Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fun Around and find out it's your girl,
Speaker 1: Shanti and this week we have a very special guest,
Speaker 1: Tim fun Thanks.
Speaker 2: For having me on. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to have you.
Speaker 1: This has been a month in the making and it
Speaker 1: is my honor to be able to host you today.
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to it. Let's have some fun.
Speaker 1: So let's just talk about this past week. Your daughter,
Speaker 1: the Dallas Wings played my New York Liberty. Tell me
Speaker 1: what it was like for you in that environment. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about the game.
Speaker 4: First of all, New York City shows out at the
Speaker 4: Liberty games, not not only for Liberty games. We were
Speaker 4: in Brooklyn for Unrivaled this past season as well, and
Speaker 4: it was crazy there, and it was crazy for the
Speaker 4: Liberty game on Sunday, it was crazy and Brooklyn when
Speaker 4: Yukon went there. It's a great basketball atmosphere. It's got
Speaker 4: to be one of the top in the w you know,
Speaker 4: we went to Indiana for the first game and they
Speaker 4: were they were really rabid fans there.
Speaker 2: But New York is New York.
Speaker 4: That's the that's the mecca, you know, mecca of the
Speaker 4: basketball capitol ball not the basketball capital world, but the
Speaker 4: Mecca will give them the Mecca.
Speaker 3: Listen, listen.
Speaker 1: You know I'm a little biased, but we definitely always
Speaker 1: show out for our sports teams.
Speaker 3: It does not matter if.
Speaker 1: You like hockey, soccer, football, basketball. New York fans are
Speaker 1: literally unmatched. But I'm really glad you liked the environment.
Speaker 1: It was definitely electric and.
Speaker 3: Our girl Azy lit us up.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, seventeen points in the third quarter. I
Speaker 1: was so excited, but also sick for my liberty.
Speaker 2: What the fund of the week? Maybe maybe what the.
Speaker 3: Might be youring with the money, but I got some
Speaker 3: cooking up.
Speaker 4: The crazy part about it is that they you know,
Speaker 4: we were in the city all weekend and the whole
Speaker 4: city was is vibing, partly because the Knicks are making
Speaker 4: the run, but you know, it's just exciting. It's a
Speaker 4: great time for the be, you know, to be a
Speaker 4: basketball fan in New York City or around New York City.
Speaker 4: If you can get to the city, people are excited.
Speaker 4: You see people, ordinary people just walking around with nick
Speaker 4: hats on, and you know they don't know thing about basketball,
Speaker 4: but hey, they're representing, and it was it was actually fun.
Speaker 2: It was really fun.
Speaker 3: I'm glad to hear that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean right now, the Knicks have the city
Speaker 1: on fire. So people are like selling shirts, hats, wearing gear,
Speaker 1: people are allowed to change up their uniform at work.
Speaker 1: I mean, like it's a real exciting time to be
Speaker 1: in New York.
Speaker 4: Well, just being a basketball fan, you know that this
Speaker 4: time of the year for the Knicks and just a history.
Speaker 4: And you know, I was a big Patrick Ewing fan
Speaker 4: back in the day. Of course, he was George Town
Speaker 4: University and you know we claim him here in the DMV,
Speaker 4: but he was. He's one of my favorite players when
Speaker 4: I was growing up. So I followed the Knicks a lot.
Speaker 4: And the Garden is always exciting, even with reckless season,
Speaker 4: it's always exciting. It's always buzzing. And then we went
Speaker 4: to you know, when we went to Brooklyn the other
Speaker 4: day on Sunday to play the Liberty, it is just
Speaker 4: such a buzz man. It's like you don't know who's who.
Speaker 4: It's like you are looking around and you know, celebrity
Speaker 4: here and we're sitting next to celebrities. And got to
Speaker 4: meet Jason Sedeikis. He came over and said hello, hello,
Speaker 4: and met his sister, took a picture with her. Stan
Speaker 4: Ban Gundy came over with his daughter, who said she
Speaker 4: was a big fan of Asy and got a chance
Speaker 4: to take a picture with him have a conversation with him.
Speaker 4: It's like, coach, I'm a big fan of yours. I've
Speaker 4: been listening to you for a decade. So yeah, it
Speaker 4: was it was exciting for sure.
Speaker 3: I mean in New York, let me tell you something.
Speaker 1: One thing about New Yorkers, we all believe that we're celebrities.
Speaker 1: Like you'd be surprised it would be so many celebrities
Speaker 1: walking around or just existing in the space, and New
Speaker 1: Yorkers are kind of like used to it. I'm sure
Speaker 1: people have the same experience in LA, but I think
Speaker 1: that's super dope that you had to meet these people
Speaker 1: and you get to see like.
Speaker 3: Everyone's pretty normal, you know what I mean. Everyone. The
Speaker 3: thing that we all have in common is we're here
Speaker 3: for the sports.
Speaker 1: We're here for the basketball game, We're here to enjoy
Speaker 1: the culture, the New York City sports culture.
Speaker 3: So that is awesome.
Speaker 4: To see those people in the stands and people not
Speaker 4: bothering them, just leaving them alone. They're like normal people,
Speaker 4: you know, So that it is something to be said
Speaker 4: for that. You know, you guys are respecting people, respect
Speaker 4: their space, their time and energy, and allow them to
Speaker 4: be be normal fans as well.
Speaker 3: You know for sure.
Speaker 5: And you know security be tight, yes, they'd be tight, yes,
Speaker 5: especially in Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: Come on, they never play.
Speaker 1: So speaking of you being in Brooklyn, you and Katie
Speaker 1: got to train at my gym. I see you rocking
Speaker 1: our hat the program and was see how is that?
Speaker 1: And I want to hear more about your other New
Speaker 1: York City activities.
Speaker 2: So first and.
Speaker 4: Foremost, if you don't know about the program, you better
Speaker 4: get with the program because that is a phenomenal space,
Speaker 4: you know for someone who has both Katie and I
Speaker 4: have aspired to own our own gym and to do
Speaker 4: something like what the program is doing. Providing the opportunity
Speaker 4: for kids to learn, train and and trainers going into
Speaker 4: the gym and bringing their clients in.
Speaker 2: It was amazing.
Speaker 4: So we get a chance on Saturday to show up
Speaker 4: and actually get to work with a few few kids
Speaker 4: in the area and that was awesome, you know, just
Speaker 4: being able to pop in and just get some knowledge
Speaker 4: to some of the kids. And you look around and
Speaker 4: everybody training the ball. There's a lot of trainers that
Speaker 4: look like they are all cookie cutter, but most of
Speaker 4: us trained differently and we trained different things. And Katie
Speaker 4: and I have been built from the foundation of you know,
Speaker 4: we're we're about development and trying to correct and trying
Speaker 4: to teach and trying to allow, you know, the kids
Speaker 4: a chance to grow their games and not so much
Speaker 4: of a hectic environment, just something that we're trying to teach.
Speaker 4: We're trying to give you something that you could take
Speaker 4: away for a long time and use it for years
Speaker 4: to come. So it was great being in the gym
Speaker 4: with kids and impartan some knowledge and some expertise on
Speaker 4: them and giving them a chance to show them some
Speaker 4: of the things that we taught easy along the way.
Speaker 4: So it was really really fun. Yeah, the rest of
Speaker 4: the weekend, we we kind of hung out. We hung
Speaker 4: out with Jack and Jonathan a Ton had some great meals.
Speaker 4: You you joined us for a couple of the meals
Speaker 4: or one or two of the meals or whatever, and uh,
Speaker 4: you know, it's kind of sucky because the rain, but
Speaker 4: you know, we were gonna we were playing on heading
Speaker 4: back home on Sunday, and then we kicked around and
Speaker 4: decided to stay over and overnight and come back Monday.
Speaker 4: Katie got a chance to train a couple more kids
Speaker 4: at the program again. But just just the vibe in
Speaker 4: the city on even a rainy holiday weekend was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Well, I just want to stay on the behalf of
Speaker 1: the program. You guys are always welcome.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: And I see that you've been holding a guest popping
Speaker 1: in and out. Yeah, tell us about about your special
Speaker 1: guests on your laugh.
