#515: Chris Bosh on How to Reinvent Yourself, The Way and The Power, the Poison of Complaining, Leonardo da Vinci, and More

Chris Bosh on How to Reinvent Yourself, The Way and The Power, the Poison of Complaining, Leonardo da Vinci, and More | Brought to you by Tonal http://tonal.com/ smart home gym, Theragun http://theragun.com/tim percussive muscle therapy devices, and LinkedIn Jobs http://linkedin.com/timrecruitment platform with 720M+ users. More on all three below. Chris Bosh (@chrisbosh https://twitter.com/chrisbosh) fell in love with basketball at an early age and earned the prestigious “Mr. Basketball” title while still in high school (Lincoln High School) in Dallas, Texas. A McDonald’s All-American, Bosh was selected fourth overall by the Toronto Raptors after one year attending Georgia Tech. By the end of his basketball career, he was an 11-time NBA All-Star, two-time champion, and the NBA’s first Global Ambassador of Basketball. In March of 2019, Bosh’s #1 Jersey was officially retired for the Miami Heat. In addition to his basketball career, Bosh founded the community-uplift organization Team Tomorrow in 2010 and regularly speaks to youth about the benefits of reading, coding, and leadership. Bosh, his wife Adrienne, and their five children reside in Austin, Texas. His new book is Letters to a Young Athlete https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Young-Athlete-Chris-Bosh/dp/1984881787/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, which includes a foreword by Pat Riley. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Tonal http://tonal.com/! Tonal is the world’s most intelligent home gym and personal trainer. It is precision engineered and designed to be the world’s most advanced strength studio. Tonal http://tonal.com/ uses breakthrough technology—like adaptive digital weights and A. I. learning—together with the best experts in resistance training so you get stronger, faster. Every program is personalized to your body using A. I., and smart features check your form in real time, just like a personal trainer. Try Tonal http://tonal.com/, the world’s smartest home gym, for 30 days in your home, and if you don’t love it, you can return it for a full refund. Visit Tonal.com http://tonal.com/ for $100 off their smart accessories when you use promo code TIM21 at checkout. * This episode is also brought to you by Theragun http://theragun.com/tim! Theragun http://theragun.com/tim is my go-to solution for recovery and restoration. It’s a famous, handheld percussive therapy device that releases your deepest muscle tension. I own two Theraguns, and my girlfriend and I use them every day after workouts and before bed. The all-new Gen 4 Theragun http://theragun.com/tim is easy to use and has a proprietary brushless motor that’s surprisingly quiet—about as quiet as an electric toothbrush. Go to Theragun.com/Tim http://theragun.com/tim right now and get your Gen 4 Theragun today, starting at only $199. * This episode is also brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs https://linkedin.com/Tim. Whether you are looking to hire now for a critical role or thinking about needs that you may have in the future, LinkedIn Jobs https://linkedin.com/Tim can help. LinkedIn screens candidates for the hard and soft skills you’re looking for and puts your job in front of candidates looking for job opportunities that match what you have to offer. Using LinkedIn’s active community of more than 722 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn Jobs https://linkedin.com/Tim can help you find and hire the right person faster. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit LinkedIn.com/Tim https://linkedin.com/Tim. * If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews! For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Tonal. That's T-O-N-A-L. Tonal is the world's most intelligent home gym and personal trainer. That's the tagline from their website, folks. So it gives you the one-sentence summary. "By eliminating traditional metal weights, Tonal can deliver 200 pounds of resistance in a device smaller than a flat-screen TV. It mounts right on your wall with no floor space required." I've had one for a few months now, after a number of close friends recommended Tonal to me. And it allows me to do things that I would normally need a huge gym for, like cable chop and lift or rotational exercises. And it allows me to do other things that are nearly impossible otherwise, like eccentric loading, which I'll talk about again later. Tonal is precision-engineered and designed to be the world's most advanced

• 0:45Tim Ferriss?

  strength studio and personal trainer. It uses breakthrough technology like adaptive digital weights and AI learning together with the best experts in resistance training so you can get stronger faster. One of my friends, who used to be a competitive skier, very high-level competitive skier, has doubled his strength in many exercises over a period of months. So what are these adaptive digital weights? Tonal's patented digital weight system makes thousands of calculations a second to deliver you a smooth weightlifting experience using their advanced electronic motor technology. And a lot of the buttons are built right into the handles themselves, into the grips, so you don't need to move around, and it is extremely easy to use. Tonal lets you adjust the weight in one-pound increments, and you can do it on the fly,

• 1:28Tim Ferriss?

  something that was never possible with traditional dumbbells. It's easy to dial weights up and down with just the touch of a button. Tonal also has built-in dynamic weight modes, like chains, eccentric, and their patent-pending SmartFlex technology. So you can experiment with more ways to get stronger faster without the hassle of extra equipment like chains and bands. The eccentric, which I mentioned, means that you can set a mode that allows you to say, just as an example, "bicep curl 15 pounds up", and then lower automatically 20, 25 pounds down. And it is incredible. How much you can get done in just a handful of minutes when you use this type of technology. So, check it out. Try Tonal, T-O-N-A-L, the world's smartest home gym

• 2:12Tim Ferriss?

  for 30 days in your home. And if you don't love it, you can return it for a full refund. Visit www.tonal.com, T-O-N-A-L.com. And for a limited time, get $100 off of smart accessories when you use promo code TIM21. Like I'm ready for my first drink at checkout. That's www.tonal, T-O-N-A-L.com, promo code TIM21, T-I-M-21. Tonal, be your strongest.

• 2:45Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Theragun. I have two Theraguns, and they're worth their weight in gold. I've been using them every single day. Whether you're an elite athlete or just a regular person trying to get through your day, muscle pain and muscle tension are real things. That's why I use the Theragun. I use it at night. I use it after workouts. It is a handheld percussive therapy device that releases your deepest muscle tension. So for instance, at night, I might use it on the bottom of my feet. It's helped with my plantar fasciitis. I will have my girlfriend use it up and down the middle of my back, and I'll use it on her. It's an easy way for us to actually trade massages, in effect. And you can think of it, in fact, as massage reinvented on some level. Helps with performance,

• 3:30Tim Ferriss?

  helps with recovery, helps with just getting your back to feel better before bed, after you've been sitting for way too many hours. I love this thing. And the all-new Gen 4 Theragun has a proprietary brushless motor that is surprisingly quiet. It's easy to use, and about as quiet as an electric toothbrush. It's pretty astonishing. And you really have to feel the Theragun's signature power, amplitude, and effectiveness to believe it. It's one of my favorite gadgets in my house at this point. So, I encourage you to check it out. Try Theragun. That's Thera, T-H-E-R-A-G-U-N. There's no substitute for the Gen 4 Theragun with an OLED screen. That's O-L-E-D, for those wondering. That's organic light emitting diode screen. Personalized Theragun app and incredible

• 4:15Tim Ferriss?

  combination of quiet and power. So go to Theragun.com/Tim right now and get your Gen 4 Theragun today, or you can watch the videos on the site, which show you all sorts of different ways to use it. A lot of runner friends of mine use them on their IT bands after long runs. There are a million ways to use it. And the Gen 4 Theraguns start at just $199. I said I have two. I have the Prime and I also have the Pro, which is like the super Cadillac version. My girlfriend loves the soft attachments on that. So check it out. Go to Theragun.com/Tim. One more time. Theragun.com/Tim.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Now would be the appropriate time.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 5:16Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. I'm nervous. I'll explain why I'm nervous in a minute. My guest, he's a very friendly fellow. He's not trying to make me nervous. His name's Chris Bosch, on Twitter @ChrisBosch. He fell in love with basketball at an early age and earned the prestigious Mr. Basketball title while still in high school. That was at Lincoln High School in Dallas, Texas, not far from where we are sitting in Austin, Texas. A McDonald's All-American, Bosh was selected fourth overall by the Toronto Raptors after one year of attending Georgia Tech. By the end of his basketball career, he was an 11-time, that's more fingers than you have, folks, 11-time NBA All-Star, two-time champion, and the NBA's first Global Ambassador of Basketball. In March of 2019, Bosh's

• 6:01Tim Ferriss?

  number one jersey was officially retired for the Miami Heat. In addition to his basketball career, Bosh founded the community uplift organization Team Tomorrow in 2010 and regularly speaks to youth about the benefits of reading, coding, and leadership. Bosh, his wife Adrienne, and their five children reside here in Austin, Texas. His new book is Letters to a Young Athlete, which includes a foreword by Pat Riley. Chris Bosh can be found in many places online, Twitter, as mentioned, at Chris Bosh, Instagram, at Chris Bosh, and Facebook official, Chris Bosh, Chris CB. Welcome to the show.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  Appreciate it, man. I'm excited to be here.

• 6:40Tim Ferriss?

  I was looking at the copious notes in front of me. I was joking that I feel like the main character in Memento. I don't like to show how the sausage is made, but this is the first in-person interview since COVID for me, really, certainly indoors. And I'm looking at this bio, and I'm looking, and I'm looking, and I'm looking. Did you ever go to the Olympics?

• 7:03Speaker 03

  I went to the Olympics, yes.

• 7:04Tim Ferriss?

  I thought so. I may not be the best researcher, but I thought that, and how did things go at the Olympics?

• 7:12Speaker 03

  Amazing.

• 7:13Tim Ferriss?

  What was the outcome?

• 7:14Speaker 03

  You know, the Olympics were one of those things. I had the time of my life there, you know, and when I mean time of my life, at that age, I was right where I was supposed to be. Back in 92, when they constructed the dream team together, I was just a little kid in Hutchins, Texas, watching TV. And I just thought it was cool that they had basketball in on the summertime on regular TV, because you know, you couldn't really watch TV. You had to have cable to take in as many games as possible. And I was just one of those kids. Anything basketball, I'm taking it in. And I remember just that time of the dream team, watching them. It was just incredible. Wait a minute, Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson and all these guys on the same team. That doesn't, I was trying to comprehend it.

• 8:00Tim Ferriss?

  The X-Men.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know what I mean? And that pretty much sparked the obsession. And so every Olympics, I mean, I would watch the Olympics. I mean, we watched gymnastics, we'd watch track and field, and we'd watch anything to do with the Olympics. And getting to take part in Beijing was quite amazing. And, you know, just to be there, taking part in the opening ceremony. But most importantly, getting to have the experience of playing basketball for my country and being able to represent the USA and win a gold medal, I mean, that was everything.

• 8:31Tim Ferriss?

  You know that you have a good bio, just for those who didn't pick up on this, when you can omit the Olympic gold medal from your bio. Just as a side note, that doesn't happen all too often. The reason I brought up the Olympics is because I had heard, I think it was, might have been LeBron James who, who mentioned this, but that while other people were killing time or doing A, B, and C, playing cards, that you were trying to teach yourself Spanish. And this is the type of anecdote that came up over and over again, whether related to craft beer collection and making craft beer, there were these parallel tracks.

• 9:14Tim Ferriss?

  And I found that very interesting because sometimes it's the side notes that tell a lot of the main story, even though basketball is the most obvious.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:23Tim Ferriss?

  Is that a myth? Is that true Spanish? Does that enter the picture?

• 9:26Speaker 03

  It's probably true.

• 9:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  I'm surprised that they would remember something like that. You know, to me, that's, you know, that was when you had to like have the whole eight CD set.

• 9:39Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. You had a separate bag for it.

• 9:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, you gotta have a whole separate carry on. I could see that and I'm, I forgot all about that actually. But yeah, I mean, language was always something that was just nagging at me and I just had to do. And golly, back in 08, that would mean I had just started and I was trying to put two and two together and I thought it was so cool that Rosetta Stone had a eight CD packet that you could take with you and, and download on your computer and all that stuff.

• 10:10Tim Ferriss?

  That you could buy at an airport kiosk. You remember when that was a thing?

• 10:13Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And I thought that was so cool because I'm like, yo, I got that. But I remember taking it with me. I was always, I always had a fascination with language, always trying to pick it up. And, and believe it or not, it actually getting drafted by Toronto in the beginning years, for some reason I wanted, I thought I could learn French. Like, oh yeah, I'm gonna learn French.

• 10:32Tim Ferriss?

  No problem.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  No problem. And I got up there, everybody speaks English. You know?

• 10:38Speaker 03

  And so it's like, you gotta watch TV and I was trying to watch TV. It just didn't happen and it didn't make any sense. And so probably a few months after that, I said, okay, I need to learn Spanish because more, there's more Spanish speakers in the world than there are French. So let's start there. And yeah, I started learning Spanish and that was before I got a tutor. So I started with Rosetta Stone and you know, that was okay. And then I hired a tutor and then I ended up making the move to Miami eventually, which it helped me out quite a bit, just in.

• 11:12Tim Ferriss?

  Caiocho.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, Caiocho.

• 11:14Tim Ferriss?

  You shout out in Spanish.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  I'm their son, you know, and they really, really loved it. But just the culture that was down in Miami, it was just really just a perfect fit. And I don't know what it was. I just had to learn languages. It's just one of those things that just calls me communicating with people, talking with people. And, and really it was always beneficial because we would have teammates. I have had three, three teammates from Spain, two or three teammates from Spain. And you have guys coming from Europe and Africa and South America and stuff like that. So you, you want to be able to communicate efficiently with them and you know, just learning different languages and stuff like that. It has helped me quite a bit.

