interview with the vampire
man we had an awkward lil session with one of the media guys the other day. during wednesday's practice a few dudes from one of the newspapers came by; took some pics and interviewed me and corrie. i guess they are doing a bye week(basically all sports are shut down out here this week for their equivalent of spring break) focus on sports training and they wanted input about basketball. he asked alot of questions about what differences we saw between the way people train and practice out here and back home, general and specific comparisons both individually and within the team or club dynamic, differences in the styles, had we learned anything from the european style that we would bring home.... that kinda stuff.
it was hard because we basically had to guard alot of what we said alot because the honest truth woulda come out as a pretty brutal on danish basketball. you can't compare the apathy here with the competitiveness in north america. i just passed alot of the questions off to corrie. in all honestly it is like comparing giant apples and withered mandarin oranges. it's one thing to compare "european basketball"... but to specify within a country of 5million that is well down the rungs in the hierarchy of european ball in general is tough to dance around the truth. which is that they just don't have the coaching infrastructure out here.... leading to a hinderance in athlete development.
the coach/player relationship is really different out here. often they are friends and there is more a emphasis on the social aspect. kids aren't learning the fundamentals early enough. the street aspect of the game out here is virtually nill. by that i mean the part that develops creativity, pride and competitiveness. obviously we didn't say alot of that because its hard to frame and would probably get lost in translation anyways. more-so we talked about that it was a difference in mentalities. i dunno the whole convo with the guy was walking the line, almost evading the truth while trying to be positive and promote basketball in a positive light here in the community. you see how others are portrayed in wins and you see how you are portrayed in losses and disagree with it as you may, its just a part of the deal
this dude had an obsession with 40 points and wanting us to score it. we're like naw dude forget the individual stuff and worry about the wins is more the concern. i dunno i guess they see imports and desire these gaudy numbers when they should be worrying about why their own players aren't developing.
the more places i play and the more pro players i talk to, you realize these other parts of being professional as an athlete are to be generally avoided...
it was hard because we basically had to guard alot of what we said alot because the honest truth woulda come out as a pretty brutal on danish basketball. you can't compare the apathy here with the competitiveness in north america. i just passed alot of the questions off to corrie. in all honestly it is like comparing giant apples and withered mandarin oranges. it's one thing to compare "european basketball"... but to specify within a country of 5million that is well down the rungs in the hierarchy of european ball in general is tough to dance around the truth. which is that they just don't have the coaching infrastructure out here.... leading to a hinderance in athlete development.
the coach/player relationship is really different out here. often they are friends and there is more a emphasis on the social aspect. kids aren't learning the fundamentals early enough. the street aspect of the game out here is virtually nill. by that i mean the part that develops creativity, pride and competitiveness. obviously we didn't say alot of that because its hard to frame and would probably get lost in translation anyways. more-so we talked about that it was a difference in mentalities. i dunno the whole convo with the guy was walking the line, almost evading the truth while trying to be positive and promote basketball in a positive light here in the community. you see how others are portrayed in wins and you see how you are portrayed in losses and disagree with it as you may, its just a part of the deal
this dude had an obsession with 40 points and wanting us to score it. we're like naw dude forget the individual stuff and worry about the wins is more the concern. i dunno i guess they see imports and desire these gaudy numbers when they should be worrying about why their own players aren't developing.
the more places i play and the more pro players i talk to, you realize these other parts of being professional as an athlete are to be generally avoided...
posted by miceail | 4:08 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home