Speaker 4: Well, she just jumped down, but let's say hi, Uh,
Speaker 4: this is Stewie. Stewe wanted to make a guest appearance
Speaker 4: because she said her mommy showed out on Sunday and
Speaker 4: she she blocked your namesake, Stewie.
Speaker 2: That was pretty good. That was pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: One thing that that truly amazed me about a Z
Speaker 1: is like, yes, she is a phenomenal officsive player, fire
Speaker 1: MIDI great, but her defensive game is super underrated. In
Speaker 1: my opinion, that blocking uh the former MVP, former champion
Speaker 1: like that as a rookie is insane, as any player
Speaker 1: is insane.
Speaker 3: So yeah, shout out to easy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's hard not to not to get excited about
Speaker 4: some of the stuff and talk about it and you know,
Speaker 4: you hear everybody's talking about it, of Saint mentioned things,
Speaker 4: and but you also want to be respectful because Stewie
Speaker 4: is one of the goats, and and you know, of
Speaker 4: course if you come you kind of lum and one
Speaker 4: of our favorites. And things happen when you're in the court,
Speaker 4: and then the whole, the whole premises. You go out
Speaker 4: there and you compete, and whatever happens happens. And she
Speaker 4: happened to get a chance to defend her on a
Speaker 4: on a situation where she switched on her and did
Speaker 4: a down doing good job of fending off the basket
Speaker 4: and then got her hand on the ball at into
Speaker 4: the end of it and knocked it away and helped
Speaker 4: Dallas can kind of keep that that little cushing of
Speaker 4: a lead that they had. But yeah, it was, it was.
Speaker 4: It was unbelievable, and it's it's really surreal, even to
Speaker 4: this this point. It's only been about a month, but
Speaker 4: to see her on the floor and the court with
Speaker 4: some of the greats and the people that we've been watching,
Speaker 4: she's been watching for a long time, and we've been
Speaker 4: kind of day dreaming of this day coming. But it's
Speaker 4: here and it's like, it's not normal, it's just surreal.
Speaker 4: And then to see her how she played on Sunday
Speaker 4: in that environment in that game. One of the last
Speaker 4: things I said to her before the game, we send
Speaker 4: a little pregame text all the time, just to kind
Speaker 4: of just locking in on certain keys or whatever it is.
Speaker 4: And one of the last things I said to her
Speaker 4: was like, enjoy this environment. You know, this is kind
Speaker 4: of why we play the game. You go out in
Speaker 4: that environment, there's no reason to be You may you
Speaker 4: have that anxious jitters at first, but it's don't need
Speaker 4: to be nervous because you hear to play and once
Speaker 4: that ball goes up to playing and it is what
Speaker 4: it is. It's just basketball and you just out there
Speaker 4: competing ooping.
Speaker 3: You know, yes, absolutely, And she sure did. Oh she
Speaker 3: what have you texted? I need? But you gotta texted
Speaker 3: I every single time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: She makes me have to be diversify what I want
Speaker 4: to say, because I definitely want to be like, all right,
Speaker 4: copy paste, you know what, repeat rents and repeat, Let's
Speaker 4: do it again, you know, but now, no, no two
Speaker 4: games are alike. And hopefully for me, it's it's an
Speaker 4: opportunity to see her. And it's funny because the discourse
Speaker 4: with about Easy has been crazy online, which she doesn't
Speaker 4: she doesn't really see any of that stuff. She stays
Speaker 4: off of it. But you know, to see people debating
Speaker 4: whether she should be starting or which would coming off
Speaker 4: the bench eight, or you know, all the rookie of
Speaker 4: the year craziness that they're they're they're debating, and uh,
Speaker 4: and it is that people on debate that that's.
Speaker 2: The barbershop talk.
Speaker 4: But the one thing that that really like for me
Speaker 4: is that you know, she's achieved some of the loftiest goals.
Speaker 4: Number one draft pick and no one's ever going to
Speaker 4: be able to take that away like that. I don't
Speaker 4: care if basketball seas to exist tomorrow, that's always going
Speaker 4: to be her mention as the number one draft pick.
Speaker 4: And you could say that all the wood ups in
Speaker 4: the world, but that she gets to own that for
Speaker 4: the rest of her life and beyond. But also just
Speaker 4: the fact that you know, Easy is just a different
Speaker 4: kind of character, and you know this having worked with her,
Speaker 4: She's not about all of those individual accolades. That doesn't
Speaker 4: drive her, like it's not it's not what she plays for.
Speaker 4: She's a she's a connector. She's not necessarily a someone
Speaker 4: who's driven by you know that all the the individual stuff.
Speaker 4: As a matter of fact, that there's clips of her
Speaker 4: individual awards Yukon and handing the trophy off to her
Speaker 4: teammates because it's not what she plays for. She plays
Speaker 4: for them. She plays for them, and you can kind
Speaker 4: of see her kind of developing that rapport with her
Speaker 4: teammates in Dallas where that she wants to play for them,
Speaker 4: she wants them to be successful, and she went she
Speaker 4: plays because she's a winner and she wants to win championships.
Speaker 2: That's all. That's that's the driven driving force for her
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: You know, let's just I on that note, I do
Speaker 1: want to know more about like what it was like
Speaker 1: for you coaching Asy as she was growing up, right,
Speaker 1: you were one of her first coaches ever, right, so
Speaker 1: tell us more about what it was like as coaching
Speaker 1: young as just.
Speaker 2: What you see as loves on her teammates.
Speaker 4: She that's what kind of calls her to fall in
Speaker 4: love with the game because of that camaraderie that she
Speaker 4: had with her teammates at a young age. She was
Speaker 4: so excited to show up on the weekend to play
Speaker 4: with her teammates, that experienced something with her teammates and
Speaker 4: and you know, slowly but surely we introduced work to
Speaker 4: her and doing a little bit extra and teaching her
Speaker 4: that just because you show up to practice doesn't mean
Speaker 4: that you're you know, you're just doing this, doing the
Speaker 4: bare minimum. You have to do a little bit extra
Speaker 4: every day to increase your your aptitude, your knowledge, your
Speaker 4: skill level and and your expertise. And sooner, uh, sooner
Speaker 4: or later, that becomes habit. And the habit is what
Speaker 4: she has in her instilled in her today that causes
Speaker 4: her to want to get that extra work in and
Speaker 4: continue to push herself and push those boundaries. But she
Speaker 4: is so driven by that camaraderie with her teammates and
Speaker 4: and wanting to have this common goal that you're working towards.
Speaker 4: It's it's that that's the epitome of who she is.
Speaker 4: And when you're coaching her, uh, she's she's so coachable
Speaker 4: to the point to a fault at times, like you
Speaker 4: tell her X Y and Z, She's going to work
Speaker 4: to do X, Y and Z and focus on that, uh,
Speaker 4: as opposed to working on a B and C off
Speaker 4: on her own. She's gonna work, worry about what you say,
Speaker 4: and and that's that's just who she is. And this
Speaker 4: is kind of the type of mentality. And she's always
Speaker 4: been that way, even as a young child, like she
Speaker 4: would she would she as a toddler, she'd be she'd
Speaker 4: had that we would.
Speaker 2: Call it the warm up period.
Speaker 4: She take wake up from a nap, and she'd be
Speaker 4: very social before the nap, and she'd wake up from
Speaker 4: a nap. She'd sit in our laps for like ten, fifteen,
Speaker 4: twenty minutes, and it was like then she would slowly
Speaker 4: come out of her shell and she'd be back social again.
Speaker 4: And you could see the same type of thing happening
Speaker 4: with her in the Dallas environment where she's been introduced
Speaker 4: to this new environment and she's like, Okay, let me
Speaker 4: see what this is about. Let me see how I
Speaker 4: can interact and relate and connect with my teammates. And
Speaker 4: as soon as that stuff starts to happen, she's like
Speaker 4: a flower that hits but the morning dew and the
Speaker 4: sun hits it and it just slowly opens up and
Speaker 4: you get that full, full, bossoming personality. That's the way
Speaker 4: I describe her. She's so slow up pomatic. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: you see it. You see that now, it's like all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, Okay, we're seven games in here, Okay, here,
Speaker 4: come there, here she is. She's starts starting to open up.