• 11:56Tim Ferriss?

  You can cover a lot of the globe with Spanish.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 12:00Tim Ferriss?

  You can go a lot of places.

• 12:02Speaker 03

  And it's a good beginning, right? That's a good Latin base because then you can be like, okay, Portuguese, Italian.

• 12:07Tim Ferriss?

  You can hop around.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can hop around pretty, not easily, but it could happen.

• 12:11Tim Ferriss?

  So I heard you say the words Caiocho.

• 12:15Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 12:16Tim Ferriss?

  In your, I don't want to say last speech, but when your jersey was put up into the rafters. So for people who don't know, and don't worry folks, if you don't know anything about basketball, that's me too, because I have little squirrel hands. I'm, I'm very small. And during the winters, when basketball was an option, I actually did not get accepted to the JV basketball team because as the coach put it, I dribbled like a caveman. So I ended up wrestling. That's going to be my excuse for not knowing much about basketball. But we will, we will come back to the very, very, very, very building blocks of basketball in a moment. But because this is also not explicitly mentioned in your bio, could you explain for people how you came to retire?

• 13:00Tim Ferriss?

  Or how your basketball career came to an end? And then we're going to fill in the in-between.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Okay. So. Year thirteen and it was kind of like, uh, not a long drawn out process, but pretty much what happened is it started with a pulmonary embolism. I ended up having a pulmonary embolism. I had chest pains, back pains, all kind of different pains. Um, had a collapsed left lung partially for a while and I was still playing. I chalked it up to something else happened. It wasn't definitely anything life threatening and it definitely wasn't anything that would end my season, let alone my career. But I kept playing and we eventually, you know, it got so bad, um, I went to the hospital and I had to end up having to get a surgery. Let me see, I was in the hospital for, you know, close to two weeks. It was pretty much like solitary confinement.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  I didn't really think about it until it was over, but I didn't leave that room for, you know, a good two weeks. I had two tubes in my chest right here on my ribs, on the side of my ribs, right below my, uh, chest. And I had to drag that around with me after surgery for a few days until, you know, it got all the, the leakage out. And that took about a week. And then after that, I was able to recover, was able to come back and play basketball. And then that next year, we found another clot. And so pretty much when, when you're in a situation with, with blood clots and stuff like that, if you have a second blood clot, it's almost like you're radioactive.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  And so that pretty much was it. It was, uh, during All-Star Weekend in Toronto. I was, uh, reshaping my game. I'm a three-point shooter now. I'm actually in a three-point competition. I'm looking forward to this, my career being revitalized and still being on top of my game, still being an All-Star, still performing at a highly level. We felt that we had a team good enough to compete for a championship that year. We were second or third in the East. We're ready to go. We're, we're right there in the, um, driver's seat. And, uh, we unfortunately found another clot. It was a blood clot in my lower extremities. That was pretty much the end of the season. I continued to try to come back, but it just didn't happen with doctors and, and things

• 15:15Speaker 03

  like that and teams and question marks. And we found out that it's not that much research. The research has been inconclusive about athletes' blood clots and things like that. And You know, we, we, we tried and, and I did try. I gave it the whole college try to try to come back, but it just proved to be too much. And I have a family. I have children and I had to start thinking about that. It's like the easy tough decision to make, right?

• 15:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  You know what's right, but I just love basketball so much and, and I just figured this was, this was my time to really prove myself as for the umpteen time to be an elite player in the world. And, you know, it was just that second act or third act rather that didn't happen.

• 15:57Tim Ferriss?

  And was the cause ultimately, whether definitively or just tentatively concluded to be a hereditary disease or was it?

• 16:06Speaker 03

  I did test to see if it was hereditary. It's not. I don't have the genetic markers that would mean I just have reoccurring clots. When they said that, I was like, okay, well, great.

• 16:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  It just seemed to have come out of nowhere, especially in a sport where, you know, trauma is pretty, you know, you're getting leg trauma on a nightly basis. But it's just something that I had to move past eventually. And as tough as it was, I had to move on with my life and, um, you know, eventually figure out how to move past it and do something else.

• 16:41Tim Ferriss?

  We'll likely come back to that at some point. Just, just psychologically, philosophically, how you've navigated that. But

• 16:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 16:48Tim Ferriss?

  As promised, I want to jump back to, to Lincoln High School and we are going to at some point, we, I'm using the royal we. I'm not, I don't mean to embarrass my audience by including you in the questions I might ask about basketball. They're going to be very, very basic. But let me first ask, as we kind of segue into this, I just want to read part of this paragraph from Wikipedia because I have something related to ask about it. All right. So the six foot 11 teenager, we didn't mention that yet, six foot 11 teenager, teenager, helped Lincoln High capture in this, again, Wikipedia, so feel free to fact check anyway. Class four A state title as he delivered 23 points and 17 rebounds to go along with nine blocks. Here's the paragraph that really caught my attention. All right. Bosh was subsequently named high school player of the year by Basketball America,

• 17:32Tim Ferriss?

  power A player of the year in Texas, a first team All-American by Parade, McDonald's and EA Sports, a second team All-American by USA Today and Slam Magazine. And it goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. My question is, what was it like for you at that age to get that amount of visibility?

• 17:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:55Tim Ferriss?

  And that amount of, suppose fame, I mean, this is later, you'd be much, much better known. But at that age, I think back to all the terrible decisions that I made in high school, all the terrible decisions I continue to make for a long time.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:10Tim Ferriss?

  And it was not in any way fueled, I wouldn't have had the opportunities afforded to someone with tremendous visibility. What was that like as a student in high school? And was there a moment when you were like, oh, wow. Okay.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:23Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, things are going to be different.

• 18:24Speaker 03

  It like continuously happened like that.

• 18:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  The thing with me is, I was lucky to find the thing, right? That thing that you love, once I found basketball, and that's one of the things that I always encourage, not only the youth, but people in general, find that thing that you love. And, you know, people can help you get there, but only you know, and only you know that feeling, whether it's sewing, knitting, architecture, it could be anything. But for me, I found basketball pretty quickly. And in my mind, it was all supposed to happen. One of the interesting questions I get is people ask me, well, what else would you be doing? That's kind of a hard question to answer because I didn't do anything else.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  So it was basketball, video games and friends. And, you know, of course, schoolwork. Anything outside of that, it really didn't get too much in my atmosphere. And so with that said, I was always able to go to practice or go to the gym, or even play basketball video games, or read the newspaper and see what the stats are and who's leading the Eastern Conference, or who's leading the league in scoring, rebounding, and things of that nature. I never wanted to do anything else. Basketball was, was it. I grew up watching Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. And of course, all the other stars too, but those two guys in particular. They were always winning.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  You know, as soon as I found out what basketball was, I knew who Magic Johnson, you know, was and huge success in the eighties, five championships. And then Michael Jordan is there. I watched him pretty much win six live. And then Kobe Bryant comes along and he was the dude that made it real because he was a teenager doing things that Jordan did. So, once that started happening, it became more obsessive. Are you familiar with Slam Magazine?

• 20:18Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not, but I can imagine the subject matter, possibly.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  So, you know, Slam Magazine was pretty much like the basketball magazine. And so, that was like the internet. So, you go get your Slam Magazine and I started putting these posters on my wall of Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, all these guys. And just obsessively following the game. But they would also put in these articles with the high school talent. It was all basketball, high school, college and pros. And so, for me, with all the content I consumed, whether it was movies, whether it was watching Slam Magazine, these things were supposed to happen. So, when they started happening, for me, it was more like, okay, cool. I was still in my bubble.

• 21:05Tim Ferriss?

  Did you feel in a way because of this extreme focus on basketball, that you had identified it as like the path, your path?

• 21:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:14Tim Ferriss?

  That these things were sort of, I don't want to say ordained to happen, but you were like, if I am in fact destined to be on this path, like these are the following markers along that path. And therefore, when you show up yourself in Slam Magazine, you're like?

• 21:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, missing Slam, like, okay.

• 21:31Tim Ferriss?

  As it was written.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  Full disclosure, I didn't like the Slam article that they made of me. It's like I finally got my half page and I'm like, that's the photo they chose?

• 21:41Speaker 03

  But you know, yeah, it was kind of those markers, you know, getting those markers pretty much from the ninth grade on. And one of the things that was always interesting, nobody, fun fact, in our yearbook, I wasn't chosen because we had another, we had other good players as well. I wasn't chosen most likely to be in the NBA. So I was never like, Chris, just like you were reading off. Yeah. You saying USA's second team is still like. Wins a little bit. They messed that one up. It's okay, USA today. But with that said, that was just always my mentality. I was not, not written off, but in my mind, it was always how it was supposed to happen. And I started growing. And then I guess once that notoriety came for me, it was like, okay, yeah, about time. Yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  But once I started getting that notoriety, I wanted to get in the gym more because it was working, you know? So from ninth grade pretty much on, every time I saw success, or if I was in the paper, or if the coach told me good job, or something like that, I wanted more. It was always an emphasis on doing more work, you know, doing more work. You were like, the recipe works. Let's crank out some more pizza pies with that recipe. It's going pretty good. Let's, uh, yeah, let's make something out of this. And, and you know, one of the interesting things, and probably one of the things that lit a fire under me was my dad, you know, we weren't, we weren't the poorest kids. I would describe

• 23:06Speaker 03

  my upbringing as lower middle class, but he sat me down, or we would drive all the time and ride everywhere. And he told me one day, like, I was like 12, he said, hey, man, I can't pay for college. So basketball, you love basketball? That's awesome. You can get a scholarship playing basketball. And that's great because I can't pay for college. He kept saying, I can't pay for college. And I thought that was fascinating that you could actually, wow, you could go to college and play basketball. Okay. And I started, you know, that began an obsession with schools and mascots and learning the colors on top of all the stats and stuff, you know? So, once I really started getting into it, I mean, it just grew and grew and grew. And as it grew, so did the notoriety. So let's talk about making those pizza pies. The recipe that was working, I want

• 23:50Speaker 03

  to try to tease apart some, some pieces of that. So you mentioned a name.

• 23:55Tim Ferriss?

  Kevin Garnett, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Were there any players you watched and decided to emulate? I had read that KG was one such player. I don't know if that's true. You can't believe everything you read on the internet.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 24:11Tim Ferriss?

  So you can confirm or deny. But were there players who you watched early on in your development as a player or as a player who you decided to emulate for one reason or another?

• 24:24Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan. More so KG. But Tim Duncan, of course, too, because he was right down the street. And his nickname was the big fundamentals. And every coach loved the way he played the game. So I would play the power forward, which is, you know, is kind of a dying position now. But it was called the four and it was cool to be a four. Like, oh, man, early 2000s, late 90s to be a four man. It was awesome. And so it was just kind of looking for guys that looked like me.

• 24:52Tim Ferriss?

  Looked like you in terms of like physical.

• 24:54Speaker 03

  Physical stature or lack thereof. But, you know, it's kind of, you know, growing up playing the game when you're skinny, when your mass hasn't caught up with your bones.

• 25:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  It's kind of, you know, people kind of be like, ah, you know, you hear all the skinny jokes and you need to eat something and lift some weights. And like, I am lifting weights, you know? But it was always this preconceived notion or this stigma that you had to have size to play down low. And once I saw KG play.

• 25:29Tim Ferriss?

  When you say down low, what do you mean?

• 25:31Speaker 03

  Closer to the rim.

• 25:32Tim Ferriss?

  I see.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  You know, now the game is more spread. It's more around the three point line. And the game back then was more people in the paint. So that's how the game was played, closer to the basket, a lot more physicality, a lot of banging around, you know? And I'm sure a lot of people were worried for me.

• 25:52Speaker 03

  But you know, once I saw Kevin, there was one highlight in particular. Long and skinny. He was a, what, an all-star when he was 19, 20 years old? He came straight out of high school in 96, no, 95. And he was long and skinny like me. And one of the things, kind of, you were joking and saying how your coach said you handled the ball like a caveman. He could handle the ball.

• 26:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 26:17Speaker 03

  That was kind of like a new thing. Not new all the way, but old school coaches would tell me, if you're tall, don't dribble.

• 26:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  That was a part of the game. Don't put the ball on the floor. I saw him put the ball on the floor and rebound and block shots and play defense. And he had this intensity and tenacity to him, the way he played the game. It was just infectious and, and you know, I was like, yo, I want to do that. And so I would imagine going to the park and imagine these moves and imagine myself doing, you know, I would visualize every day, man. And, and once I saw that, it was over. And, and I mean, he was cool too. He had the, had the swag, the young guy swag back then. Had the, had the look and, and you know, had the off-court look in the slam. And it was just amazing to me and I just wanted, that's all I wanted to do. I wanted to be, oh, that's what I wanted to be, that right there.

• 27:09Tim Ferriss?

  KG. Not only tall, ball handling skills.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  And a lot of people don't know this, a lot of people don't know this, but that was actually my nickname. I've never, I haven't told you about it. That was my, they called me KG in high school. In summer league, like KG, that's how bad I wanted to, you know, emulate his game and make it to the NBA. People were calling me KG.

