We\u2019ve always enjoyed former Duke star Paolo Banchero as a basketball player but his personality is severely underrated. We\u2019ve seen little glimpses: his playfulness when a TV reporter tried to get him to repeat the mistake he made when he said he\u2019d prefer to play UNC in the ACC Tournament rather than Virginia Tech (\u201coh no, you\u2019re not gonna get me again!\u201d)<\/p>\n
Then there was the bizarre scene where a British reporter not well versed in American sports mistook him for Patrick Mahomes.<\/p>\n
And we\u2019ve admired his rapid ascent in the NBA.<\/p>\n
But in this week\u2019s Brotherhood Podcast, Banchero had a conversation with Cameron Boozer and said something exceedingly smart about the toughest part of transitioning to the league – especially as a 19-year-old:<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, I would say for me, for me, I mean, it\u2019s more so off-the-court stuff, like just being on your own. College, you wake up, you got weights, you got class, practice. Your day is planned out pretty much every day, and you are busy from the time you wake up to like, you know, 5, 6 p.m. You know, you\u2019re busy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the NBA, it\u2019s like, you know, you got one practice from 11 to 1 or whatever, it is 12 to 2, and then you got the whole day to just do whatever you want or to chill at home. And so it\u2019s like finding stuff to do in that free time is like, I think it\u2019s every rookie kind of deals with it, where it\u2019s like, wow, like, I really have the rest of the day to like, what am I even about to do? It\u2019s kind of like, especially as a 19-20 year old coming in, it was like, I\u2019m not even have any hobbies yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy only hobby is basketball right now. So I was just playing video games or chilling at home. So I think that all the games, obviously, it\u2019s a lot more basketball being played, a lot more traveling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Making it to the league would be an amazing accomplishment for anyone, but Banchero is right: there\u2019s a lot of loneliness. We remember hearing about Kevin Garnett as a rookie and how lonely he was when his teammates went out and he couldn\u2019t go. He spent a lot of nights alone in hotel rooms. At least Banchero had better video games.<\/p>\n
And when Boozer\u2019s time comes, he\u2019ll have an infrastructure that players from most other schools won\u2019t find: we don\u2019t have up-to-date stats, but he\u2019s got roughly a 50-50 chance of having a former Duke player as a teammate. Banchero himself has Wendell Carter and Tyus Jones as teammates. Odds are pretty good that a member of the Brotherhood will be there to help Boozer adjust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019ve always enjoyed former Duke star Paolo Banchero as a basketball player but his personality is severely underrated.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":202291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[24370,2575,1260,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-202290","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-alumni","9":"tag-main","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115151697955009778","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}