Speaker 4: And it's not something that we haven't seen all throughout
Speaker 4: her life and every every new environment that she's ever
Speaker 4: been in here, So it's really exciting to see.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I love seeing her get adjusted and starting to look
Speaker 1: and feel.
Speaker 3: Super comfortable out there.
Speaker 1: As her former coach or I guess she's still kind
Speaker 1: of coach her in this life. Yeah, how do you
Speaker 1: get the best out of easy on the court?
Speaker 2: You challenge her.
Speaker 4: You have to challenge her, and you have to always
Speaker 4: be willing to adapt those challenges. It can't just be
Speaker 4: concrete level of expectation, because she'll rise to it. She'll
Speaker 4: rise to a level of expectation, and you gotta you
Speaker 4: have to then adapt and adjustice and fix your expectations
Speaker 4: so that she continues to rise because uh, and then
Speaker 4: and it's like any any high level great player, they
Speaker 4: have this unique ability to rise to the occasion and
Speaker 4: and and to meet those challenges and meet those expectations.
Speaker 4: But that's that's the way I found it like we
Speaker 4: would be in the gym working out and uh, you know,
Speaker 4: we're just working on shooting or whatever, and I found
Speaker 4: that I started finding that she was getting bored throughout
Speaker 4: the workout. Okay, make ten shots from this spot. Okay,
Speaker 4: we're gonna do X, Y and Z, and you're gonna
Speaker 4: make You're gonna make seven shots here and then so
Speaker 4: you could see her eat like in the midst of
Speaker 4: shooting that, you know, making those ten shots halfway through.
Speaker 2: Her minds like like was wandering because this is too easy.
Speaker 4: And so now I'm it's like the smart kid in
Speaker 4: class that's bored, you know, and he's showing he's displaying
Speaker 4: negative behaviors or different behaviors. That's not that's unbecoming, right,
Speaker 4: But you have to challenge them to keep them focused.
Speaker 2: So we did.
Speaker 4: We had to start doing things differently, and we asked questions,
Speaker 4: how do you how do you challenge to certain players
Speaker 4: and college coaches right giving us advice and so everything
Speaker 4: was it's about winning and it's about competing. You have
Speaker 4: to you have to make this many shots right in
Speaker 4: this spot, six of eight from the from the corner
Speaker 4: three you have to do and then when you can
Speaker 4: make the six of eight and then next time around,
Speaker 4: I'll be like, Okay, we're gonna shooting corner three, all right, Uh,
Speaker 4: you gotta make five swishes in a row before we
Speaker 4: move to the next spot. And it'd be it'd be
Speaker 4: amazing how you could literally see her eyes, the sparkle
Speaker 4: in her eyes start to like and her eyes like narrow,
Speaker 4: the focus is narrow. It was like you could literally
Speaker 4: see her lock in on that goal and before you
Speaker 4: know it, she's in it.
Speaker 2: And it's like she's.
Speaker 4: Knocking shot off, the shot off, the shout out the shot,
Speaker 4: and it's like, okay, all right. So when she when
Speaker 4: she's challenged, it's like it's a it's almost like this
Speaker 4: barbado in her to like, Okay, you think you're gonna
Speaker 4: beat me, I'm gonna beat.
Speaker 2: You, you know. So you get a challenger one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: That's awesome. I love seeing the competitor of a Z.
Speaker 1: So, with the success of coaching your daughter, is that
Speaker 1: why you and Katie decided to build out GTS fusion?
Speaker 3: Tell us, yes, tell us what is GTS fusion?
Speaker 4: So let me let me start with the coaching piece,
Speaker 4: Like I never wanted to coach her because I'm a
Speaker 4: buthole man. I am not nice like I can I
Speaker 4: cannot be. I can be really tough. And as a
Speaker 4: young coach, I'll give you a story as a young coach.
Speaker 4: But then the first year we got married, I got
Speaker 4: my first head coaching job at an elite private school
Speaker 4: here in the DMV and I go to coach there
Speaker 4: and they want to have a national program. I recruit
Speaker 4: a bunch of kids I got. I got five international kids.
Speaker 4: I have kids from We were like forty five minutes
Speaker 4: west of the city. I have kids from the city
Speaker 4: driving that far out just go to school. We were
Speaker 4: really good. We were thirty three and one. So three
Speaker 4: the five international kids lived with us. We had we
Speaker 4: hosted them. Me and met Katie and Aisy. There was
Speaker 4: Asy's big first big brothers. That that was it. And
Speaker 4: I was really like so locked in on my craft
Speaker 4: and being a great coach and trying to be I wanted.
Speaker 2: I always wanted to be a college head coach, right,
Speaker 2: that was my goal.
Speaker 4: And so I I coached those kids on the court
Speaker 4: in the classroom at home. One kid you know that
Speaker 4: I coached, I mean he was he was Cameroonian, and
Speaker 4: he was like Chidsel with all the stone, didn't lift
Speaker 4: the weight, couldn't lift the weight, but could barely understand
Speaker 4: how the left weights. But he was like chiseled out
Speaker 4: of the stone. He was just naturally like strong, cut
Speaker 4: up and but he was kind of like not super motivated.
Speaker 4: He's lazy sometimes, and so I would I would see
Speaker 4: him lazily walk up the stairs at home, and I'd
Speaker 4: be like, that's it, That's exactly what you look like
Speaker 4: in the game last night. I was like, I'm doing
Speaker 4: something like that, and to a point where I was
Speaker 4: I was over the top with it. In retrospect, I
Speaker 4: was over the top with it, and I didn't know
Speaker 4: any better. I was a young coaching, eager, eager beaver.
Speaker 4: She's trying to get it done. And that's one of
Speaker 4: the only players I've ever coached it I've never I've
Speaker 4: never heard from him again, never heard from him again.
Speaker 4: So I didn't want to coach easy because I didn't
Speaker 4: want me coaching her to to bruin our follow dollar relationship.
Speaker 4: That was that was the most important thing for me.
Speaker 4: And so I was reluctant. And so she played for
Speaker 4: someone her first year playing. She was in the first grade.
Speaker 4: It was developmental basketball, but it was driving me crazy.
Speaker 4: And I was coaching in college at the time. I
Speaker 4: was coaching three hours away. I was living away from
Speaker 4: my family. I'd come on my days off, I'd go
Speaker 4: to the gym. I'd go watch her practice, and this
Speaker 4: coach would be the only coach in the gym, and
Speaker 4: she'd stand in the middle of the floor at the
Speaker 4: center of the jump ball circle and she would just
Speaker 4: scream out and struts to the kids. And I was like, yo,
Speaker 4: these kids are like for first two, third grade. You
Speaker 4: got to demonstrate for them, you know, you got to
Speaker 4: show them. They don't have any She's like calling out
Speaker 4: lines and they don't know where to go, and so
Speaker 4: and I, you know, me and Katie would go and
Speaker 4: we were like, just ask us to help, will help,
Speaker 4: Like we'll just go get a basket. Well, we'll mimic
Speaker 4: whatever you want to do if you need help. And
Speaker 4: she would never choose too arrogant. She never asked for help,
Speaker 4: and knowing that we were coaches, she knew she never
Speaker 4: did that. So I sent her my resume at the
Speaker 4: end of the first season. I said, hey, listen, it's
Speaker 4: my resume. I'm I'm interested in coaching the team, would
Speaker 4: you be interested in And she was. She was the
Speaker 4: president of the organization, and so she was like, you
Speaker 4: could coach the B team and you could take easy
Speaker 4: with you. I was like, okay, all right, and now
Speaker 4: mind you A was not good at the time, like
Speaker 4: she was just she was she loved her teammates, right,
Speaker 4: And I was like, so that's how you want to
Speaker 4: do it, okay. So someone had already offered me a
Speaker 4: head coach, coach a team while I was coaching in
Speaker 4: college and bringing her with me, and that's what we
Speaker 4: ended up doing. We end up leaving as and Katie
Speaker 4: was coaching in the same organization that we left, and
Speaker 4: so that's how I started coaching her. And so it
Speaker 4: was just out of a need to. I felt like
Speaker 4: she wasn't learning, she wasn't getting enough teaching, and I
Speaker 4: was like, well, I know I can teach her. Katie
Speaker 4: can teach her. So what kind of coaches or would
Speaker 4: be are we if we allow our kids to go
Speaker 4: through an environment where it's not based on teaching and
Speaker 4: instruction and development and growth. And so that's how I
Speaker 4: got involved. But I wanted it to be about her,
Speaker 4: not about me, And so I had to check my
Speaker 4: ego at the door and said, you know, I'm not
Speaker 4: going to like when we leave the gym, when we
Speaker 4: leave the court and we have our little group huddle
Speaker 4: at the end of a game or whatever, we're not
Speaker 4: rehashing this. We're not like talking about what happened, what
Speaker 4: she should do, should have done, what she didn't do.