• 27:29Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So, so this is, this is the intended segue into all sorts of terminology that I'm going to need your help with.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 27:36Tim Ferriss?

  But, but let's, let's, uh, let's talk about Tim Duncan just for a second because the big fundamentals.

• 27:41Speaker 03

  The big fundamentals, man.

• 27:43Tim Ferriss?

  That's a, that's a cool name. Now, what did the coaches like about his playing style? You said they all loved his playing style.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:49Tim Ferriss?

  What, what were the ingredients that they loved about his playing style?

• 27:52Speaker 03

  He had that stoic demeanor. He was never, just, he brought the intensity and he played hard, but it wasn't anything extra.

• 27:59Tim Ferriss?

  Wasn't flashy?

• 28:00Speaker 03

  The opposite of flashy, but. Like we were speaking of playing down low closer to the basket. His moves that he used were very basic, but devastating. Sometimes when you're dealing with younger players that are good at the game, the simplicity can get to them. So they want to show that they're good by doing something fancy. And then usually you're messing it up, right? But Tim, he made his career off of establishing position, basic stuff, establishing position, getting your move technique, you know, playing within the system. And he was unstoppable. I mean, he was, he was MVP of the league and perennial All-Star, you know,

• 28:42Speaker 03

  and the best four man to ever play the game. You had to put him in that same context if you're trying to be successful.

• 28:51Tim Ferriss?

  And by playing within the system, do you mean within a coach's prescribed system?

• 28:56Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. Like a set number of plays, like basketball is a fast moving game and it can look like guys are just out there or girls are just out there, just running around and not really doing much. But there is.

• 29:09Tim Ferriss?

  A method to the madness.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  A method to the madness. You're supposed to be in a certain position, even if it's within the flow of a game. So, you know, when I say system, that's what I mean by that. If he was at the top, he knew exactly what to do. If he's down low, he knew exactly what to do. And that added on top of the talent. Yeah, they could have given it to him and say, okay, bring us home, big fella. And that would have worked. But he added so much longevity on his career by playing within the system, in my opinion. And, and I mean, that made him more dangerous because you have to worry about all of these other things happening. If you're defending him, it's four other people out there that you have to worry about. But then he's hitting you on your body down low,

• 29:54Speaker 03

  getting the ball and he was incredibly strong too.

• 29:57Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so this is fun for me as a basketball illiterate to begin to sort of piece this together in my own mind because you have the big fundamentals who's playing within the system, not in a negative sense, but meaning he understands how to play with and synergize with the other elements on the team. Absolutely. He is not doing anything fancy for fancy's sake, right? So as we were talking about before we started recording, like Morgan Spurlock once told me, like, once you get fancy, fancy gets broken, right? That's a good one.

• 30:31Tim Ferriss?

  And fancy can work, but you better have the fundamentals first, right? So he's devastating within the system, which is a possibility. And then you have KG, Kevin Garnett, who is in some ways violating the expectations of him, not because it's impossible to do so, just because there isn't much historic precedent for somebody his size also having the dexterity to be a, to handle the ball really well. Especially in the mid 90s. Right, which later you would also receive that compliment quite a lot. And I want to go to power forward and is it four man? Yeah, the four. All right, this is the four. This is where I'm really going to embarrass myself. Here we go. So I'm going to make a confession. I was reading through the research. I was reading about your bio.

• 31:14Tim Ferriss?

  I was watching videos and I thought to myself, this might as well be in Greek. I can't, I can't even begin to imagine what these terms mean, half of them. So I went to, this, these people are going to love this. So I went to Wikipedia and I looked up basketball. Yeah. I was like, I was like, let's just start there. And, and just to be clear, like I do watch basketball. I appreciate, I mean, I clearly don't follow it very well, but I can appreciate the athleticism. I understand what a three point shot is. I understand what a jump shot is, layup, slam dunk, et cetera. Some of, some of these terms I actually do know, but I realized that I did not know the positions whatsoever. And so I just want to read something and then we can dive in.

• 31:56Tim Ferriss?

  So this is from the Wikipedia entry on basketball, folks. Yes, feel free to laugh. All right. So first of all, if you didn't know this, five players on each side, it turns out. All right. So the five players on each side fall into five playing positions. The tallest player is usually the center. Second tallest and strongest, the power forward. A slightly shorter but more agile player is the small forward and the shortest players are the best ball handlers or the shooting guard and the point guard who implement the coach's game plan by managing the execution of offense and defensive plays. In parentheses, player positioning. Informally, players may play three on three, two on two, one on one. And then I'll just add this because I was like, what? Really? Invented in 1891 by a Canadian-American gym teacher, James Naismith or Naismith.

• 32:40Tim Ferriss?

  Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States. Basketball has evolved to become one of the world's most popular and widely viewed sports. So number one, 1891, not that long ago.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Not that long ago.

• 32:49Tim Ferriss?

  That's crazy.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:51Tim Ferriss?

  That is insane. That is just, that's like wheels on luggage where you're like, really? It took us that long?

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it started with a peach basket. Did you get to that point?

• 32:59Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  So back in the day, when they made the game, they had to have something to do in the wintertime in Massachusetts. So they put the peach basket up there. And when you make a basket, they had to get a ladder to climb up and take it out. It wasn't until later that they cut a hole in the peach basket.

• 33:19Tim Ferriss?

  The climbing up and getting it out, not as compelling for television.

• 33:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Nah, it's like, oh, good shot. Okay, let me go.

• 33:26Tim Ferriss?

  Hold on, hold on. Give me a few minutes.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  The game will be two to three or something like that, you know?

• 33:34Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Small business owners have always shown an incredible ability to adapt and innovate. This past year has certainly highlighted many examples. Now, another way you can adapt and innovate in 2021 is by finding the right people to help you grow your business. LinkedIn Jobs makes it possible for you to do exactly that. Get started by posting your job for free to reach LinkedIn's network of more than 740 million professionals. Fill out targeted screening questions to get your role in front of the most qualified candidates with the experience, skills, and motivation you're looking for. Then with simple filtering and management tools, you can easily review, rate, and Home in on your top candidates.

• 34:18Tim Ferriss?

  LinkedIn jobs can help you find the right person to help you grow your business. And your first job post is free. So just visit LinkedIn.com slash Tim to learn more. Again, that's LinkedIn.com slash Tim to post your first job for free. Terms and conditions do apply.

• 34:39Tim Ferriss?

  So I just want to kind of run through this again and then get your commentary just as to how to think about the game. Now, also understanding the game is not static, right? And how the game is played changes.

• 34:49Speaker 03

  Especially now.

• 34:50Tim Ferriss?

  Especially now.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  So we can take these rules and then we're about to break them.

• 34:53Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. All right.

• 34:56Tim Ferriss?

  Not to say you have to comment on what I just read, because obviously you're much more qualified than the 37 people who put that together. How should we think about the positions of basketball? Like if I were an alien, which might as well be the case.

• 35:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:09Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm looking at this and I understand what I said, I understand. But like, all right, how are the jobs and responsibilities separated out here? How should we think about that?

• 35:18Speaker 03

  Well, you know, with those positions, with all those positions, with that said, it's been totally.

• 35:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And each of those positions is numbered, therefore.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:28Tim Ferriss?

  Power forward.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  The one, the two, that's like when you get into it like, oh yeah, play the two. That's when you're super cool.

• 35:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 03

  You know what I mean? Like I'm at the five.

• 35:34Tim Ferriss?

  The shorthand.

• 35:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm at the five. One, two, three. You know, you have your positions, but with that said, the game has changed. So you have one through five. The one is the point guard, the two is the shooting guard, three, small forward, four, power forward. And the five is the center. What has happened in the last few years is that it's become more of a spread game. Because mathematically, people that do data eventually said, hey, let's shoot more threes. Because these shots, we don't like these shots, we like these shots.

• 36:03Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  Spread the floor.

• 36:05Tim Ferriss?

  So is the, so is the reason, sorry to interrupt, but I'm going to do it a lot. So the, is the reason that the three point shot has become more and more prominent? That was driven by kind of like the saber metrics equivalent. Came from the data wonks, not from the player side.

• 36:20Speaker 03

  There were some players, in particular me and Shane Battier, we would talk about, my good friend Shane Battier. We played together. In Miami during the championship years, we would talk about this. We had just got him. He had played his career in Houston and Memphis. And Houston is a guy by the name of Daryl Morey. He's the president for the Sixers in Philadelphia right now. Big stat guy. Love stats. I mean, a number cruncher. And so they had a certain team and it was a whole culture of stat driven guys. Shane came from that. And so that's where we would kind of talk and we would talk about threes and contested twos and just different shots. What's a contested two? So if you're within the three point line, right?

• 37:03Speaker 03

  Or a contested shot is if you're shooting and I just put my hand up trying to defend you. Right? Trying to deny you from actually putting two or three points up. And so it turns. You're pretty good at denying other people. For sure. Yeah. You know? I've seen. I have seen these. So like it came to be that the worst shot in basketball is a contested two. Fifteen to eighteen, nineteen, twenty feet away from the. Got it. Just statistically, when they look at like. Statistically, it's terrible. You know, and so people took that information and said, okay, hey, we need to play faster. We need more points. Big fella, you need to dribble. So now it's you want everybody. Interesting. So all of a sudden. All of a sudden. That thing that you were not supposed to do.

• 37:48Speaker 03

  Is everybody should do it, you know? And it's like, wow, you play the game. Everybody should be able to do the basic fundamentals. But now it's opened up to where now you have guys like, um, you know, Nikola Jokic. Probably never heard of him. He's a big man that plays in Denver. One of the best players in the league. He's a five man, but he handles the ball. You know, which is a five man again? The center. Okay, thank you. So to confuse you more. Yes, please. Now you have a thing called the point center. Okay.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  That's if your big fella can bring it down. But the evolution of the game, you've had guys like, you know, Magic Johnson, then LeBron. James comes and he's very tall, but he can handle the ball. Then you have Ben Simmons, Giannis Antetokounmpo. These guys who are very tall, seven feet, six, eight to seven feet. Who back in the day, you could say, okay, hey, you're a four or a center or something else. They've totally transformed the game because they're the guys bringing it up the floor. And they're getting the team into offense. So they're doing the job of the point guard. So now it's more of the term positionless. When we were playing, when I was playing, it's crazy to say the last decade,

• 39:02Speaker 03

  early in the 2010s, that became kind of one of our words to say, positionless disruption. That's the word I'm looking for. So you know, basketball has been disrupted. What we thought was the game has been cracked open and now it's just become, not just, it's become a faster pace, longer shots, more athleticism, and not so much the cookie cutter approach to where someone should be on the court because of their size or lack of size.

• 39:33Tim Ferriss?

  You know, it makes me wonder about adaptability and the adaptability of not just some players. And I'm sure there's also just a selection bias that changes with respect to who, who is drafted and how, and just the entire feeder system into the NBA. But also coaches, even more so coaches, like if their entire career has been predicated on a system of a certain type. I mean, I'm not asking you to name names, but have you seen certain coaches who've been really able to adapt to this new style of playing, others who are like, I don't know. I don't get it.

• 40:08Speaker 03

  Well, the ones who say, I don't know, I don't get it. They don't have jobs, right?

• 40:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and they get weeded out quickly. Yeah.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  One of the guys, of course, you know, my ex-coach and Eric Spoelstra, he, I remember him, he was having the vision of having that positionless type of basketball and that faster pace, which I didn't like at the time because that would mean I would have to play the center as opposed of the power forward. And I didn't want to do that. But just taking advantage of the speed.

• 40:37Tim Ferriss?

  Why didn't you want to do that?

• 40:38Speaker 03

  Because I was banging up against guys bigger than me. So usually in the NBA, my playing weight was about 235, 240. If I'm playing the five, I'm banging with guys that are 280. Two seventy and on a weekly nor nightly instances, oh, man, it gets brutal. But, you know, it did work as far as, you know, using the speed to get around the bigger defenders. So essentially playing, I guess, if you were a fighter, going a class up in weight.

• 41:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 41:08Speaker 03

  Because you're quicker, you can, you know, hit them more.

• 41:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, right.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  That was pretty much the philosophy. One of the other guys who have done, I think have done a great job is Greg Popovich. He's in San Antonio. He's done a wonderful job because they run the same place.

• 41:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  They just extend them.

• 41:26Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, interesting. Okay, could you, could you expand on that? Because I remember.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:29Tim Ferriss?

  Watching The Last Dance. And watching this segment on the Spurs.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:37Tim Ferriss?

  And sort of their, I don't want to say playbook, but sort of systematic approach. And some of the debate around that, right? Because there are other players who are like, that's not fun to watch, right? Like, they should do A, B, and C instead.

• 41:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, because they beat you. It's not fun to watch your team getting beat, you know?

• 41:56Tim Ferriss?

  So can you expand on what you mean by that? So they had the same fundamental system, but they expanded it?

