@daedalron actually, when he returned to the field in middle school, he had spent 2 years without running with the ball, 2 years in which he grew up in height. So he completely lost his personal sense of space with a ball and decided it would be a waste of time to focus on his dribbling at the time as he would not get his ball sense back in time to play at the level he needed to play.
I imagine that now that he spent so much time playing, he naturally got some of that sense back, yet he doesn't realize that he may have regained enough ball control to be able to begin dribbling again.