Speaker 2: I wanted to be Dad.
Speaker 4: So it was a physical switch, and it became a
Speaker 4: thing of ours where I would come up to her
Speaker 4: and she's always hungry, always hungry, and we both love
Speaker 4: ice cream, right.
Speaker 2: Although she loves it more than me. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I'd come up to her, I'm like, hey,
Speaker 4: you're hungry, and she yes, Or I'd be like, I
Speaker 4: want to go get somebo ice cream and she'd be
Speaker 4: like yeah. But that was a physical switch from me
Speaker 4: being coached to Dad and I'm not gonna I'm not screaming.
Speaker 4: I'm not we'll not screaming, but just yelling instructions or
Speaker 4: whatever it could be screaming. I said, I want to
Speaker 4: go back to Dad, and we're gonna we hold hands
Speaker 4: and walk out the door. That's that was the thing
Speaker 4: for us. That was will work our butts off while
Speaker 4: we're in the gym, when we're on the court, but
Speaker 4: when we leave, we we leave the business here and
Speaker 4: when we come back, we'll pick up where we left off.
Speaker 4: But we're not going to take that home with us.
Speaker 4: She may tell you different different stuff, but truthfully, very rarely,
Speaker 4: we very rarely had conversations in the car about what
Speaker 4: was going on, And if we did have a conversation,
Speaker 4: it was limited to like three or five minutes, max,
Speaker 4: and we moved on from it. And so that was
Speaker 4: that was my big thing so coach, but coaching her
Speaker 4: was I've coached other pros. You know, Kendall Marshall is
Speaker 4: one that comes to mind, who is one of the
Speaker 4: best players in our area, played in North Carolina, played
Speaker 4: in the NBA for about four or five years. You know,
Speaker 4: unbelievable talent, unbelievable ment, just mental abilities in terms of
Speaker 4: learning and understanding the game. And those two Hey and
Speaker 4: Asy are very similar in that regard. But you know,
Speaker 4: I never got the joy of coaching a kid like
Speaker 4: I got from coaching her. It was it was just
Speaker 4: different and just watching it, It's just it was just different.
Speaker 1: So, you know, that's awesome. Is GTS fusion still around?
Speaker 1: Is that something you and Katie still do?
Speaker 4: I forgot to answer that part GTS fusion is. So
Speaker 4: Katie is a basketball trainer by trade, and which I
Speaker 4: used to be with her, but I had to kind
Speaker 4: of take the route of going to the corporate job thing,
Speaker 4: get insurance for the family or whatever. At the two
Speaker 4: thousand and eight things got really crazy. So she trains.
Speaker 4: It's called her business is called Game Time Skills GTS,
Speaker 4: and so when we started to eventually two years in,
Speaker 4: we brought Easy's team under under the umbrella of the business,
Speaker 4: and instead of calling the Game Time Skills, we just
Speaker 4: called the GTS, and we just gave it GTS fusion.
Speaker 4: And everything we did, Yeah, I hated pink, but everything
Speaker 4: we did when they started plan was to allow her
Speaker 4: to the foster her, like being her environment, right. So
Speaker 4: our uniforms were pink. We had these pink leopard print
Speaker 4: tiger print shorts and on one side it was really
Speaker 4: like basic, but then you flip the other side with
Speaker 4: their reversibles and they were like this wild print uniforms
Speaker 4: and the kids loved it. You know, we were pink.
Speaker 4: You could everybody knew who we were because we went.
Speaker 4: We were there, the team was wearing pink.
Speaker 2: The pink.
Speaker 4: We were the only team wearing pink and in a
Speaker 4: you know, two hundred team tournament. And that's that's kind
Speaker 4: of how GTS came about, is just bringing it under
Speaker 4: the umbrella. We we trained the team, we coached the team.
Speaker 4: It was really holistic because as is such a connector
Speaker 4: in terms of connecting with her teammates. Her teammates were
Speaker 4: at our house all the time, they were having sleepovers
Speaker 4: at their house all the time. It was so her
Speaker 4: teammates became sisters and like extensions of our family. Uh
Speaker 4: to this day, like you know, we have our at
Speaker 4: her draft party, a bunch of those kids were now
Speaker 4: young women were there and it was just great to
Speaker 4: see and and hug them all. And one of them,
Speaker 4: uh to this day. Malou who lives in Dallas, works
Speaker 4: in Dallas, and she she calls me Dad to this day,
Speaker 4: and so she's like, hey, Dad, when you come into Dallas,
Speaker 4: you know, she'll asked those questions or Dad, I'm coming home.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna come see you. So it's we created this
Speaker 4: in Foster, this family environment that was built on development,
Speaker 4: holistic development of the obviously the basketball player, but the
Speaker 4: person as well. And I went on. I was coaching
Speaker 4: boys for a long time, but when they got to
Speaker 4: high school, I made a full on switch to girls
Speaker 4: and I went on the coach several of them in
Speaker 4: high school. Uh So it was it's been. It's been
Speaker 4: a quite a journey with her and her connection to
Speaker 4: people and been people become connected to us and part
Speaker 4: of our little group and our crew is you know
Speaker 4: that our crew runs deep.
Speaker 3: So that's a let me tell you something.
Speaker 1: It's always a packed house when it comes to the funds.
Speaker 4: Something to be said for that. There's something we said
Speaker 4: for that. I always I was joking with a guy
Speaker 4: yesterday while we were at the program, while Katie was
Speaker 4: training his daughter, and I said, you know, this is
Speaker 4: this is my way into heaven. You know, if I
Speaker 4: leave it up to everything else I've done, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: be like begging and begging on the door trying to
Speaker 4: get in, you know.
Speaker 2: So it's my way into heaven.
Speaker 4: Please. Yes, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: So you talked about you know, Asy's draft night and
Speaker 1: having on her friends and family there.
Speaker 3: I do want to talk a.
Speaker 1: Little bit about that night for you and the family
Speaker 1: and the emotions leading up. I mean, you've been in this,
Speaker 1: your baby girl's life, the entire basketball career, her entire
Speaker 1: basketball career, and to see her name being called that
Speaker 1: whole night in general, I do want to hear.
Speaker 3: Like your emotions and how that night went for you, Oh.
Speaker 4: Man, that that was an emotional world when surreal is
Speaker 4: the word that we use all the time, and I
Speaker 4: mean that's the best descriptor.
Speaker 2: It was just different and very emotional, very emotional.
Speaker 4: So obviously you we had come off the disappointing loss
Speaker 4: in the final four and how we played in the
Speaker 4: Final four in terms of Yukon on that South Carolina game,
Speaker 4: that was very disappointing. And you look at that and
Speaker 4: it's the culmination of her college career and I remember
Speaker 4: that my last moments of my college career. Is like
Speaker 4: a wealth of emotions hit you, a wave just drowns
Speaker 4: you almost right, So, like this is something you've been
Speaker 4: doing all along, all your life, and it's you're changing, right,
Speaker 4: and you don't realize. You know, you love in the environment,
Speaker 4: you know you love doing something, but you don't realize
Speaker 4: what it really means. To you until you're not with
Speaker 4: it anymore or they take it away from you. And
Speaker 4: you know, I went on to play after college, but
Speaker 4: it still was not the same. So we're all grieving
Speaker 4: from that process, and you're trust right into this draft process.
Speaker 4: And this year's draft was I would say that it
Speaker 4: was a competitive draft. You don't know what was going
Speaker 4: to happen. And couple that with, you know, the renegotiation
Speaker 4: of the CBA free agency that needed to happen, and
Speaker 4: you have this uncertainty about the draft that I don't
Speaker 4: think has ever existed in the in the history of
Speaker 4: the w You know, you got free agency happening in
Speaker 4: the week of the draft. As we're leading into the
Speaker 4: draft night, free agency is going on and people are
Speaker 4: signing with teams, and teams are evolving and changing rapidly,
Speaker 4: and you don't know how you fit where you fit.