• 42:04Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. So it's kind of, um, the best analogy I could put to it is, um, you know, I don't want to expose their system, but everybody knows their system. It's predicated, and I might, I might be saying this wrong, but, but it's two, two plays that are the base in their system, weak and strong. I can't remember which side of the court. If you're on this side of the court, it's weak, on another side of the court, it's strong. But that's their base of the offense. Like I was saying earlier, the game a few years ago was being played closer to the rim. There was nowhere to go. There's no space, even if you want to get your best player attacking into the paint. If there's eight other people in there, it, it makes it a little more difficult.

• 42:45Tim Ferriss?

  Traffic jam.

• 42:46Speaker 03

  Traffic jam. So you can take those same plays in basketball and just tell your players, hey, all these things from the Heat days are going to come into my head, but pace and space. I can't believe I'm saying that.

• 42:59Tim Ferriss?

  I like it.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  But that's what, you know, the space was very particular because you want to be able to see what's going on and to attack the rim, get closer to the rim for easy buckets. Well, all you have to do is, hey, if you're in the paint, I want you to get out there. We're gonna run the same plays, but as opposed to being six feet away from the basket, get 16. I need you in this 12 to 16 area feet right here, because usually bigs, they wanted to keep them, we call them bigs, the fours and the fives, bigs. We want to keep you as close to the basket as possible, but that was clogging it up for the smaller guys to be able to attack.

• 43:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 43:36Speaker 03

  So you would tell to be able to-

• 43:39Tim Ferriss?

  And they want to keep their bigs close to the basket, not to state the obvious, but so that you can receive a pass, jump up, done.

• 43:45Speaker 03

  Be tall.

• 43:45Tim Ferriss?

  Rebound.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:46Tim Ferriss?

  Do all the things.

• 43:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, the tall things. Do all the things that tall people do. Well, if you spread the court, that makes it a little tougher to guard. It takes bodies away from the painted area, you know, that area where the paint.

• 43:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 03

  That's what we call it.

• 43:59Tim Ferriss?

  Harden the paint.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  Harden the paint.

• 44:01Tim Ferriss?

  If people have wondered what that term refers to, as my girlfriend told me, I was like, what? Oh, my God, I never knew that.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  It's going hard in the paint, man. You can have the same type of offense, which is nobody is reinventing the wheel here, but what's happened is the game has become faster and more spread so that, you know, more offensive opportunities can happen.

• 44:23Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm. So you have preemptively developed ball handling skills, which lo and behold, now are this huge asset.

• 44:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:32Tim Ferriss?

  As the game evolves. But you get put into center, where you're basically running into freight trains.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:40Tim Ferriss?

  Uh-oh.

• 44:41Speaker 03

  It was a part of my whole career. It happened in Toronto, too.

• 44:43Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not saying a bad thing, but initially you're like, this is-

• 44:47Speaker 03

  I don't want to do it.

• 44:47Tim Ferriss?

  I don't want to do it. Now, again, based on just the homework that I've done, I mean, you seem to be also very, very well-known as a rebounder.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 44:59Tim Ferriss?

  And one of the questions that comes to mind for me is if suddenly the bigs, is that the term?

• 45:06Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:07Tim Ferriss?

  Are expanded out further away from the basket, does that not make it harder for you to utilize one of your superpowers with?

• 45:16Speaker 03

  In a ways, there are certain things that do get taken away. In our case, it was a little easier to make that sacrifice because we had Dwyane and Wade and LeBron. So if it's saying, hey, Chris, we need you to get out the paint and spread the floor, yeah, your offensive rebounding opportunities are gonna sink quite a bit, but-

• 45:39Speaker 03

  It's better if we get those guys attacking.

• 45:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  So you need to be out here and one of the things that kind of developed was having a more sound defenses. Okay, instead of crashing the boards, just get back.

• 45:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 45:53Speaker 03

  Because you know, the defense especially, you know, if the defense gets the rebound, now they're on offense. If they're running, if they're a fast team, you wanna mitigate their opportunities for easy baskets. So you know, and that's, that can be a stat too, which I'm pretty sure we, uh, we dug up, we did dig up that stat. What's the percentage of you getting an offensive rebound versus not getting a stop because of that?

• 46:17Tim Ferriss?

  So question, question for you on the stats, and maybe this is getting too, too nerdy, but do all the teams have equal access to data? And it's just a matter of analyzing it more effectively?

• 46:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, we can go on NBA.com and get all the stats right now.

• 46:33Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, so that's hard. Like, everybody has, it's an open book.

• 46:35Speaker 03

  Right, it's an open, it wasn't like that before. And the way you crunch those numbers is not an open book. So everybody gets the data, but that's all it is, is just data. It's just telling you what happened the last game or over the course of the game. It's on the teams to kind of take that and utilize it if they want to. Now, some people do overdo it, in my opinion. You can kind of get some people like, eh, you know, it's the way we wanna play, and okay, cool.

• 47:01Tim Ferriss?

  Gotta tie your shoes with the left hand first.

• 47:04Speaker 03

  But there's still, you know, in my, you know, in my case, there's still some fundamentals to the game that, you know, you can't really get around.

• 47:11Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned, uh, Erik Spoelstra, if I'm getting the pronunciation right. Our mutual friend, Ryan Holiday, had given me a bullet, which was, uh, related to books that Erik had given you. What books did he give you that come to mind?

• 47:26Speaker 03

  He would give books every Christmas to the team. So there were.

• 47:31Tim Ferriss?

  Quite a few.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  Quite a few. And I read all of them. I was probably the only dude to read all of them. It was even kind of funny, because one time we were cleaning out their lockers and our lockers and said, you know, some, I won't name who, but somebody grabbed a book from their locker, oh, man, Spo, thanks for this Christmas gift. It's the, it's in June, we're blowing dust off of it, you know?

• 47:51Speaker 03

  But when we first met, I had just signed to Miami. And I was always reading. I was always been an avid reader since I was a kid. And I just fell into reading books. I would always read books, especially on the road, before naps, before games. That was my thing. And he knew that about me. He had heard that about me. Him being a good coach said, hey, I'm gonna get him this book. I heard he's a reader. He got me outliers by Gladwell. And I said, okay, you know, he gave it to me and I took it. Oh, that's cool. I read that book. And he was, he, he just kind of looked at me like, what? And then ever since then, he would, I guess, I hope that I pushed him to do more research

• 48:35Speaker 03

  in his book buying. But yeah, he would, he would, he would get us books every Christmas. Were there any that stood out to you? One in particular was grit because he used that term all the time. The author's slipping my name. Angela Duckworth? Angela Duckworth. And, you know, he, he got us that book and he would always use these phrases. And so grit was a huge, huge, huge word that he used that I'm sure he still uses to this day. But that book in particular, he bought for the team and I read that one. I do remember that one. And then it's another one that's slipping my mind, but I remember specifically, we were having a conversation and it wasn't an easy conversation. Usually when you're a coach, you're having tough conversations 24/7 with your players because everybody wants the ball.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  I was having one of those conversations like, hey, give me the ball, you know?

• 49:24Speaker 03

  And it was one chapter in particular that was saying push versus pull. Some people you have to push, some people you have to pull. Another chapter that said, you have to have an open mindset or a closed mindset. You don't want a closed mindset. You want an open mindset. The book will come to me in a minute. I had to like, you know, challenge him on having an open mindset.

• 49:48Speaker 03

  Like, hey, give me the ball. Have an open mindset, coach, you know?

• 49:53Speaker 03

  Remember that book you gave me? And I always loved that one because it's the book that he gave us and I had to use it, you know, to kind of try to get my way.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  But I always, I want to say is good to great, but that's probably not the one. But those are, good to great is one of them. Those books in particular, and I mean, like I say, throughout the whole time, throughout the whole stint in Miami, you know, he gifted us books and I'm pretty sure he gifted us the obstacle is the way. I want to say he did, I'm pretty, pretty sure. But you know, I just thought it was fascinating, just a coach taking the time to think of his teammates and give them food for thought, something to think about. And I always enjoyed that and I would read it and I felt like I was getting inside his mind and the minds of others, reading these passages and kind of taking, you know, and interpreting it for myself right before the game. You know, it was always great. Wow. So you would read right before, right before playing?

• 50:51Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I would, uh, it was a funny Pat Riley, he told me, he's like, you're like Kareem. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, he would sit there and read the whole time. And a couple of my young players, when I was an old grizzled vet, they, they told me like, I would just sit there reading and, and you know, I'm oblivious to this stuff. I'm just getting my mind right, you know? This was, I read because this was my relaxing time because this is about to get hectic. Yeah. So you're not reading like Black Hawk Down, you're reading? Maybe. Maybe. I might. Yeah. But if I'm reading Black Hawk Down, it's the playoffs. Yeah.

• 51:27Speaker 03

  You know, it's winning time. But you know, I always tried to give myself that peace of mind. It was like, I felt like it was my time. And granted, we're in the locker room, it's media everywhere and people, it's like the buzz of an NBA game about to start. And I would sit there and they told me, man, when you close that book, it's like, all right, he's ready, let's go. Yeah. Yeah, I would read and all the way up until Coach was about to start talking. It's like, all right, cool. Let's, uh, let's go and do it.

• 51:53Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any books that you've reread multiple times that come to mind? I mean, or was it always a new book that you would read?

• 52:01Speaker 03

  I always read a new book, but the book that I read all the time, which you, I know that you're a connoisseur of Japanese culture is The Way and the Power. Have you heard of that book?

• 52:12Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  So it's a book called The Way and the Power. I had a buddy of mine who was a Kempo black belt many times over. He gifted me that book. It pretty much was breaking down the way of the samurai. And it was two books into one, The Way and the Power. Strategies, the power is more so like strategies for a master, distancing, confusion, how to handle conflict, things like that. The way is more so shaping the body and shaping the mind to become a samurai. So the exercises that one has to do to get to the point,

• 52:53Speaker 03

  to start mastery before you can even think about it. You know, you need to be here, you know, one of the passages said, you have to look successful. You want to be able to look good. So I took all these principles and applied them to basketball. So what they meant by looking good was saying, hey, shirt tucked in, regulation, everything is good to go. My shoes are tied. I don't have to worry about them because I have this knot that they won't come loose. So I'm not worried about my shoes while I'm playing. It also says, you know, exercise must be vigorous. People need to tell. So you have that strong spirit, you know, when you're showing up before you even play. My muscle definition is good. I'm ready to play because we've been working hard.

• 53:37Speaker 03

  We want to feel that, you know, it's feeling the spirit before you even start playing the game, working on your key, things like that.

• 53:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. The Way and the Power.

• 53:47Speaker 03

  The Way and the Power. I think you'd enjoy it.

• 53:49Tim Ferriss?

  Cool title.

• 53:50Speaker 03

  Cool title. And it's got Japanese, you know.

• 53:52Tim Ferriss?

  I'm into it.

• 53:53Speaker 03

  They don't translate the words. So for instance, one of the principles is called motion. That really resonated with me quite a bit.

• 54:01Tim Ferriss?

  No mind.

• 54:01Speaker 03

  No mind. So you attack with no mind. I don't. Think about everything we've done, all the studying. I filled myself with my opponent and I'm attacking with no mind because I've done all the training.

• 54:14Tim Ferriss?

  That is super cool. That's

• 54:16Speaker 03

  Ah, you know that.

• 54:17Tim Ferriss?

  That's Wu Xin.

• 54:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you read that and be like, oh, yeah.

• 54:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. Wu Xin, no mind, or this, this, this character Xin, which is also Kokoro, uh, is, is also used for heart, but it's, it's like spirit, heart and mind all wrapped into one. Culturally, super interesting.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's very fascinating. And I mean, they, yeah, they don't change. They do not translate because some of them have no translation, right?

• 54:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  So they have the like Mushin, for instance, it's called Mushin. Then they do English, but the title, the principle is, is all Japanese.

• 54:51Tim Ferriss?

  So you mentioned the knot, having the right knots, you're not worried about your shoes. I might be misattributing this. I don't think I am, but even though I know very little about most sports, I'm fascinated by consistent top performers. Because it's like, once you're lucky, twice you're good. Like for a decade, okay. Yeah, there, there, there is some method. And I recall reading this story about John Wooden, famed, I guess, UCLA coach.

• 55:21Speaker 03

  He's got his book too, you should check it.

• 55:22Tim Ferriss?

  And I recall reading a story, I'm sure I'm going to get the details wrong, but when he would meet a bunch of new players, sit down and he'd walk them through tying their shoes. And, and they'd be like, why does this matter? And he'd be like, the little things matter because if you mess this up, you're going to get irritated. Then you're going to get a blister and then you're not going to be able to move properly. And that's going to cost you points and that's going to cost you the game.

• 55:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, man.

• 55:44Tim Ferriss?

  And, and I was like, oh, so good, so good.

• 55:48Speaker 03

  Pyramid of Success.

• 55:50Tim Ferriss?

  Pyramid of Success.

• 55:51Speaker 03

  Pyramid of Success by John Wooden. You can check that one out. That pretty much describes that. So he had a pyramid of success and that's one of the myths or stories or whatever, they pretty much owned the sixties and seventies, you know, UCLA basketball. They built it to what it is, you know, historically today. And not only did he get the best players and great players, Abdul Jabbar being one of them. He had the best teams and coming in to play for a great coach like that, it's like, okay, first day of practice, ooh, we I can't wait. What are we gonna do? And he's showing them how to put on their socks and shoes, you know, practically and perfectly. And that was the first day of practice. So, you know, just.

