her. The bigger the game, the bigger the moment, the more attention, the bigger her game gets.”

UConn basketball coach Geno Auriemma

“She was back and even better than before,” said former Storm coach Gary Kloppenburg. “She’s got a deep-seated mental toughness that she can weather anything. She has an aura about her. She exudes that confidence that she knows she’s gonna win. All the success she’s had, that confidence, that mentality, is picked up by all her teammates. They get that swagger as well because they see her.

“She’s so good with her teammates, and that can be unusual with someone who is such a great superstar. She really is just one of the girls.”

Stewart’s six years in Seattle ended with her scoring a WNBA postseason-record 42 points in an elimination game against the Las Vegas Aces. In her home debut in Brooklyn, she scored a Liberty-record 45 points.

Going into Saturday’s WNBA All-Star Game, where she’s one of the team captains, Stewart currently ranks second in the league in scoring (23.1), first in rebounds (9.8), fifth in steals (1.7), sixth in blocks (1.4), 14th in assists (4.1) and 10th in 3-point percentage (41.1), while leading the Liberty to the Eastern Conference’s best record at 14-4.

It has been 21 years since the Liberty made the WNBA Finals.

“She pushes you to reach a potential you didn’t know you had,” Timpano said. “She brings rings wherever she goes.”

Her smile surfaces easily. It takes little effort to get her to laugh.

Few knew what she was hiding, what she had been living with for 13 years.

Inspired by the growing #MeToo movement, Stewart revealed in October 2017 that she was sexually abused over a two-year period, starting when she was 9.

“I decided to go public with my MeToo story because as I was getting older, as I was getting comfortable in my skin, I knew that I had a story to share,” Stewart told The Post in May. “Knowing that being a survivor of sexual abuse, unfortunately it’s something that happens way too often in this world … hoping my story would be able to help someone else. Maybe someone else who hasn’t spoken out, or someone else who has, and giving them the confidence and the courage to kind of keep going and realizing that this is just gonna be a bump in their journey. And it’s not gonna dictate their entire life.” 

Stewart’s cousin was her best friend. She often slept over at cousin’s house, where the man married to Stewart’s aunt waited until everyone else fell asleep and forced himself on her. On Jan. 9, 2006, the 11-year-old girl told her parents about it. More than a decade later, Stewart told them she wanted to share her story with all. 

After she did, Stewart heard from countless people — including fellow  WNBA players — who had experienced similar trauma.

“I wasn’t surprised she wanted to help people in that way,” her mother said. “That was an internal process she had to go through. I never knew when she would be ready to confront it and really talk more about it, and I was glad she did at that time. It was good therapy for her, but it was also to help other people. She turned something that was pretty horrible into something that was a positive for other people.”

Basketball took on outsized importance in the aftermath of the abuse.

After telling her parents what happened, Stewart gave a police statement. They returned to her grandmother’s house, where she learned that the perpetrator confessed and had been arrested.

That night, the Syracuse Stars had practice. Stewart didn’t want to miss it.

“There are kids that kill themselves over that happening to them,” Brian said. “To see Breanna not only move on in life, but successfully and with her head up is important. I told her that maybe someday she’d want to help others. That was how it was always approached. ‘Don’t bury this out of embarrassment because you didn’t do anything wrong. And some day, you may want to talk about this and help others.’ I can’t tell you how many people came up to Heather and I after that. Someone would come up to me crying, ‘You don’t know how much this helped my daughter.’

“It’s just an example of someone with the resiliency, they’re not gonna let anything stop them. Probably the most proud of that, by far, more than basketball or anything.”

The quiet young girl blossomed into one of the loudest and mature voices in women’s sports. She advocated for the Black Lives Matter movement. She offered to help subsidize charter flights for WNBA teams. She is co-founding a new league to allow WNBA players to compete domestically during the offseason.

In 2019 — while recovering from her Achilles injury — she documented her experience freezing her eggs, hoping to educate others about the fertility treatment.

“It would be a little bit selfish of me if I only worried about the way that I could use my platform on the court, but not off,” Stewart said. “In today’s society, as a woman, as a woman’s basketball player, there’s a lot we’ve done, but there’s a lot we still need to do. We need to make sure everything is right for the next generation.”

During her injury recovery, Stewart began dating teammate Marta Xargay. In 2020, the couple decided to have a baby, using a surrogate and an egg frozen from Stewart the year prior.

On Aug. 7, 2021, Stewart won gold at the Olympics in Japan. Two days later, she cut the umbilical cord of her daughter, Ruby, before placing her on a bed with the medal by her side.

This October, Stewart and Xargay are expecting their second child.

“Knowing that I’m a role model, but now I’m literally being looked up to by my own kid, and trying to show her she can do whatever she wants,” Stewart said. “And also appreciating my parents because sometimes it’s a lot. Raising a kid is difficult, but incredible.

“We’re over the moon, excited, but getting prepared. Trying to deal with a 2-year-old and a newborn is gonna be a journey.”

There is little time to reflect. There is always another game, another practice, another workout, another appearance. There is a marriage. There is a baby en route, a toddler seeking attention every waking moment, whose screams still roust you from sleep. There is life.

But in a quiet moment, squeezed in between practice and a chiropractic appointment, Stewart laughs at the thought of the ungraceful child from upstate New York becoming the best player in the world.

“I have moments where I’m like, ‘Whoa, like, holy s—t,” Stewart said. “Like the ability to be at the Olympics and win a gold medal and play in the WNBA. Things I was dreaming of when I was a little kid. Now, it’s normal. This is my everyday life, but not forgetting that goal of wanting to get here.

“Sometimes when I think about my résumé, I think, ‘Oh, pretty good, you know? Done a lot. But still wanting to do more.’ If I think about legacy, I want to be thought of as a winner. But also a good person.”

She has been a star since she was a teenager. She is in her second decade of celebrity. It is still surreal.

“It still catches you by surprise because she’s stayed so grounded,” Ally Zywicki said. “If we’re out in public hanging out, when people ask for pictures, it sort of catches you off guard because you forget when you’re with her. She’s never been someone who has made her success in the forefront.

“Sometimes when I think about my résumé, I think, ‘Oh, pretty good, you know? Done a lot. But still wanting to do more.’ If I think about legacy, I want to be thought of as a winner. But also a good person.”

Breanna Stewart

“As big as she’s gotten with basketball, she’s always been the friend that never misses a birthday, that puts everybody first. I had one of the biggest tests I had to take at school during the pandemic and she stopped everything she was doing and drove to the testing center to ask them if the tests would be canceled, if they’d be open, she made sure she made me something for dinner and celebrated with me after the test.”

There is more than basketball. There was life before it dominated her life. There will be decades after it.

And there is today, in the midst of her prime, in a career where the unprecedented is ordinary.

“It’s been a great ride and an amazing story to tell,” Heather said. “It is unbelievable sometimes. It is surreal. You’re just wondering, how did this happen? I can look back and say: This is how it happened.”