Speaker 4: The one unique thing about Easy is that for me
Speaker 4: from the basketball evaluator and I lived ninety percent of
Speaker 4: the time, I'm a basketball coach. I'm basket I'm living
Speaker 4: the game. I'm talking the game. You know, when we
Speaker 4: talked to I talked to her. I just want to
Speaker 4: talk to the game sometimes and not just be that right.
Speaker 4: So ten percent of the time I'm in dad mode,
Speaker 4: and for me, it is an evaluate of talent. Her
Speaker 4: skill set is something that you know, I think a
Speaker 4: lot of the teams have not. Majority of the teams
Speaker 4: in the w needed it right or had a need
Speaker 4: for her skill set. And so you didn't know. You
Speaker 4: knew she was going to be in that top three
Speaker 4: picks or whatever it was, but you shouldn't know how
Speaker 4: it was going to work out with free agency, and
Speaker 4: so on draft day you know it, you don't. I
Speaker 4: have a very delicate palette. That's a great way of
Speaker 4: putting it that I'm very picky, and so I knew
Speaker 4: that they were not gonna go on sell Light or
Speaker 4: dervs at the UH at the pre draft thing and
Speaker 4: I was like, oh there, I don't have anything I like.
Speaker 2: So I went. I was like about three o'clock.
Speaker 4: I was like, I got to get something to eat,
Speaker 4: something heavy so that I'm not going to be hungry
Speaker 4: during this whole because I'm not going to be able
Speaker 4: to eat until after the draft, which turned out I
Speaker 4: didn't eat that eat there either at the draft party,
Speaker 4: and so I wouldn't got a burger right, right, around
Speaker 4: the corner from the hotel by myself, just sitting there
Speaker 4: and I'm there and I'm I'm doing deep dives on
Speaker 4: social media looking at stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm like, Okay, is this is this really real?
Speaker 4: Is this?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: All this other stuff?
Speaker 4: And all of a sudden, as I'm waiting for my burger, Uh,
Speaker 4: I'm crying like someone like someone died. I was sitting
Speaker 4: there and I'm like just bawling by myself, just just
Speaker 4: wiping tears and just like so it was.
Speaker 2: It was very emotional.
Speaker 4: And I'm not a big crier, and I cry more
Speaker 4: now in my old age than I you know, I
Speaker 4: had a harder stone, but you know, I guess I'm
Speaker 4: softening up as I get older.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it was. It was very emotional for sure.
Speaker 3: That's really beautiful.
Speaker 1: So Tim on Instagram, you said the WNBA draft after
Speaker 1: party was a blast, at least from what I can remember.
Speaker 1: So for you, what was the after party with the
Speaker 1: easiest friends, family and teammates?
Speaker 2: Like I could give you the first like thirty minutes
Speaker 2: of that. Uh, what is it like? The party was
Speaker 2: much you can remember? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Like so, so I had the pre pre draft part
Speaker 4: and for those of you guys who don't have never
Speaker 4: done that stuff. You go to the draft, you're in
Speaker 4: the back room. There's a red carpet stuff or orange
Speaker 4: carpet stuff, and you can watch everybody walk out and
Speaker 4: the kids get interviewed by multitude of reporters. You see
Speaker 4: people you talk in the families. They have Vito dirs,
Speaker 4: they have some alcohol. I think had I had a beer.
Speaker 4: I was like, no, I'm not a big drinker. And
Speaker 4: so I was like, I might have a beer. It's
Speaker 4: just like, you know, the anxiety I could feel a
Speaker 4: kind of building, So I'm gonna just like settle my
Speaker 4: nerves or whatever, and that nerves are saying the anxiousness.
Speaker 2: Of the whole moment.
Speaker 4: So I had a beer and I was like, let
Speaker 4: me and I thought about the halfway through the beer,
Speaker 4: I said, let me not drink drinks this beer because
Speaker 4: they told us we cannot get up from those tables
Speaker 4: and that we're locked there until basically they release us.
Speaker 4: I said, so let me not drink too much because
Speaker 4: I don't want to have to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 4: And so you know, you break that seal, you're done.
Speaker 4: You're gonna be running into the bathroom. Left and right.
Speaker 2: So I had that little beer and it was like
Speaker 2: a Mike Ultra or whatever it was.
Speaker 4: And so then we we leave the after party after
Speaker 4: the I mean the draft, to go to the after party.
Speaker 2: Get to the after party, I could not move.
Speaker 4: I walked in and literally were I was greeted with
Speaker 4: by people that haven't seen in a long time, months, years,
Speaker 4: and then my former players, our former players, uh, friends, family.
Speaker 4: I couldn't even I couldn't make it to the bar.
Speaker 4: I wanted to get go, get a drink, like I
Speaker 4: don't drink a lot, but I was like, yeah, we're
Speaker 4: celebrating the night, let's go get it. And one of them,
Speaker 4: this is not even one of our players. So one
Speaker 4: of the kids who plays for one of our former
Speaker 4: players at Marymount University here in Arlington, Virginia, her girlfriend.
Speaker 4: They're cool, they work easy as camp. They've become like
Speaker 4: part of the crew, and she was like, can I
Speaker 4: get you a drink? Do you what do you want?
Speaker 4: I was like, I just I don't know what I want.
Speaker 4: Get me this and she ran and all night long,
Speaker 4: she says, I told her to do it. I didn't,
Speaker 4: she offered. Every time I looked at her, she was
Speaker 4: coming coming with like sometimes two in our hands. It was.
Speaker 4: It was just I didn't have to do it. I
Speaker 4: didn't go to the bar once, so mind you, I'm thinking,
Speaker 4: it's gonna be there's gonna be food in this place,
Speaker 4: so I get to eat something and that won't be
Speaker 4: as bad. Please there everybody ate the food. Before we
Speaker 4: got there, there was no food for us, and I
Speaker 4: was like, screw it. Usually I'd be complaining, like I'm hungry,
Speaker 4: I gotta get something neat. And it was so much
Speaker 4: fun just catching up with people, celebrating with people, uh,
Speaker 4: everybody smiling and telling the stories and reminiscing and enjoying
Speaker 4: the moment. I probably remember the first half hour forty
Speaker 4: five minutes of that party.
Speaker 2: It was amazing. And then I don't remember anything.
Speaker 4: I know we went to another spot after the party
Speaker 4: was that the time slot was over for the pop party.
Speaker 2: We went to some.
Speaker 4: Other hook a lounge. I don't know we, I don't
Speaker 4: know what the heck it was, but I do remember
Speaker 4: this piece vaguely. The ride to this place was the
Speaker 4: bumpiest ride I'd ever been on. And if you got
Speaker 4: have ever, maybe some of you guys and hopefully oh
Speaker 4: guys are old enough to drink your listeners. But if
Speaker 4: you've ever ever been shaking and stirred after drinking, you
Speaker 4: know that's that's not a good thing. It is not
Speaker 4: a good thing. So I got to I got to
Speaker 4: the out of the car. I'm like, okay, all right,
Speaker 4: we're out of the car. We're going right to the bar.
Speaker 4: I ordered two drinks. I got a drink for someone.
Speaker 4: I think it was the young lady who was getting
Speaker 4: me to drinks all night. I got a drink for her,
Speaker 4: got a drink for me, and I just stared at
Speaker 4: that drink, and I can That's when I first felt it.
Speaker 4: It was like, whoa, just slow down, big fella, you good,
Speaker 4: Just like, let let it, let it die, let it
Speaker 4: pass by.
Speaker 2: It'd be all right, you know, you don't have to
Speaker 2: drink that one right now, right.
Speaker 4: And so I sat there for about five to ten minutes,
Speaker 4: just convincing myself that it's gonna it's gonna pass. It's
Speaker 4: gonna be all right. You're cool, You're right. And then
Speaker 4: I said, I looked at Katy, I said I'll be back.
Speaker 4: I went out on the street and I was like,
Speaker 4: I'm about to lose it. So let me go somewhere
Speaker 4: where I'm not around anybody. I would lose it by myself.