• 56:36Tim Ferriss?

  I'm just imagining the faces.

• 56:39Speaker 03

  Could you imagine that? Like, we about to, oh, what, what offense are we gonna run? This is gonna be the best. And, and you know, it's, and, and if you read, there's an actual pyramid that he built and constructed. And tying shoes and socks was at the very bottom of the pyramid of success. So, and, and he'd do this every year. Every year, that would be the first thing that they would go over. And then they would build on top of that.

• 57:03Tim Ferriss?

  And you know, he was testing and tracking and keeping notes. It's not accidental that that ended up at the bottom of the pyramid.

• 57:11Speaker 03

  Of course, of course, but that makes sense, right? Yeah, if you get a blister, you know, especially back in those days, everybody was playing in Chuck Taylors. That's important. That's important, man. You've got to, hey, let's, this is important stuff. And, you know, like I was alluding to earlier, that's the challenge with younger players, right? They want to go right to being the master. Doing the things that, you know, you think that a master is supposed to be doing when we need to do this. First, the basic, basic fundamentals. That way, when it's winning time, we can be healthy. It's kind of like many sayings out there, but you have the bit in the horse in the shoe. If that nail isn't right, then the horse, you know, it's all these catastrophic events that could possibly follow if this one basic thing is not correct.

• 57:56Tim Ferriss?

  You've spent a lot of time as a leader with other leaders, whether players, iconic players, coaches, whole broad spectrum. Are there any particular lessons or stories related to leadership that stick out to you? Things you saw or absorbed from, from anyone in particular?

• 58:18Speaker 03

  My high school coach, Leonard Bishop, he talked to me one time. And as much as I became more social later in life, this is me at 17 years old, 6'11".

• 58:33Speaker 03

  All the accolades are possible and they can possibly come. He called me in his office and he told me, you don't have to be loud to be a leader. You can lead by example. And, you know, we always hear the thing lead by example, right? You hear that all the time, but what does that even mean, right? And he told me, he explained it to me. He said, you know, you. Can lead by putting your work in, being on time, being dressed and ready to go when it's time to practice, staying after practice. Your teammates are watching you all the time.

• 59:09Speaker 03

  So if you do these things and lead by example, never giving up, never quitting, playing hard, these are the things that could be infectious. You don't have to be the guy giving the win one for the Gipper speech. You can go out there and you can be yourself. And that was so comforting to me. I remember that conversation we were having in his office. And I said, wow, okay. That gave me so much more confidence because I could be myself. Cause on the court, I'm gonna yell and scream and do all that stuff all day. I'm not, I wasn't always the player to always talk during the game at that age. But if it's getting hype and screaming and yelling, that was, basketball was always my release to do that. It was comforting to know I could be myself and still bring the leadership qualities

• 59:54Speaker 03

  to that team. And you know, that always stuck with me.

• 59:58Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the things that people don't know or don't see that you think are important about some of the, the, the big names you've spent time around? Whether that, and you can take your pick, could be anybody, could be, could be a player, could be a coach, could be an owner, could be anyone at all. Somebody not on that list. Cause people see you on TV.

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe they followed you for a long time and they, maybe they think they know what makes you you. And they might have a few things right, but they probably have a whole lot of things wrong. And that would also, I assume be true for many of these big names that you've spent time around. Are there any particular ingredients or special aspects of some of these folks that come to mind that you think are maybe less appreciated or less obvious to people?

• 1:00:43Speaker 03

  One, being human, humanizing the people that can kind of get lost in translation when you're on TV. So remembering that there's a human element. These are people with families and feelings and emotions. And on top of that, I think the work that's, that, that is being put in to anybody who's elite at their craft or even professional at their craft. I mean,

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  It's in a ridiculous amount of work that's put in to even be in the league.

• 1:01:11Tim Ferriss?

  Right, let alone on the shortlist of people.

• 1:01:13Speaker 03

  You know, and even on the shortlist, man, they're working hard, you know, and um, I don't know, like, the, the first thing that came to mind when you said that is like, you ever, well, I was about to say, you ever watch a basketball game?

• 1:01:23Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I have watched basketball.

• 1:01:25Speaker 03

  You have watched basketball?

• 1:01:26Tim Ferriss?

  I've, I've watched, let's say I understood all the finer details.

• 1:01:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, so have you ever watched it when they say, okay, they've got two days off until their next game?

• 1:01:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  That is not true.

• 1:01:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right, right, right, right.

• 1:01:37Speaker 03

  Not true. Practice, treatment, appearances? The professional aspect that it takes to be able to perform, because usually, people just see you on TV, and they see you doing your thing, oh, okay, two days off, no, we do not have two days off, there are no such thing as weekends, if there's a weekend, maybe we play at eight o'clock as opposed to seven thirty like usual, that was the only cursor for me that let me know it was the weekend.

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  So, just trying to remember, and, and you know, it's really for all people who, who are good at what they do, if you admire that person, remember that there's a human element, that's a human, they're probably going through it, or maybe not, or just whatever comes with life, they're dealing with it, and the tremendous amount of work and focus that it takes to be able to do that, you know, to be able to, to say, hey, I'm, I, I need to put this to the side to be able to perform, it's happened many times in my career, you know, you go to funerals, you have things you have to fight through, and then you have to play, and, and you're still expected to win, you know, so, just remembering those, those things,

• 1:02:47Speaker 03

  just remembering that, when you're watching your favorite player, or your favorite author, or favorite engineer, whatever that is, the tremendous amount of work and dedication that it takes to get to that level, that's what I would like people to.

• 1:02:58Tim Ferriss?

  To really remember and understand. I have watched, maybe not, not enough basketball, but I have watched basketball. And in fact, at one point, not to say I ever got particularly good at it, but when I was working on a book called The Four Hour Chef, which is very confusingly actually about accelerated learning, which might, might explain why there was so much confusion on the part of readers also. But there's a section looking at free throws in basketball. And so I actually practiced quite a bit with the help of a few people, sort of technicians who were trying to help me understand basic principles. Yeah. And part of the reason for that is that I have been just dazzled by, say, three-point shots.

• 1:03:43Tim Ferriss?

  Because as a, someone built like a small Flintstones character myself, right? I watch people who are jumping over the rim and performing these incredible feats of athleticism. I'm like, well, I can't even imagine myself doing that. Like, the physics are just not there, right?

• 1:04:01Tim Ferriss?

  My bones never caught up with my mass is the problem. It's the other way around. And plus, my vertical jumps, like somewhere between half an inch and an inch at best. So, so those are things I just can't even imagine myself doing. And I think people might be, I'm not saying that this is everyone, but people might be inclined to say, well, he's 6'11". Right. So, of course, you can slam a basketball. But it's a lot harder to use that justification when it's a three-point shot, right? It's like, no, actually, actually, like you, short guy, yeah, Tim, that's you. I'm talking to you. You should technically, like, you have the physical capability of doing that. So I would just love to hear, and this might be getting too into the weeds, but how you improved your three-point shots?

• 1:04:45Tim Ferriss?

  Because it's not just repetition in the sense, like, you can make the same mistake over and over and over again.

• 1:04:53Tim Ferriss?

  And I've read about you doing video review, watching games six to eight times and so on. So I know that you are methodical about reviewing your own performance, but how did you improve something like a three-point shot?

• 1:05:07Speaker 03

  I didn't start shooting threes consistently until about my third year in Miami. Second and third year in Miami. I shot them in Toronto a little bit, but like I said, it still wasn't, we were talking about the game earlier. It wasn't that widely accepted in the game. Big men shooting threes, handful of them. Now you have a handful that don't. We got to Miami and you know, my, my position or my responsibilities changed. So I wasn't getting the ball closer to the basket anymore. That was my job in Toronto. To get the ball as close to the basket as possible. That's what we functioned. I was pretty good at it. And then the team would go from there and we would distribute

• 1:05:47Speaker 03

  and kind of base our game off of, I guess, my success or lack of success down low. I was telling you earlier that in Miami, I had to get out the way. Yeah. That was my sacrifice in particular with that team so that LeBron and D could penetrate and get into the paint and do what they're best in the world at doing. As we continued to play, I had a coach and me and Shane Battier, we would talk all the time about it. But then I had a, you know, have discussions with coaches as well. And somebody said something one day, said, hey, man, just take a step back. Take one step back, shoot the same shot, but just take a step back. Because I was always an avid worker on my jump shot. I was pretty good.

• 1:06:30Speaker 03

  I was lethal from mid-range. That was my thing. I always worked on it and worked on it. So it's the hundreds of thousands or millions of reps that I have shooting the ball. I know I have a touch anyway. It was just extending the range. So it's kind of one of those things that if you're good short range and mid-range, hell, you practice your long range, you can be pretty good too. But getting those fundamentals of the, you know, the shooting motion, the arm.

• 1:07:01Speaker 03

  Snapping your wrist, following through, balance, all these different fundamentals that you learn and what goes into a great shooter. Going and seeking that advice, learning from other shooters, always kind of taking in information, but relying on my own information. I think you have to have a good foundation in what you've done already by yourself, even if it's in the weeds or in the dark. And then you have hopefully someone that can refine what you already have or say something to you to say, hey, man, take a step back. You can shoot threes. And then I started shooting threes and then as I became more consistent, you know, I found more success. And it's funny to watch the game now because I'm like, man, I could still be playing, you know.

• 1:07:45Speaker 03

  I'm 37, I saw myself playing into my, you know, 37, 38. And I started practicing more threes because I saw where the game was going. I said, okay, yeah, they're shooting with more threes. Me and Shane have talked about this. Three is more than two. Okay, I'm gonna start shooting more threes. And that in my last year in the league, I had a higher frequency of three point shots. And, and you know, I was seeing some success. So that was exciting. But that was like the part of my career that I never really got to crack open.

• 1:08:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Tim Ferriss?

  With three pointers, when you're watching other players make three point shots, are their styles dramatically different? Or are the good three point shooters, do they all have the same ingredients?

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  I think there's the same ingredients. I mean, you're always going to get different flavors, but um, it's the same ingredients to me. It's always follow through, one fluid motion and good balance. If you have those things, you can shoot the ball. And I always, it's kind of funny you learning to shoot free throws. I would always tell people, I give my friends pointers. So I have a few buddies that, you know, they're producers and songwriters. They always play in rec league games. I won't give away your sauce, dude. Don't worry, I won't give away your position. But I would, I just give them like pointers and say, you know, like, hey, man, can you help me with my shot? And I just look at them shoot it a couple of times and give them corrections. And then they see instant success, you know? But that's just, you know, elbow in, follow through, one fluid motion.

• 1:09:10Speaker 03

  Boom. You have a better, you just wanted to go straight.

• 1:09:16Speaker 03

  And and this, you know, you can get super deep into it, trajectory and all that stuff, but that's when you see it's good to get into the fundamentals of where the ball is supposed to go and how you're supposed to hold it. But one of the things that we always do is just start with one hand shooting. I don't know if they had you doing that right under the basket this all day. Get a lot of repetitions in that, build that muscle memory, and then you can start stepping back as you get better.

• 1:09:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the the thing that kind of blew my mind also, which I hadn't thought about at all, because why would I? I hadn't had any exposure was I was just missing, missing, missing. I was like, oh, for you know, 20, even at a close distance. One coach, I'm blanking on his name. I want to say it's Rick Torbit, but he did an eye dominance test. And he's like, oh, you're right handed, but your left eye dominant. He's like, yeah, shift it like an inch over. And then the whole thing changed. I was like, wow, wow, that's a thing. Okay.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  That's pretty good.

• 1:10:15Tim Ferriss?

  And well, maybe someday I'll I'll pick up a basketball again and have to confiscate all phones and cameras first. So be critical to my self esteem.

• 1:10:24Speaker 03

  Close your right eye and shoot it.

• 1:10:27Tim Ferriss?

  What did it feel like going from and why did you go from Toronto to Miami? Yeah, because like you were king of the hill.

• 1:10:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, Mr. Canada.

• 1:10:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you're Mr. Mr. Canada.

• 1:10:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, it was a it was a tough decision. I loved Toronto and Toronto loved me. And it was great just to be able to compete and put a city or a country on your back and just hope for the best and just go out there and work hard every day. And, you know, I just felt, you know, like a pillar of the community. I wanted to do it so bad for Toronto. You eventually get to a point in your career where you have to make a choice. And I went to, you know, I talked to many people. It was a dilemma. I didn't know what to do. And if you're familiar with popular culture, or maybe not, that year in 2010, there was a I was like the first mega free agent.

• 1:11:22Speaker 03

  Everybody who was free agents, it was about eight or nine free agents that's like, "Okay, they're the best eight or nine guys in the world right now. They're ready to go. Things can and will dramatically change." That was the atmosphere that was coming, and I knew that was coming. And I had tried everything. I tried everything in Toronto. I tried to recruit. I tried to push myself, push my team, and you know, we weren't even scratching the surface. And one of the tough things dealing with it is seeing the early success of my peers. I wanted to win. I've always wanted to win, and I've always wanted to put in the work to be able to do that and compete and hopefully gain glory in that way. I talked to a lot of older players and...

