Lesson Learned

Hello World! I’m back, again writing about my experiences here in Spain. This blog is a little different, but just bare with me. As a kid I never really thought about playing professionally, or even at the collegiate level. My first love, as many kids, was baseball. I was a catcher, obviously I eventually outgrew that position pretty quickly. I always played on the local all-star teams, and was one of the better players in my hometown. As I grew older and grew taller, I moved to play first base…this as I look back was the beginning of the end of my baseball career. I was in my sophomore year in high school and was playing in a fall baseball league. I remember the game like it was yesterday. It was a really cold October night in Statesville. I was playing my ‘new’ position at first, and the batter hit a pop-fly…as it went up I looked at it as every other routine pop fly…but this one was different, for some reason, it was different. I looked up and waited for it to come down, and waited, and waited, and then POP…yep, the ball totally missed my glove and hit me in eye/face/nasal region. Wow, how did this happen? I’m still not really sure as to how it happened, but looking back now I’m glad it did. As soon as it happened, I tried to be a big tough guy, and shake it off. Well, that ended pretty soon, especially when the blood started to flow from my nose. This pretty much spelled the end of my baseball career. I decided that I would play a game where ball didn’t hurt quite as bad. So, at this point, being about 6’5 and an overall big kid, I figured that basketball would be the best bet.

From then on basketball was my primary sport. I played, and played, and played everyday…I loved the game, but I wasn’t really sure how to get better. I started doing a lot of different things to try to expand my game, including waking up at 6am every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to play with a group of old men. At Guilford we have something like this, it’s called the geezer league. These guys were just a bunch men who loved to play the game. I was new to the club, but I think they loved having the youth around. Here, is where I learned a lot, not only about basketball, but about life, and about myself. Lesson one: don’t mess with John..John was about 6’8 and 260 pounds, everybody called him “big John.” He played collegiately in California, and he had been a guy who would come around my high school team to help out a little. Well, John was an extremely competitive guy, and this was one of the best things for me. At first when I just started going, John pretty much dominated me in every facet of the game. He was stronger, more skilled, and just had a better feel for the game. However, as I started getting better, and more skilled..I started to give John some problems. Occasionally I would block his shots, score on him, and then it became more frequent, and eventually it was the norm. John was not ok with this, daily John would curse, kick balls across the gym, and generally just get really irritated with me. This is what learned from John: He was the first person to give me a challenge, and that’s something that everyone needs, a challenge. I had always been bigger than everyone, and typically had my way. He was one of the reasons that I wanted to get better, and as I started to improve, it was feeling that is hard to duplicate. Lesson 2..work hard and you will reap the benefits. One of my best friends dads also played with us in the morning. He was also my High School JV coach, and had an overall huge impact in my life. He started to tell me about his days as a player, and how at first he wasn’t that good, but with hard work he got better. I think he was one of the first to see what kind of player I could or really should be. Here I was a chubby(to put it nicely), tall, awkward kid who liked the game, but wasn’t really ready to make the sacrifices to get where I wanted to go. He started to drill into my head, run, shoot, lift, run, shoot, lift, repeat, repeat…I would go to my friends house and spend the night on weekends, and in the morning his dad would come wake me up, just me, while everybody else slept, and we would go outside and shoot, since he had a full basketball court in his backyard. We worked on free-throws, hook shots, everything. OK…so now we have the working hard part down, how about the reaping the benefits? The first benefit was having the opportunity to play at the collegiate level, something that I had never really given much thought, but fortunately it happened. Guilford is where I continued the hard work part, and I had a vision, unlike in high school I knew where I wanted to be. It might have been considered unlikely, and very difficult especially coming from such a small school, but I wanted to be a professional basketball player. Four years later, and here I am. I’m a professional basketball player; I’ve been so blessed to have family and friends to give me so much support over the years. My college coaches were the best, they pushed my teammates and I when we didn’t want to be pushed, but in the end it was definitely for the better. However, the biggest supporter, and she has been my whole life, is my mom. My mom is my rock, and she is the reason that I wake up and do what I do everyday. I’m not living the glamorous lifestyle of an NBA player, but I do wake up and go to the gym everyday as a job. Not only do I get to play basketball, I get to live in a different country. I get to experience a different culture, see new things, and learn life lessons that I could not elsewhere.

So, lessons learned…everyone has problems, and two everyone need a challenge. Being here is a challenge, playing against bigger and stronger players is a challenge, waking up and going to two practices a day is a challenge, being away from the ones I love is a challenge, but this is what life is about, finding a challenge, and not only adapting to the challenge, but overcoming it as well. I think that basketball is a great teacher of life lessons. My whole life I have been challenged, not only with basketball but with everyday life as well. You learn a lot about yourself. You learn how bad you want something, and how much something might be worth to you. You want to be in shape for the season? Run this extra or last sprint. You want to be the best player on the team? How hard are you willing to work to do this? You want to lift two times a day, and play pick up, and go to workouts? The final question is…HOW BAD DO YOU WANT IT? If you want it bad enough, you can obtain a lot. At the end of the day, I just want to be the best me I can be. If I can do that, it’s a successful day, no matter what happened if I put the effort into the day to do the best I can, it’s a day that I can reflect upon as a productive day.

If there is one thing that I’ve learned in the past four years is that “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” Haha you might be thinking, ok, well what does this mean? It’s one of the quotes that our coaches would put in our practice schedule as a “quote of the day.” At the end of practice they would ask us…what does this mean? We would stand there and look dumbfounded, and they would say OK, well tomorrow have an answer. I never really understood what this really meant until now. You can’t get something for nothing…you are always going to have to pay the price, are you willing to pay it? That is what you must ask yourself everyday, am I willing to pay the price?

If you stuck with me as I rambled on, thank you!

God Bless