Speaker 4: And funny, funny story, I don't know where we were
Speaker 4: when you were part of town where we end, I
Speaker 4: don't I don't even remember.
Speaker 2: I don't know where that place was. Anyway, it wasn't
Speaker 2: a bad part of town.
Speaker 4: But it was like I was on the street. I'm
Speaker 4: leaning on a street sign, and I'm just trying to
Speaker 4: convince myself just go ahead, it's okay, just.
Speaker 2: Let it go. You got it.
Speaker 4: You're by yourself, You're safe. And I'm sitting there and
Speaker 4: my knees a week I'm like buckling at the knees,
Speaker 4: and I'm like, you know, holding onto the street sign
Speaker 4: and oh man, waiting for all of the wretchedness to
Speaker 4: come out of me right. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: I looked behind me and this guy was sizing me up.
Speaker 4: I was like, wait a second, wait a second, Like, no,
Speaker 4: that's the wrong one. I was like, I stiff in
Speaker 4: my back, I stood up straight. I made sure he
Speaker 4: saw the all every bit of the six seven. You
Speaker 4: come over here, it's cause you got six ft seven
Speaker 4: to fight with, come on. But I was he I
Speaker 4: balled me up and down the street, went down one side.
Speaker 4: He went back up there. He checking on me. He
Speaker 4: was waiting for me to fall over because I was.
Speaker 4: I was seconds from being done with it, and I
Speaker 4: held I held onto it. Yeah, definitely, well I did
Speaker 4: forget most of it. I big remember. I remember the ending,
Speaker 4: I remember the beginning. The middle part is real mushy
Speaker 4: in the middle park.
Speaker 1: So you know, Acy's not the only professional basketball player
Speaker 1: in this family. Katie got drafted into the w n
Speaker 1: b A, and you also played professional basketball.
Speaker 3: Take us back and tell us a little bit more
Speaker 3: about your basketball beginnings.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, I tell you what. I'll give you a
Speaker 4: little quick one. Basketball. I'm lucky to be able to
Speaker 4: play basketball as long as I did. It was the
Speaker 4: worst sport I played. I was much better at football
Speaker 4: and baseball than I ever was at basketball basketball. I
Speaker 4: think in high school my freshman sophomore year, I was
Speaker 4: the last person picked on the fifteen roster and barely played.
Speaker 4: Like my mom went to all my have a twin sister.
Speaker 4: My mom went to all my my sister's games and
Speaker 4: didn't come to my games because I never played, and
Speaker 4: so it was my sophomore year, probably three quarters away
Speaker 4: through the season, we got blown out by one of
Speaker 4: our team, the local team, and I got to go
Speaker 4: in the game the last four minutes of the game.
Speaker 4: So you know, you get four minutes of garbage time.
Speaker 4: It's a bad it's a bad loss. It's either a
Speaker 4: bad win or a bad loss. So I go in
Speaker 4: the game, and you know, and coaches are great creatures
Speaker 4: of habit. We get wound into these rotations and playing
Speaker 4: people the same way. We all humans or creatures of habit, right,
Speaker 4: So my coach had done that, and I go in
Speaker 4: the game and four minutes ago, and I scored fourteen
Speaker 4: points or four minutes.
Speaker 2: From that point forward, I started starting.
Speaker 4: Oh back when I was growing up, you weren't very
Speaker 4: athletic early. You got your athleticism later. And the guys
Speaker 4: who got it early were you often way better than
Speaker 4: everybody else. And I was one of those late bloomers. Uncoordinated, goofy,
Speaker 4: couldn't walk in chew gum. At the same time, on
Speaker 4: the basketball court, it was really I was really goofy.
Speaker 4: But football great hands. I could catch anything that come
Speaker 4: to me. Baseball was pretty good. I had good hanging
Speaker 4: dye coordination with baseball, football basketball didn't have it, and
Speaker 4: so I had a late run in high school. Got
Speaker 4: offered about eight scholarships. Half of those were probably the
Speaker 4: two schools, and then I got one was to American University,
Speaker 4: which is eight miles from my house, and my mom
Speaker 4: liked me and Katie loved to watch us play, and
Speaker 4: so I was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna go to
Speaker 4: school right down the street from my house because my
Speaker 4: mom would be at my games and you know, she'll
Speaker 4: come over, she'll bring me food. I'm thinking of all
Speaker 4: the good things. And that's what I did. And when
Speaker 4: I got that scholarship ball for him, they were honest
Speaker 4: with me. They told me, they said, you're a project,
Speaker 4: but we had one scholarship when we wanted to offer
Speaker 4: it to you.
Speaker 2: And I said, Okay, I don't know what the heck
Speaker 2: that means, but I'll take it. And so.
Speaker 4: Just through my work ethic and my ability to compete
Speaker 4: at a high level, I turned that project's last person
Speaker 4: getting a scholarship on a roster to UH starting half
Speaker 4: of my freshman year, if I think it was something
Speaker 4: like that, and then being the third leading scorer of
Speaker 4: my sophomore year to leading the conference and scoring my
Speaker 4: junior year too, and senior year being one of the
Speaker 4: top scorers in the league. I had an injury and
Speaker 4: I played a fifth year. I fractured my kneecap and
Speaker 4: had to have surgery and it was had remove my tendon,
Speaker 4: put it back on and it came back out had
Speaker 4: I had a lot of tending night is coming back.
Speaker 4: So I wasn't quite the same the same. I didn't
Speaker 4: run quite the same for about a year and a
Speaker 4: half and it kind of skewed me a little bit
Speaker 4: in terms of potentially doing some other things with basketball.
Speaker 4: So I went overseas, played over there, and I played
Speaker 4: in My first stop was Holland and the Netherlands, and
Speaker 4: I had a terrible experience. Much like easy is today's.
Speaker 4: I was a connector. I connected with my teammates. I
Speaker 4: love being around my teammates. You turn to professional basketball,
Speaker 4: and I taught I had conversations with her about some
Speaker 4: of this stuff, like when you go turn pro, it
Speaker 4: is business and it's a different feel to it. It's
Speaker 4: not pure anymore, and it's not about the camaraderie of
Speaker 4: the team and the team doing it's about you have
Speaker 4: to handle your business or that next contract isn't coming.
Speaker 2: And I went over and dealt with a lot of
Speaker 2: the selfishness.
Speaker 4: From a professional standpoint from other players on the team,
Speaker 4: other Dutch players, and struggled my first year to the
Speaker 4: point where I was averaging like seven points a game
Speaker 4: and they expected us to average twenty and they sent
Speaker 4: me home to send me packing, and I was like,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 2: What, screw that stuff.
Speaker 4: I had heard these horror stories, nightmares from some former
Speaker 4: teammates of mine au and guys who came before me,
Speaker 4: who played overseas, like yo, you got to go handle
Speaker 4: your business, make sure you get your numbers, or they're
Speaker 4: gonna send you home, blah blah blah blah. And it
Speaker 4: happened to me in my first year. So I was like,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm done with this. I'm done. I'm just
Speaker 4: gonna go be normal. I got a regular job. I
Speaker 4: had an accounting job at the Washington Hilton Hotel where
Speaker 4: Reagan was shot right in DC. And I didn't I
Speaker 4: didn't touch the ball for like four months. I didn't
Speaker 4: touch it. I was like, I'm done, you know. I
Speaker 4: was so disappointed by the experience, and one month. One time,
Speaker 4: my teammates and my friends and high school buddies like, yo,
Speaker 4: we're hooping the Nightma, why don't you come play play?
Speaker 4: I was like, man, all right, I'll come play. And
Speaker 4: I went out there, and when I tell you, I
Speaker 4: was terrible. I was terrible, so bad playing pick up
Speaker 4: because I didn't played in four months, out of shape,
Speaker 4: couldn't couldn't shoot, couldn't do anything, and pissed. I was
Speaker 4: pissed at myself. The next day, I was over over
Speaker 4: at AU, I was running sprints, I was working out
Speaker 4: on my own with you know, doing all this other stuff.