• 1:12:07Speaker 03

  About what to do. About what to do, and older gentlemen as well. And the thing that I kept hearing was that, "You want to play on the stage, man. It's about going for it. It's about competing for a championship. You want to play on that stage." That's the phrase that stuck with me. And I had an opportunity to play with two other great players. And we had known each other since we were teenagers. I've been knowing Brian since we were 16, 17 years old. I knew Dwayne since we were 19, 20 years old. And it just fit, and it was a possibility to be like my heroes. I told you, I idolized Jordan and Kobe, and it was right there to be able...

• 1:12:51Speaker 03

  The calling happened, and I wanted to play on that stage that I was talking about. I was telling you, since I was a little kid, I was watching Michael Jordan. That was like, I distinctly remember. And even, you know, the moment I found out about basketball was because Michael Jordan was playing on TV all the time. I mean, even, we would go to Dayton, Ohio. My dad, he'd drive us, it was crazy, 18 hours in a single cab pickup truck. 84 F-150, man. And he'd drive us from Dallas to Dayton and drop us off. And like every summer, '91, '92, '93 for sure, the night that we got to my grandma's house...

• 1:13:32Speaker 03

  The Bulls will be playing and it's winning time, you know, it was in the finals and I understood after a while, you know, after they get the trophy, I'm like, oh wow, what is, this is amazing. And I wanted to do that, man. And, you know, I couldn't even tell you what happened the rest of that summer. I couldn't tell you what happened that night. I couldn't even tell you who was around the TV. I know I was. And I was just taking it all in. And every year, I would watch it and watch it and watch it. And that's all I wanted to do, you know, aspire to do. And, and at that time, that situation was right there in front of me. It was right there in front of me to take. So, I took it.

• 1:14:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:07Speaker 03

  And that was only a chance, you know, that's just a, this is just an opportunity, not to even say that you're gonna have success, but this is your best chance to go for that right now.

• 1:14:15Tim Ferriss?

  Now, did you feel 100% confident when you made that decision and in the weeks and months following? Or were there any points where you're like, oh, man?

• 1:14:25Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, there's always gonna be those points, right?

• 1:14:26Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:14:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's those points. You get to those points, but I had gotten used to that by then. And, you know, for whoever's listening, sometimes it's just gonna be like that. You're supposed to feel it, right? You're supposed, it is a major leap of faith.

• 1:14:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:44Speaker 03

  And if you're making that leap of faith, yeah, there will be some questions, but I always, that was part of my mental training, like, yeah, they're just questions. That's okay. Let's, let's just keep going forward logically. It makes sense. It's sound. And then, yeah, when the emotions come in and, yeah, you get those feelings like, I don't know if I can do this. And, and we came together in such a way to where it was explosive and pretty infamous.

• 1:15:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Speaker 03

  You know, so, that comes into it as well. Yeah, you start having self doubt. And that's one of the things we eventually got to with talking with the Heat. That self doubt is gonna come. It doesn't make you any less of a competitor or a person. It's just a part of the process.

• 1:15:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm so, I'm so glad you're mentioning that. I remember, not too long ago, I was talking to a really, not on the podcast, this is a private conversation, but an extremely famous investor, who from the outside looking in, I'm like, okay. This guy's balls are bigger than my house. Like, I don't know how this guy, I don't know how he does what he does. Like, I would not get a second of sleep. It's just the risks that I perceive him as taking.

• 1:15:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:52Tim Ferriss?

  And we were talking about self doubt and second guessing and he goes, oh, just to be clear, he's like, no matter what, you're going to have some regret. He's like, if you buy something and it does really well, you're gonna kick yourself for not having bought enough. Why didn't I buy enough? If you buy something and it does really poorly, you'd be like, why did I invest in that? He's like, oh, he's like, no, either way, he's like, you're gonna have second guesses. He's like, just accept that as like part of the game. And I was like, oh, it was actually very stress relieving. I was like, oh, okay.

• 1:16:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm biting myself all this time, man.

• 1:16:22Tim Ferriss?

  Like, oh, okay.

• 1:16:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, cuz a lot of people, they, they get that. They think something's wrong with them.

• 1:16:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Speaker 03

  Or they think something's wrong with the situation or they'll pull out.

• 1:16:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:31Speaker 03

  And say, hey, no, no, no. I always kind of think of one of my favorite books was Blink.

• 1:16:37Tim Ferriss?

  Blink, yeah.

• 1:16:37Speaker 03

  By Gladwell. And, you know, just talking about the gut decision, trust in your gut, then we talk ourselves out of it. We knew the answer and then we talk ourselves out.

• 1:16:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:48Speaker 03

  Talking yourself out of it, that's a part of it. It's gonna happen, but, you know, just stay with it. Stay with what you, you know, said you were gonna do, what you're meant to do. And yeah, sometimes self doubt comes, you just gotta be like, shh, shh, shh. Hold on, I'm working now. And it's okay to dismiss that voice.

• 1:17:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, totally. Doesn't, doesn't mean you're uniquely flawed.

• 1:17:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it does not mean that at all.

• 1:17:09Tim Ferriss?

  When you were reviewing footage of yourself, could you give an example of, if one comes to mind, of when you did that? And then, once again, like, how do you watch? Like, what are you looking for and what are you seeing? Because, you know, someone was asking me as I was preparing for this, like, well, have you watched basketball? And I said, I think I've seen basketball.

• 1:17:32Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not sure I've watched it because, for instance, I mean, there are sports I know a lot more about, like wrestling or boxing or these things. And I can watch it and I see things that some of my friends won't see. Just because I know the technical

• 1:17:43Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 1:17:44Tim Ferriss?

  underpinnings.

• 1:17:44Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:17:45Tim Ferriss?

  So when you're watching footage, if you can think of any examples of reviewing your own footage, why did you look at it? And then what were you looking for? What types of things did you pick out?

• 1:17:57Speaker 03

  I think naturally every player will start on offense. They wanna watch themselves on offense and, and it can easily turn into just a highlight tape. The Instagram of your own mind. You know what I mean? Your highlight tape and I would look for mistakes. I got to the point where I was looking for mistakes. Did you do that consistently? Did it start at a particular point? Was it always? No, not always. Like I said, highlight tape. It started off as highlight tapes. You just want to see yourself doing good, but then you get to a point to where you're looking for the inconsistencies. Or if there was a game, certain particular game that you were unsuccessful. I'm looking at the whole game to see what exactly, why? What happened? What I can do to get better?

• 1:18:42Speaker 03

  What is this team doing? They might've had some success against me, defending me. So what, one of the things I would look for, I would look, it's so hard to describe, but I would look for everything all at once. You get to the point where you're looking for everything, but the main, main, main things were defense and offense. My positioning on offense. I would always look at my teammates' characteristics, seeing what they're doing, see their, what the scouting report on them is. They might do a certain particular move every single time in this play. And you have to watch film to know that. It would help build continuity. And we talk about it too, like when you're doing that, I want you to zig instead of zag. You know, and it's having those discussions. You watched the video with coaches, with teammates?

• 1:19:27Speaker 03

  Everything, by myself, with the team. We always started practice with half an hour of film. Oh, you did? Yeah, 45 to an hour of Spoh felt long-winded, but yeah, we would. And that was game footage? Hmm, yeah, pretty much usually the night before, looking at all the mistakes. And then I developed the habit of going home and dissecting other players. So in particular was Dirk Nowitzki, three-point shooter, seven feet.

• 1:19:55Speaker 03

  Late 90s, early 2000s, this is when it was, you know, he was shooting threes back when, you know, it was very taboo, I guess, for a big to be doing all that stuff. But he revolutionized the game in that aspect. We lost against them in the 2011 finals. Terrible, terrible tragedy, right? But one thing it inspired me to do, he did these certain particular moves within the system that were, you couldn't stop it. And I had to figure out what it was he was doing. So I watched a tremendous amount of film on him in particular, but what happened? In our losing effort, but what happened was you start seeing like you're saying, you start seeing other things. So what I started doing was I started compartmentalizing

• 1:20:37Speaker 03

  the film and I would say, okay, I'm gonna watch what Atlanta or I'm gonna watch what the Lakers are doing on offense. It became this thing of, okay, I've got my offensive system down. I know my game. Now I will watch film on the other team. I just want to get inside the mind of the other team. I want to know all their plays. I want to know their best players, best moves, so we can take all those things away. So that's what it became. I would study to take the top two high percentage things away from a team or a person.

• 1:21:10Tim Ferriss?

  I have to imagine also that with that amount of footage and also just that amount of time on the court, practicing, playing, that you're almost certainly absorbing a lot more than you're consciously aware of.

• 1:21:24Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 1:21:25Tim Ferriss?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:21:26Speaker 03

  For sure. Absolutely. And what starts happening is not that it happens on tap, but you can start anticipating what's gonna happen on the court. So things will just come to you and be like, I'm gonna run over here because I'm gonna be wide open or I'm gonna crash the boards because I'm gonna get a dunk. And it happens. You know, it's crazy. But you know, the more, it just becomes a part of you. The more that you watch it. And I was having those second guesses and doubts and stuff. The other week I was talking with my buddy and I said, man, I should have, I could have done more, man. He said, okay, stop. You watch more film than anybody I know. Because you know, film is more of a thing, a football term. So it's kind of like the quarterback in football. They have

• 1:22:07Speaker 03

  to watch a tremendous amount of film because they have to, it's really anticipation. They have to anticipate. They have to look where they're looking and say, okay, this is what they're doing. If you watch enough film, you'll pick up on people's tendencies and you know what they're about to do before they do it. Because he's leaning a little, those subconscious things that you pick up.

• 1:22:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, a telegraph.

• 1:22:28Speaker 03

  You know, like I say, you would be surprised how much success you have as a defender if you take the best move away.

• 1:22:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:36Speaker 03

  Every day I watch film, whether it's the team or the player and be like, okay. Take away that for him. He goes right every single time. He's got to go left today. And if he scores 30 points going left, hey, I'm gonna tip my hat to him. But percentage, that's where we would mess with the data. You know, we would play with the numbers. We'd twist the numbers a little bit. Team wise and individual wise, you develop a repetition for knowing the team's plays. That's, that's the biggest thing, right?

• 1:23:00Tim Ferriss?

  That's gotta really mess with people.

• 1:23:02Speaker 03

  It does. You know, it's just two minutes in the fourth quarter and they call a play. It's like, he's going right there. A lot of people look at LeBron and be like, oh my God. You know, these were the discussions we were having every day. LeBron James, Shane Battier, Ray Allen, Dwyane Wade, Rashard Lewis, myself. We're talking about, I guess, a masterclass every day in how to stop people or, you know, how to be successful.

• 1:23:27Tim Ferriss?

  Take away one leg of the stool.

• 1:23:28Speaker 03

  You know, if they beat us with two legs, then hey, man, that's a good job, but probably not.

• 1:23:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, uh, the footage is so important in the fight game too. Whether boxing or MMA, same story. Also because I guess like many sports, like if you have person A versus person B and A beats B and B beats C, it doesn't automatically mean that A is gonna beat C.

• 1:23:52Speaker 03

  Right, for sure. Matchups.

• 1:23:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, styles.

• 1:23:54Speaker 03

  And, you know, and styles and another component to that is you might play a team like San Antonio, which we were duking it out with them for a couple of years. And they'll run certain plays against certain teams. They have certain set plays against you that they think are successful. And you have to crack those codes and, and figure that out on top of the individual tendencies for Amanu Ginobili, for Tony Parker, for Tim Duncan, for Danny Green. You know, you have to, you have to know their individual tendencies on top of the team tendencies. So it can get, it can get pretty deep, you know, like you were saying, get in the weeds. You can be in the weeds.

• 1:24:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Uh, Manu is such a, he's a sweet guy. Does, uh, yeah, he's, he's close to here, lives nearby.

• 1:24:37Speaker 03

  He'll dunk on you too, I'd say, well.

• 1:24:39Tim Ferriss?

  He'll definitely dunk on me.

• 1:24:42Speaker 03

  That was the thing about the Spurs. Man, like, man, nice guys. Well, you know, he's elbowed me in the face a few times. So, you know, the nice guy, you know.

• 1:24:51Tim Ferriss?

  Gentleman, the elbow.

• 1:24:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's a hell of a competitor.

• 1:24:56Tim Ferriss?

  Let's talk about Letters to a Young Athlete. This is your new book.

• 1:25:02Tim Ferriss?

  Why? Books are hard.

• 1:25:05Speaker 03

  Books are hard.

• 1:25:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:07Speaker 03

  Books are hard. You know.

• 1:25:09Tim Ferriss?

  How did this come about?

• 1:25:10Speaker 03

  So, I was, I was just in a place. I got the news, the unexpected news that I wouldn't be playing anymore. And, and I was just kind of in a place and I was just not wandering around, but reshuffling the deck.

• 1:25:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:24Speaker 03

  You know.

• 1:25:25Tim Ferriss?

  That's a great way to put it.

