One of the first things I ask the athletes I mentor is what do you love about playing your sport? Which is almost always answered with ‘I don’t know, it’s just fun’. And while I’m looking for a little more detail than this, and you’ll understand why soon, I love that this is their initial answer.
It’s just fun.
This is, after all, is why we start playing sport, and why we continue to strive for excellence along the various pathways our sport provides us with as we get older.
This is also what I encourage athletes to hold on to, as it is so easily, and all too often, lost.
 
At numerous times throughout my career I certainly did not think basketball was fun. I lost that joy I once experienced when playing. I wasn’t playing carefree anymore. Honestly, I wasn’t even playing a basketball game anymore, it felt like life or death out there. Basketball had become a constant reminder of all the ways I wasn’t good enough, with the actions I took on the court being the measure of how I felt about myself and my worth as a person.
 
It wasn’t until I went to Germany for my first overseas experience of playing professional basketball that I actually asked myself this same question.
Because it was over there that I realised I had had enough of not enjoying a life full of basketball.
 
The overseas life of a professional basketball player is not as glamorous as you might think. Yes, we get to live and immerse ourselves in a new country and culture. Yes, we get to eat fresh croissants and baguettes from the local bakery below our apartment in the tiny French village we live in. Yes, we get to drive 15 minutes and cross the border into another country and be a tourist for the day. Yes, we get paid to play a game.

But the lifestyle is gruelling. You train twice a day, every day. Sometimes you’ll get a day off, if you’re winning and the coach is happy of course. Load management is a foreign concept over there, and instead they believe more is always better, no matter what your body says, no matter how injured you may be.
You also have to deal with the language barrier. In Germany, English was my coaches’ 3rd language. Our pre-game speech was given in German, or Polish, with a teammate rushing to translate as best she could. During the game, our coach yelled non-stop…in Polish. I was told by some teammates it was probably a good thing I didn’t understand a word he was saying, as he had quite the temper.

I’m painting this picture, because up to this point, I had come to rely heavily on a coaches’ feedback as an indication of how well I was playing and as a source of confidence for myself. If I got praise, I felt good. If I got yelled at, at least I knew what I had to work on, as flat as that made me feel. If I didn’t hear anything, then I assumed they must think I was playing poorly, and I became concerned that the coach didn’t care about me, or surely must be thinking I was a trash player.

So, when feedback was limited from my German coach, I was lost for some time. Was I playing well? I thought I was, but I wasn’t too sure. Was I doing what he wanted me to do? Again, maybe? There was no way of me knowing, and so I stopped looking for signs of what he thought about me.
But what was there instead without this feedback telling me how to feel about myself?
Why was I playing now, if not for the unfulfilling pursuit of gaining someone else’s approval? And it was unfulfilling, because looking for proof that you’re good enough based on someone else’s opinion is a waste of energy, and never gives you enough of what you are looking for. Only we hold the key to our ‘enoughness’, no one else.
 
But I was only just realising this.
I remember sitting in my room watching the snow fall outside, exhausted from training, missing home like crazy and knowing I couldn’t reach out to them because they were all still asleep thanks to the massive time difference. And I said to myself, if I am going to be away from my family and friends and the life I love back home, and I am going to live in a foreign country and come into a team of strangers, in a country that barely speaks English, where its freezing cold and dark all the time, and if I’m going to push my body to the extreme for a game of basketball, then I better know why I was doing it. I better understand why I was choosing to do these things, and if it wasn’t enough for me anymore, if it didn’t bring me joy anymore, then it was time to stop playing.
 
And so, what followed was a deep discovery of what was important to me about playing basketball.
What were the things that brought me joy? What were the moments on the court that brought that adrenaline rushing through my body? The things that were unique about playing basketball that had been driving me to keep pushing through the many challenges I had faced over my career so far?
 
You know that feeling when you dive on a loose ball? When you get a rebound you weren’t supposed to get?
When you are so, so exhausted, but you keep pushing and you sprint down the court and suddenly you’re wide open and you somehow catch a crazy pass (typical guards) and you make a fast break layup that you just know made the opposition groan and hang their heads.
When you and your team are perfectly synchronised on the court, like you’re all connected by a string on defence, and you hustle and push together because you all want the same thing so badly you’ll do anything necessary to get it.
 
And what about off the court?
That feeling when you become friends with your teammates, and I mean real friends, the kind that you feel so sad to leave knowing that you may not see them again for years, but when you do it will be like no time has passed at all.
When you’re walking into the stadium and a young player waves at you and smiles.
When a volunteer in the club, or someone who does a thankless job, goes out of their way to help you, to make you feel welcome, to have a conversation, to wish you good luck.
 
These are the things that bring me joy. This is why I play basketball, still to this day.
 
By focusing on these things, by creating game goals around these actions, I knew that I was tapping into a mindset that was more in line with the way I wanted to play and the things I wanted to achieve, rather than one based in fear. If I could play a game of basketball having done these largely effort-based actions, then that would mean I had played with joy, no matter the outcome. Not only did that bring the fun back to life in my game, but it also became a powerful and fulfilling source of motivation. So powerful, that I went back to play in Germany the following year, and in France the year after that. It is also what motivates me to still play to this day.
 
So, when I ask this question of the athletes I work with, I push them on their answers to get as much clarity as possible. I guide them away from needing to prove to other people they are good enough, away from relying on their coaches’ feedback to feel good about themselves. And back to the things that bring them joy and the reasons they love to play their sport. Because it is amazing what you can achieve when you find the fun and joy and love in whatever you pursue in life. 

Donec rutrum congue leo eget malesuada. Nulla quis lorem ut libero malesuada feugiat. Curabitur aliquet quam id dui posuere blandit.

Vivamus magna justo, lacinia eget consectetur sed, convallis at tellus. Quisque velit nisi, pretium ut lacinia in, elementum id enim. Mauris blandit aliquet elit, eget tincidunt nibh pulvinar a.