Speaker 4: Was I was just just to be good in the
Speaker 4: pickup game. That's all I wanted to do. Like I'm
Speaker 4: not gonna I'm not going out like that. And then
Speaker 4: I got this itch. I didn't like how it ended,
Speaker 4: so I was like, I'm playing again. Called my agent
Speaker 4: told him I was ready to play again, and he's like, uh,
Speaker 4: he got me a deal in Finland, which is kind
Speaker 4: of underrated for the level of basketball there and the
Speaker 4: level of play, but it was it was like high
Speaker 4: level stuff. The games are great. I ended up averaging
Speaker 4: like just under twenty a game. I think that second
Speaker 4: year and in the playoffs I averaged thirty three and
Speaker 4: fifteen and it was like I was I was just yeah,
Speaker 4: I just went. I was on another level, shot forty
Speaker 4: percent from three. I was just I was feeling the
Speaker 4: best I've ever felt. I mean, the most athletic I
Speaker 4: had felt in my career. Played in Spain, played, I
Speaker 4: ended up playing in like seventeen different countries. Wow, games
Speaker 4: in different seventeen. I've played in Venezuela for a little while.
Speaker 4: They're just a great experience, unbelievable, Like the game of
Speaker 4: basketball is taking me places that I never would have
Speaker 4: gone myself, this little country kid who in the DMV.
Speaker 4: You know, up to thirteen, I lived in the country.
Speaker 4: I moved to falls Church near the city. When I
Speaker 4: was thirteen years old. My mom got remarried, and I
Speaker 4: would have never had these experiences if it wasn't for
Speaker 4: the game of basketball. The ability to experience other people's
Speaker 4: cultures and appreciate other people's cultures and have this outlooked at.
Speaker 4: You know, doesn't matter what we all look like. We're
Speaker 4: not very differ much different from each other. Right, So
Speaker 4: I remember being in Spain. I wrecked my car and
Speaker 4: crazy experience just being dumb, young and dumb and doing
Speaker 4: stupid stuff. And I wrecked my car. And in Spain
Speaker 4: everything is manyana, or the Spanish culture is manyana, train kilo, no.
Speaker 2: No worries. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
Speaker 4: Will turn into three months later. My car was still
Speaker 4: in the shop and they had give it back to me.
Speaker 4: So I was walking six miles a day. I would
Speaker 4: walking to my grocery store, picking up my groceries, walking home,
Speaker 4: walking to the gym in the morning to go get
Speaker 4: our workout in, walking back home, taking a siesta because
Speaker 4: siesta is a big thing there. Get the afternoon from
Speaker 4: like two to five it's nap time, and I'd go
Speaker 4: back to the gym for practice. At six in the evening,
Speaker 4: I'd walk back home. So I was walking six miles
Speaker 4: a day. I was like, man, I thought about it.
Speaker 4: I was like, I would never do this. If I
Speaker 4: was at home, I'd get in the car. I'd drive
Speaker 4: around the corner to go to seven to eleven. Right, So,
Speaker 4: just from just embracing the culture and just embentding yourself
Speaker 4: in situations that isn't normal, and just embracing the word,
Speaker 4: just the word of today, right, just kind of diving
Speaker 4: in and like being living like everybody else lives, right.
Speaker 4: It taught me so much more about myself, figuring out
Speaker 4: that I didn't need to be around a group of
Speaker 4: people to be okay, figuring out I'm okay being by
Speaker 4: myself and dealing with the loneliness, being homesick, and things
Speaker 4: of that nature. I had to force to find my
Speaker 4: way through all of that stuff to be able to
Speaker 4: do the things I wanted to do, and it was
Speaker 4: it was a time period in my life where I
Speaker 4: grew the most, for sure. But you you also played,
Speaker 4: So what was your experience overseas?
Speaker 1: Like listening to you even when we were talking about
Speaker 1: like getting into basketball late, being a late bloomer, we
Speaker 1: share a lot of similar experiences.
Speaker 3: Basketball was my least favorite sport.
Speaker 1: I played volleyball, I played softball, and I was much
Speaker 1: better at those things.
Speaker 3: But then I got to six.
Speaker 1: Two and my mom was like, uh ah, sweetheart, we
Speaker 1: go to college for free. There's other things you can
Speaker 1: be doing, because at the time, there weren't a lot
Speaker 1: of opportunities for like softball after college, or like volleyball
Speaker 1: after college. Obviously, now there's so many different leagues, but
Speaker 1: so really started to bloom in basketball, probably like my
Speaker 1: sophomore year as well, and then fast forward playing Division
Speaker 1: one at M Corpus Christi in South Texas and also
Speaker 1: getting injured tearing my ACL going through the do I
Speaker 1: still play basketball? This is really hard. A lot of
Speaker 1: people aren't the same, and the technology in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: six compared to when I was in college is like
Speaker 1: much much different, so the rehab it just felt like
Speaker 1: everything was just taking a little bit longer.
Speaker 3: But I still had basketball hopes and dreams.
Speaker 1: I knew for a fact that I was going to
Speaker 1: play professional basketball because I told myself that there was
Speaker 1: no other option and so that was my dream and
Speaker 1: I chased it, and that I was able to land
Speaker 1: in Malta, which was like a very small market team,
Speaker 1: but I was like, I'm just going to kill here.
Speaker 1: My agent was like, just do really well. You'll be
Speaker 1: able to go other places. And it definitely was a
Speaker 1: root awakening you get there, like like I believe myself
Speaker 1: to be a connector as well. I love hanging team camaraderie,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, but there's really I'm not
Speaker 1: going to say there's none of that, but it is
Speaker 1: very much I'm showing up.
Speaker 3: Doing my job.
Speaker 1: I got to pay my bills doing this job, and
Speaker 1: I'm out. And a lot of these people are either
Speaker 1: from Malta, so they had their own lives and their
Speaker 1: families outside of this.
Speaker 3: So I had to learn how to be by myself.
Speaker 1: I had to learn that the expectation is you are
Speaker 1: the top scorer, top rebounder, top passer, top everything, and
Speaker 1: if you're not, you're going to get sent home. And
Speaker 1: I remember actually getting hurt when I was out there,
Speaker 1: and in the contract it was like if you sit
Speaker 1: out through games, you're gone.
Speaker 3: So having to figure out how to push through.
Speaker 1: So I don't lose my job, you know, and it
Speaker 1: really challenges you sometimes.
Speaker 3: With like do I really love this? Is this for me?
Speaker 1: But I told myself that this is just a temporary
Speaker 1: situation and I did do really well and then I
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to travel to my next team. Right
Speaker 1: I got to play in Germany, Czech Republic, you know,
Speaker 1: I played in Malta, and then the last place I
Speaker 1: played was Australia, which honestly was the best time.
Speaker 3: It was like night and day in comparison my.
Speaker 1: Experiences one Australia A lot more money to bigger market.
Speaker 1: I was more familiar with the culture, right. Everyone pretty
Speaker 1: much spoke English. It's warm there, it's hot there, and
Speaker 1: just everything. They had a new trip. It was like
Speaker 1: high level what you experience at the top colleges overseas,
Speaker 1: and everyone really invested in making the team better and winning.
Speaker 1: So I ended up, you know, playing for a bit
Speaker 1: and I loved it, but I definitely understand like, one,
Speaker 1: you got to get comfortable with being by yourself. Things
Speaker 1: are different and you can't just run home and family
Speaker 1: can't just show up, right, So you have to really
Speaker 1: grow up in that moment. Two, it is business one
Speaker 1: hundred percent. If you're not doing what you're supposed to do,
Speaker 1: you're going to get sent home, right Like I got
Speaker 1: hurt and I almost got sent home, but I figured
Speaker 1: it out. So I missed those three games. If we lose,
Speaker 1: it's one hundred percent you're fault. If you win, it's
Speaker 1: a team thing. So just learning, learning how to adjust
Speaker 1: playing abroad. But I think that experience is something I
Speaker 1: hold with me forever and I'm so happy, no regrets.
Speaker 1: And back then going to the league, I wanted to
Speaker 1: you know, I want to play in the W when
Speaker 1: I was younger, but at the time, the money that
Speaker 1: the girls were making in the W was less than
Speaker 1: what the girls were making overseas, and I also thought, like,
Speaker 1: I can go to a normal job and make more
Speaker 1: than what they were making in W. So I'm really
Speaker 1: glad to see that the girls are getting to the
Speaker 1: back now. So it's an opportunity to really be like
Speaker 1: you don't have to pick and choose, you.