• 1:25:26Speaker 03

  Getting used to being a father in the household, being a husband in the household all the time. I never knew how much time that I had given to basketball. People think things are easy and be like, because you should write a book. I remember people were saying, you should write a book. Like, what am I gonna write about? I didn't even know what to even think about, but I just put it to the side and really didn't think too much of it. But always being an avid reader, I guess it was somewhere in the back of my mind, I continued to think about it. And, and I was in a period, whether I liked it or not, of reflecting. I had never reflected on my career. You're too busy playing. Yeah, you're just in it. You're too busy playing and going to the next thing and going from A to Z.

• 1:26:09Speaker 03

  And I find myself in, you know, just reflecting on the journey and how that child from Hutchins, Texas, was able to actually jump from lily pad to lily pad and make it to the NBA and actually be successful. And thinking about those who helped me along my path and all the coaches who said the wise words to me, friends who helped me out, my family, of course, that helped me out, my wife. And I was in deep reflection and then, you know, the opportunity came, we just kept talking about it. Kept talking about it. I have agents and they were like, yeah, man, you know, just keep talking about, yo, think about it. And yo, you should meet Ryan. We should meet Ryan Holiday. Oh, yeah, I've read a few of his books, man.

• 1:26:49Speaker 03

  That's cool. So we met right down the street here in Austin and we hit it off. We had like a three hour lunch, just sitting, talking and, and you know, shooting the shit and we had a great time. And, and then I said, okay, great. Let's figure this out. And there's no reason to talk to anybody else. He was the first person that we interviewed to help us out. And from then on, we just were bouncing ideas. It took months and months and months just to even figure out, you know, what are we going to write about? But sitting there and being open to thinking of myself in that position of not being a player. And thinking of what would be the book that I wanted to read before a game if I were

• 1:27:30Speaker 03

  a younger player today. So this is kind of that book that I wanted to read. And you know, one of my favorite parts about books like that is that they always translated, you know, whether that was, uh, whether you're an athlete, whether you're a CEO, a leader, a follower, a librarian, a teacher. We wanted to have those basic principles that apply to everything, whether you're a young athlete or an old athlete.

• 1:27:57Speaker 03

  We wanted to have those lessons from myself that have actually helped me and worked. And, you know, from people that I admire, tools that have gotten them through challenges. I think that's the biggest thing. There are challenges every day. Everybody goes through challenges and this is a book to give you those tools to hopefully rise to the occasion when it comes.

• 1:28:19Tim Ferriss?

  Who are some of the people you admire whose advice you have featured in the book?

• 1:28:26Speaker 03

  Spo, of course. Eric Spoelstra is in there. My coach, Leonard Bishop, we talk about some things like that. One of, one of my good friends is Candace Parker. Um, she's in, you know, Chicago now, uh, getting ready for her season. But she's such a tremendous athlete and a person. And we were having a particular discussion one time just about, and really just a female player, what they have to go through. We were in Beijing. And the whole female team after winning squad, they have to go to their respective places to go start the season. Not in the States, not home. They're going to Russia. They're going to Spain from Beijing, China, and they just finished playing a whole summer.

• 1:29:09Speaker 03

  Or they'll finish the season in WNBA and then go right back to it. So they were summer, spring, fall, winter. They're playing year round and they don't even get the credit for that. That was just so inspiring to hear because, you know, it's like Ali Candace, man, you, man, you really, it just doesn't stop. It never stops. I know it doesn't stop for me and I know how I feel. How do you, you know? How do you feel? And just kind of, um, you know, hearing her story and how she gets through that. She, I don't think she does it anymore. I don't think she plays in Europe anymore. But when she was just, you know, hearing those stories and how to actually get through that and be successful and still be the MVP. And still compete for a championship in both leagues.

• 1:29:52Speaker 03

  That was tremendous. And of course, Pat Riley, he's always been, um, a great motivator and mentor for me. And, um, we had a discussion with him, kind of jumping back to the book thing. He, um, he was one of those, uh, encouragers too. He said, hey, we should write a book. And he said, yeah, you don't have to think about it now, but just think about it. You know, this is what I did when I wrote my book, The Winner Within. I was going through this and yeah, it's a good thing. You should, you should check it out. And you know, this was a casual lunch in Malibu. You know, I really didn't think anything of it, but he's always been, uh, you know, that person to really, uh, be an example. And, um, you know, he's one of my heroes and you know, he read the foreword too. It's so cool. Yeah, it's really amazing.

• 1:30:37Speaker 03

  Turns out he's like a huge writer. He, he empathized with me quite a bit because his career, like mine, whether it was because of other people's opinion or professionally being able to withstand the athleticism that the, the new league was coming or whatever. His career just abruptly ended, just like mine. And, you know, he is a writer as well. And he told me about his writing experiences and you know, he's got a few books out there and he's even wrote screenplays and stuff like that. So it gave me the openness to accept other things and, and say, well, okay, just get the wheels turning. Well, if I were to write a book, what would it be about? And you know, it two and a half year process, man. Before you know it, two and a half years later.

• 1:31:22Speaker 03

  Two and a half years, but going and looking within to to try and and find those stories and those principles to what has made me me.

• 1:31:32Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned Pat a few times. What do you think his superpower is or superpowers?

• 1:31:37Speaker 03

  Motivation.

• 1:31:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:39Speaker 03

  And excellence.

• 1:31:40Tim Ferriss?

  So a lot of people try to be motivating.

• 1:31:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:42Tim Ferriss?

  Right?

• 1:31:43Speaker 03

  That's.

• 1:31:43Tim Ferriss?

  So he's good at it.

• 1:31:44Speaker 03

  He's good at it.

• 1:31:45Tim Ferriss?

  Why is he good at it?

• 1:31:47Speaker 03

  Well.

• 1:31:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:49Speaker 03

  The experience.

• 1:31:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, like, what's the experience?

• 1:31:51Speaker 03

  He's got the experience. I think when you're in team sports for so long and you've seen every level, whether that's good or bad, and everything in between, I think you can kind of start collect things that work and things that don't work. And, you know, in the NBA, you're around each other every day. And I'm sure there have been plenty of things that he said that didn't work.

• 1:32:17Tim Ferriss?

  Those get left on the cutting room floor.

• 1:32:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like, yeah, okay, that's okay. That's fine. And, you know, but, you know, his experience being.

• 1:32:23Tim Ferriss?

  Crickets? Okay, we're gonna cut that one from the next speech.

• 1:32:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, they didn't care for that one in practice, so we'll, you know, move on from it. But he's an extensive note taker. I know that. A voracious reader. And, you know, talking to people, I think that's one of the biggest things, actually having that relationship and having those conversations and sitting down to talk with a person. Because if you come in just trying to be a motivator, why? You know, you have to have a why in things that you do. And sometimes it can backfire. If you're trying too hard to be a motivator, it can come off as phony. And people are very smart. They can pick up on, pick up on those things. Pat, he's always had that open door policy. He's always been

• 1:33:10Speaker 03

  one of those guys. You just knock on his door and talk. It can be intimidating. A lot of people don't do it. It can be. It's like going to the principal's office.

• 1:33:19Speaker 03

  But he was always been open. I mean, you know, many dinners, lunches, talking, dissecting the game, and he wants to be great. I think a lot of people can work on their appetite to be great, and that doesn't necessarily mean having a bunch of money or having a bunch of tremendous amount of success. That could be, man, I'm coming here, I'm being consistent, I'm working every day, I'm putting in the work. My mental preparation is good. I'm ready to carry out this task for this goal, having this unified goal and going after it. I think sometimes being as simple as that can be a tremendous help for a lot of people. But with Pat, he, once he identifies a goal, I mean, he goes after it passionately and wholeheartedly.

• 1:34:04Speaker 03

  And that's when you get into the teeth of it, when you're in the foxhole, that's when the passion comes out, you know? You can't really motivate someone and you just met them, or it's going good. That's naturally going. You want to motivate somebody when it's tough, and you have to be in there with them suffering.

• 1:34:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the shared privation.

• 1:34:23Speaker 03

  Not to be too dramatic, but yeah, you gotta, you gotta take part in the suffering to get over the hump.

• 1:34:29Tim Ferriss?

  This is gonna be a strange segue, but I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna strongarm this one. We'll probably go for just a few more questions. True or false, I read that you are a fan of Leonardo da Vinci?

• 1:34:41Speaker 03

  I am.

• 1:34:42Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, please, please tell me more. Why? How did that come about?

• 1:34:47Speaker 03

  I can't remember how it really happened. Of course, everybody knows the Mona Lisa and, and the famous inventions and things that he had. I got my hands on one of the books about his notebook. And I read it. It was amazing. I love Italy. I, we went to Rome, we took a early, I went to Rome pretty early in my career, around 2007, 2008, somewhere in there. And so the fascination's already there. I got to see the Colosseum, and I was already infatuated with those things, and I got to see that. One way or another, I start...

• 1:35:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, reading books. And I read the biography Walter Isaacson wrote.

• 1:35:26Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's great.

• 1:35:27Speaker 03

  It's a good one. It's amazing. But I guess, you know, you were kind of alluding to learning to learn and the pushing the human mind and all that stuff. I was just always fascinated by that. So naturally, he just became a person to, you know, emulate.

• 1:35:41Tim Ferriss?

  The polymath of polymaths. I mean, there's the breadth of his fascination.

• 1:35:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just fascinating.

• 1:35:49Tim Ferriss?

  And also, and I know that you know this, but if you look at the entire pie chart, let's just say, of his completed works, or actually I should say his works, and the percentage that were completed versus incomplete.

• 1:36:04Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:36:05Tim Ferriss?

  Very high percentage incomplete.

• 1:36:07Speaker 03

  For sure. And that's kind of as a perfect segue, actually. I kind of had to come to appreciate that because one could consider a lot of his unfinished work to be a masterpiece.

• 1:36:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:19Speaker 03

  You know, and that's kind of how I look at my career. Because it was, you know, in my opinion, it was unfinished. It's finished, but it was still an unfinished painting, in my opinion. And that kind of gave me a little, little confidence too. Like, yeah, he didn't even finish all his paintings. You guys, you know.

• 1:36:33Tim Ferriss?

  That was Da Vinci people.

• 1:36:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know what I mean? And, you know, one of the cool things, me and my wife, we love to vacation. Getting to see those things in person. I mean, I'm an avid note taker and I doodle and draw and, you know, have sketchbooks all over the place. So that was a natural connection right there. But then seeing, actually seeing the paintings, we saw them on a lease in person. We saw The Last Supper in person, which they were so nice and gave us a private tour in Milan. And when you see it, is, have you seen it?

• 1:37:07Tim Ferriss?

  I have not.

• 1:37:07Speaker 03

  It's bigger than the size of this wall. People can't see it, but I thought it was like more of a...

• 1:37:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, arm to arm. And like Tim Ferriss, arm to arm.

• 1:37:15Speaker 03

  Man, that thing is huge. It's the whole side of a building. And it was just breathtaking and just got away. It's like, but seeing these relics and all of these things that still, you know, stood the test of time. And he's still actually here today. And just seeing that, it was very inspiring. I was always fascinated in the Renaissance, you know, in the Renaissance period, and knowing that the houses were right down the street. So you could go and... Go study under Michelangelo and be a sculptor.

• 1:37:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:47Speaker 03

  And you could go under Da Vinci and be a painter and it's right, all right there in this small little space outside of Florence or in Florence or whatever, I can't remember.

• 1:37:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, but just, just thinking of the density is crazy.

• 1:37:57Speaker 03

  Crazy, you know, so it showed me that things are possible that you could do was just through his observation and extensive note taking and curiosity, you know, I try to embody those things.

• 1:38:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:08Tim Ferriss?

  And he had these, also these incredible inventions and part of the reason this is reasonably fresh on the mind is that I've interviewed Walder Isaacson a few times and interviewed him about his, his Da Vinci book and some of his inventions were just these prescient, accurate predictors of the future, right? Like hundreds of years later.

• 1:38:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:26Tim Ferriss?

  And a lot of them were terrible, like they never would have worked. And you would not want to be wearing his, you know, mock up for bird wings and jump off a cliff.

• 1:38:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:38:36Tim Ferriss?

  And I think that's also very inspiring in a way, right? Because he had these masterpieces that were masterpieces despite the fact that they were incomplete.

• 1:38:43Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:38:43Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe in some ways that makes them even all the more interesting. And he also had misfires.

• 1:38:48Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:38:49Tim Ferriss?

  Right? So it's like, it's like if, if Leo is allowed to have both of those, maybe we should be allowed to have those.

• 1:38:55Speaker 03

  That's okay, we can have them.

• 1:38:58Tim Ferriss?

  And I'd love to hear your thoughts and I apologize if you've been asked this a million times, but I think for people listening, your story has many different points that can be inspiring. The one that I think everyone can identify with certainly is points in life when you realize that certain things are within your control.

• 1:39:18Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:39:19Tim Ferriss?

  And certain things are outside of your control. In fact, a lot of things.

• 1:39:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:39:22Tim Ferriss?

  And so you have this pulmonary embolism.

• 1:39:25Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:39:25Tim Ferriss?

  And for reasons or for causes, perhaps partly known, partially unknown.

• 1:39:32Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:39:33Tim Ferriss?

  That marked the beginning of, of an end of a career.