Speaker 3: Can have it all essentially. But yeah, that's my overseas experience.
Speaker 4: It's funny because I didn't have anybody that could really
Speaker 4: kind of mentor me when I was over there, and
Speaker 4: I got discouraged because all I wanted to do was like,
Speaker 4: go get a tryout with the team. Any care if
Speaker 4: I'm obviously I cared if I made an NBA team,
Speaker 4: but I wanted to get a tryout because if I
Speaker 4: at least got a tryout, I made significantly more money
Speaker 4: when I went back overseas, And it was just hard
Speaker 4: navigating that my agent. My agent was an international agent,
Speaker 4: only he didn't do anything with the league, so just
Speaker 4: too connections and stuff like that. Even I felt like
Speaker 4: I had to do everything the hard way, which is
Speaker 4: I'm not complaining whatsoever. It is what it is, and
Speaker 4: you navigate that and you figure it out. But even
Speaker 4: when I got out of coaching and got I got
Speaker 4: got out of plane and got into coaching, all my
Speaker 4: coaches were out of the business at that point in time.
Speaker 2: So I had no easy way in, Like I didn't
Speaker 2: get to.
Speaker 4: Go coach my coach as as be a part of
Speaker 4: the staff or whatever. I had to prove myself to
Speaker 4: get opportunities to coach at the collegiate level.
Speaker 2: And it is what it is.
Speaker 4: But it was the same thing and over there, the
Speaker 4: same thing, to prove yourself over and over and over again.
Speaker 2: I remember my agent got mad at me. I was
Speaker 2: playing in Spain.
Speaker 4: I averaged like twenty eight and twelve, and and I
Speaker 4: had transitioned from being a five in high school a
Speaker 4: foreign college to playing the two and the three as
Speaker 4: a pro. And I was average in twenty eight and twelve,
Speaker 4: and I was like, look, I need to get I
Speaker 4: need to get a little bit more money.
Speaker 2: The next year, and he got mad at me.
Speaker 4: And dropped me from representing representing me because I was
Speaker 4: basically advocating for myself.
Speaker 2: The next year he came back and wanting to go
Speaker 2: to turn game.
Speaker 4: By the time, I was like, you know what, I
Speaker 4: just don't like I just don't like how this stuff works.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 4: It's everybody's in it for themselves and it's you can't
Speaker 4: there's no loyalty, absolutely, zer or loyalty, and that's not
Speaker 4: how we operate that as you know, that's our mentality. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 4: But they experience and playing over there and having all
Speaker 4: of that stuff happening and learning, growing, developing. I wouldn't
Speaker 4: change it for the world. I mean, if I could
Speaker 4: go back and do it again, I would definitely.
Speaker 1: Do it again, all right, Tim, So it is our
Speaker 1: time for what the fun of the week for the
Speaker 1: listeners or what the fund of week is?
Speaker 3: Something that happened this week that made you say, what
Speaker 3: the fud Do you want to go first? Or do
Speaker 3: you want me to go first?
Speaker 2: You go first?
Speaker 1: So, my what the fun of the week is? My
Speaker 1: New York next, are in the finals?
Speaker 3: Come on? Twenty seven years nineteen ninety nine?
Speaker 1: Was the last time, baby, we are bleeding blue and
Speaker 1: orange around here?
Speaker 4: Is that when John Starks went over eighteen or something
Speaker 4: crazy like that?
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, we're not We're not talking about the past.
Speaker 4: That was my Eraine, that was that was I was
Speaker 4: rooting for the next to me went when he went
Speaker 4: over eighteen against the wasn't against the Rockets.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, let's go next.
Speaker 3: It's a great time to be a New Yorker.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I like the next Like I like how they play.
Speaker 4: I love watching Jalen bront and play. But just not
Speaker 4: just him because he's super super really super good. It's
Speaker 4: that connection, that that building over connection. Man, those guys
Speaker 4: ball well together. Next next, there you go, there you go?
Speaker 4: All right, So my, what the fud of the week?
Speaker 4: What the what the fuck? What the fuck? I don't
Speaker 4: want to do it, but you know, I gotta do it.
Speaker 4: I don't have I have nothing else on my mind.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Don't do me like this, don't do like this.
Speaker 4: So what people don't understand is that that kid has
Speaker 4: so much in her that she just holds in the
Speaker 4: reserve tank. But when she came to the court hit
Speaker 4: that transition pull up three, I was like, what the fun?
Speaker 4: Where has that been? Like I've been waiting for that,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying that that's my what the
Speaker 4: fun of the week? That transition pull up three. Hopefully
Speaker 4: I can see a little bit more of that. It'd
Speaker 4: be awesome, awesome.
Speaker 3: That's a great what the fun? I'm gonna just say
Speaker 3: this because I know that people want to hear it.
Speaker 1: We'll have a little asterisk, a little in the air
Speaker 1: with the fun of the week.
Speaker 3: I was wearing a Liberty fit.
Speaker 1: At the Dallas Wings Liberty game, and that is the
Speaker 1: Internet's what the fun of the week?
Speaker 3: They want to hear y'all got it.
Speaker 1: I've been getting roasted the last week, and I stand
Speaker 1: by it, okay, because I still have my asy nails,
Speaker 1: and that's my girl and I always want her to
Speaker 1: do well. So I wasn't rooting against her, but I'm
Speaker 1: a New Yorker at heart. Okay, that's it.
Speaker 4: Okay, So were you were you like sad that the
Speaker 4: Liberty lost or were you happy that the Wings won?
Speaker 4: Or were you sad that the Liberty lost? Or when
Speaker 4: you're happy that Easy even showed out.
Speaker 3: I was that one.
Speaker 1: I was really happy As showed out, and then I
Speaker 1: was sad that the Liberty loss. But I always want
Speaker 1: As to show out, I said, you know, she asked,
Speaker 1: like we talked about this pregame, but also weeks ago,
Speaker 1: I was like, I always want you to have thirty
Speaker 1: forty fifty. I want you to always do well, and
Speaker 1: I want my Liberty to win. So I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: any other team, I'm like, let's get it. But you know,
Speaker 1: the Wings is the Wings and the Liberty are my team.
Speaker 1: So that's it.
Speaker 4: You know, you got to be happy for just what
Speaker 4: you see with from the Wings in general, just like
Speaker 4: young and up and coming and showing some some signs
Speaker 4: of potential growth. You know, still real early, we'll see
Speaker 4: what happens. And it was a stark difference from how
Speaker 4: we played that game at Atlanta and then how we
Speaker 4: played with New York. So you got to find some
Speaker 4: level of consistency in there. Hopefully it's the New York
Speaker 4: side of the game and not that that that last
Speaker 4: five minutes of that Atlanta game where it didn't look
Speaker 4: like we were in the ever in Atlanta game the.
Speaker 2: Way it felt.
Speaker 4: But hopefully, well we'll find some some some common ground
Speaker 4: and some consistency where we're playing well like we did
Speaker 4: on Sunday.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 1: Definitely, I will say the Wings when they're clicking all
Speaker 1: the cylinders, they're passing the water cutting and making moves.
Speaker 1: They are so fun to watch. They are electric. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm rooting for a great season for them.
Speaker 2: Likewise, wings up, how do you do it?
Speaker 3: Wings you do?
Speaker 1: Thanks?
Speaker 2: However you do it?
Speaker 1: Brings up Tim, Thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 3: This has been really awesome. Thank you. It's been a
Speaker 3: pleasure having you.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Just so you know, this is not my first podcast.
Speaker 4: You know, I've been on podcasts.
Speaker 3: Oh, let us know.
Speaker 4: You know, I've been mentioning on podcasts for y'all. Y'all,
Speaker 4: y'all out there in the audience. Thirteen thirty. That's all
Speaker 4: you need to know. Thirteen thirty go find shout out
Speaker 4: Tim Fu fut around and find out thirteen thirty.
Speaker 3: Shout out Tim Fun.
Speaker 1: All Right, you guys, that's it for this episode of
Speaker 1: fut Around and find out with asy out. I have
Speaker 1: to close out the show. So don't forget to rate,
Speaker 1: review a, subscribe to fut Around, and find out wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Peace,