• 1:39:38Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any particular books or resources or advice or anything that helped you through that period? I mean, what was it like emotionally when you realized, okay, I can't actually forestall this any longer? Like, this is, this is it.

• 1:39:51Speaker 03

  It happened in stages. I knew I wasn't gonna play again for sure all the way. When a player by the name of Gordon Hayward, he's still playing to this day, thank goodness, he dislocated his ankle. I hadn't played the year before and I still had dreams and aspirations of playing in the NBA. And I mean, that took all the wind out of my cell. First game of the season, first five minutes of me watching that season, I was like, man, let me watch basketball, I'm gonna get back into it, cuz I'm playing this season. Somebody's gonna pick me up. And that's a dislocated ankle. You know?

• 1:40:24Tim Ferriss?

  In that game?

• 1:40:25Speaker 03

  In that game. I hadn't watched basketball in close to a year. First game that I watched, guy dislocates his ankle. And I mean, whatever motivation that I had instantly went away. And I said, ah, man, that could be me. Oh, boy. Those workouts just weren't as intense after that. In the midst of figuring these things out, I can't remember what I read, but it was pretty much trusting everything that I read. And all of these books that say, find what you love to do. You gotta love, you gotta love it. And it sounds great until you're put in that position, right? And so I found myself kind of asking, well, what do I love to do?

• 1:41:10Speaker 03

  Basketball. Okay, what else? I had to answer that question. I didn't know anything else. And I had to deal with the preconceived notion that, I guess, people think I'm smart, which is great. Like, oh, Chris, you'll be fine. You'll figure it out. But in that moment, you know?

• 1:41:24Tim Ferriss?

  You still have to figure it out.

• 1:41:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, you still have to figure it out. And so I sat, I was found myself sitting around, okay, let me answer this question. What else do I love doing? And that's where music came in. And I always wanted to learn how to play an instrument. It was one of those things where I gave up, like, two or three times in my teens and twenties. So I said, man, you know what? This time, I'm gonna pick it up and I'm not gonna put it down. And I'm gonna learn how to play. I'm gonna learn how to play an instrument.

• 1:41:54Tim Ferriss?

  Which instrument?

• 1:41:55Speaker 03

  The guitar. I started with the guitar.

• 1:41:56Tim Ferriss?

  Let me ask a really naive question. I'm just looking at the size of your hands compared to my hands. Is it harder for you to form chords on a standard guitar?

• 1:42:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is a little. Right? The things you have to, but you gotta figure it out.

• 1:42:15Tim Ferriss?

  I was like, I'm thinking maybe bass.

• 1:42:17Speaker 03

  I recently, which is the same, not chord structure, but it's the same string, string patterns and everything, the notes, it's all the same system. So, you know, yeah, I've recently gotten into bass in the last few weeks and months. But yeah, I mean, I wanted to learn how to play the guitar, man. And I said, man, I've always, I never stopped. Does it make any sense? Of course it doesn't make any sense, but I love it. This is, I love it. I was watching the Rolling Stones was on TV playing there.

• 1:42:45Tim Ferriss?

  Doesn't need to make sense.

• 1:42:46Speaker 03

  Well into their life and they're still doing shows. I said, I want to do that. I do that for free. And then I found myself, my wife and I, we were already avid music lovers and stuff like that. We cranked it up a notch. We went to rock festivals, went to Coachella, Glastonbury, Bonnaroo, going to see certain shows, you know, meeting all of these cool musicians and just doing something different. And I mean, it was just, it was amazing. And I started getting magical feelings and those things, that magic that you want to pursue. It didn't make any sense at the time. I just knew it felt good. And so that opened up a new world of possibility to me.

• 1:43:27Speaker 03

  And, you know, I started making more friends, making great connections. Music is one of those things that really do bring people together and it's a live element to it. It's a recorded element to it. It's just all these different elements that you could put together or keep separate and just really enjoy it. And so then I found myself, you know, okay, playing the guitar, then I wanted to make beats. Then it just went out to full-fledged productions and writing sessions and stuff like that, but. Continuing to go on and meeting great people. Rico Love is a great friend of mine. Miguel, the artist Miguel is a great friend of mine. Meeting Billy Corbin, meeting Collective Soul, having beers after their show,

• 1:44:11Speaker 03

  you know, and just hanging out. There's some Atlanta, Georgia boys, you know. We're connecting with so many different people in so many different ways was really, really cool. And especially here in Austin, it's been great. You know, Gary Clark, we met him a few years ago, but just I was just so enamored by how they could play the guitar, man.

• 1:44:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:29Speaker 03

  And just do all these cool things. So that's just really been a thing that has actually turned into something, but has been great for the spirit.

• 1:44:37Tim Ferriss?

  What would you, aside from trying to find the thing that lights you up inside? Cause I'm sure you had some dark moments too, I would imagine.

• 1:44:44Speaker 03

  For sure, for sure.

• 1:44:45Tim Ferriss?

  For someone who's going through an experience like that, maybe there's something they had planned that they no longer can pursue.

• 1:44:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:52Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe they had a career or relationship or something and now they just feel this void and they just feel

• 1:44:59Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:59Tim Ferriss?

  directionless, not necessarily hopeless, but just really unsure of what to do.

• 1:45:03Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:45:04Tim Ferriss?

  What advice might you give them or what would you say to them?

• 1:45:06Speaker 03

  Be open. I spoke with a friend, I won't name who they are. I was having one of those days, right? Just in the dumps and I was taking this trip and I was doing some work and this particular person was running a network and running a company, the CEO. And, um, you know, I was feeling all bad and stuff and I said, man, you know, how do you know it's a brilliant person? I'm going to get some insight. The first thing that person said was, well, I was a child with cancer and when you really do go through a situation to where you're going to wear hair or no hair, you truly do find out that is up on you to make a choice to enjoy it or be happy or attempt

• 1:45:51Speaker 03

  to get yourself going. And when they said that, I was like, man, all these problems that I feel that I have, and this person just told me they were a kid with cancer. So that kinda made me realize like, okay, put everything to the side. This person just told me that it is really our choice. Not necessarily that bad things won't happen, or life won't throw curveballs, or things happen, or you won't be in a rut. It's just that when you're in this rut, it's on you to get out of it and to actually have confidence. Now, people can help you, but one of the things that we always said in basketball, if you were like on a shitty team,

• 1:46:36Speaker 03

  one of the worst experiences to have, because you know, you're losing and then you're feeling bad inside, but then you're making money and it's good money and people are like, oh, you're fine, which it's like this paradox. But like, we always used to say, hey, look, nobody's coming through that door. If you're waiting on that perfect person or that perfect

• 1:47:01Speaker 03

  utopian moment to come, it's not. You gotta start putting the work in now. Pick yourself up. Self motivation, right? Yeah. You gotta get yourself going and then you'd be surprised. Things start happening. Yeah. But you can't sit in the bed feeling sorry for yourself. That's like one of the toughest things to do. Sorry with all these basketball analogies, but

• 1:47:26Speaker 03

  you know, five game losing streak. One of the hardest things to do is to bounce back and actually win a game because it's hard. Start watching basketball. Watch a bad team play. They have a chance to win the game. They're in the game. One bad thing will happen and they just, oh, the body language, the shoulders start slouching. People start, no, no, no, keep playing. Yeah, okay, you, you, you know, it's a couple of things that hurt, or it's a couple of things that, hell, it sucks. Let's get that out the way. It sucks right now, but we're not gonna no pity parties. You know, that, that becomes uh, being old very fast. And you do see success. That's not gonna take away the challenges. You know, you're still gonna be, you're still gonna be faced with challenges daily.

• 1:48:12Speaker 03

  But if you get into the mindset to where you say, okay, hey, problem, solution, look in the mirror. What am I gonna do right now? Because I'm gonna stop feeling sorry for myself. This is so easy, right? You could just, oh, man, you know, the coach, oh, they, they did it. Oh, man, I, after a while, it gets old. And I assume if someone's listening to this now, even if they're in a place where they don't wanna be frustrated with it, it's a daily grind, but it's not gonna happen tomorrow. You gotta make that decision, start focusing, start visualizing and, and start working toward that goal and know just because you had this moment of thought and say, okay, I'm going for it. The seas aren't gonna part, you know?

• 1:48:56Speaker 03

  It's just not gonna just open up for you and say, okay, Chris, great, yeah, this is what you wanted. Why did you ask? It's not like that. You've gotta be consistent, be diligent, and just know that the challenge is gonna come and when these things arise again, I'm not gonna feel sorry for myself. We're gonna win this game, even when it gets hard. And then we're gonna do it again and again and again and again. And just, you know, get to that point.

• 1:49:18Tim Ferriss?

  That's a great story. When you had, it is. When you had that conversation with this, I guess, network exec. Do you recall what the next thing was that you did when you were like, oh, wow, okay, that puts things in perspective?

• 1:49:30Speaker 03

  I stopped complaining. I knew I was complaining. I didn't know I was complaining, but I, I heard myself. I heard my language. Sometimes you gotta listen to yourself. And this was me after me promising myself that I wouldn't complain after I came from Africa. I went to Africa. We went to Joe Berg. We went out to Clint Town and Soweto and saw real poverty.

• 1:49:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:50Speaker 03

  Went to India, speaking of being the NBA Global Ambassador. We went to places and we have seen real poverty, you know, that make the projects look like a five-star hotel. And so when I saw those things and you take in all that stuff, it's like, man, it's heavy. What have I been complaining about? I haven't been complaining. Ah, man, I've been complaining a little bit. When she said that, I instantly stopped feeling sorry for myself and said, okay. At the end of the day,

• 1:50:21Speaker 03

  thirteen years in the league and I've got a shot at doing something else. That's all I need. I don't need the, like I say, that leader to come by and say, no, Chris, let me tell you something. Kick the door in and just get me going. That right there was kind of like, ah, man, I felt bad, you know, for even having not weakness, not points of weakness, but just like having those thoughts and just saying, like, what do people say when you, if you think you've got problems, where everybody put their problems on the table, you'll pick yours back up real quick?

• 1:50:54Tim Ferriss?

  Never heard that. That's great.

• 1:50:55Speaker 03

  It's kind of, that's pretty much what it was. Like, okay, I've got some problems, man. Okay.

• 1:50:59Tim Ferriss?

  I'll take those back.

• 1:51:01Speaker 03

  Wasn't that bad. How you feeling? Fine. I'm doing great.

• 1:51:07Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I'm so glad that they were having this conversation. It's so easy to complain and I feel like I've been complaining a lot in the last handful of weeks and it's, it's socially reinforced. You will find somebody if you go searching who's going to encourage you. Oh yeah, you're right to feel that way. Oh, that's terrible.

• 1:51:25Speaker 03

  And then how do you feel, right? How do you feel when you're doing it? And that's for people listening too, you know, and make you look at who's around you a little more.

• 1:51:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:32Speaker 03

  It's because it's like, yeah, yeah, it's tough and it sucks and it's been like that for years, but aren't you tired of it? You sick and tired of being sick and tired.

• 1:51:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:41Speaker 03

  Right? After a while, it's not going to change.

• 1:51:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:45Speaker 03

  These habits that you're building, you kind of think about the habits that you're building. And I tell people too, be conscious of what you're consuming, especially nowadays. You know, I tell my kids that and I try to, you know, even for myself, you know, just with everything you can consume, it's a lot of BS.

• 1:52:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:00Speaker 03

  You know, so just be aware of what you're putting into your mind, what you're thinking about. And yeah, birds like a feather, right? If you're, you find yourself complaining and yeah, people, I say, you can have pity party, but after a while, they're going to get tired of you complaining. They're going to be complaining about you.

• 1:52:17Speaker 03

  You know, so it just you just get to a point where it's like, okay, hey, man, let's talk about solutions, you know, let's talk about solutions. How do we get out of this rut? Or how do we find that next thing to do? For me, music and writing, I would have looked at you like you had eight heads five, six years ago. Music, maybe five years ago, not so much writing.

• 1:52:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:42Speaker 03

  I always did them, but just thinking of that, I wouldn't have even come close at that time. But going through challenges and situations, you wanna, you wanna come out better, right? You don't wanna still be holed up, talking about what could have been or why it didn't happen. That gets old after a while.

• 1:53:00Tim Ferriss?

  So ladies and gentlemen, if Chris Bosh can have these days, you can too, but it's about what you actually do in response to those days.

• 1:53:09Speaker 03

  Response, man.

• 1:53:10Tim Ferriss?

  And, you know, a long time ago, you're inspiring me, I'm gonna do it again. I read a short book. It was called The 21 Day No Complaint Experiment, written by a pastor, Will Bowman, I think is the name. And it's just a commitment to not complain for 21 days.

• 1:53:27Speaker 03

  I like that.

• 1:53:28Tim Ferriss?

  And it had a huge impact.

• 1:53:29Speaker 03

  I read that.

• 1:53:30Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm gonna do that because, like you said, if you were to put your problems on the table with even a small subset of humankind, you'd be like, I'll take this back.

• 1:53:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:53:41Tim Ferriss?

  Thanks, thanks. No, nobody take my problem cookies. I want those, I'm going home with those. And it really does make a tremendous difference. And I think that Letters to a Young Athlete is gonna do a lot of good. I'm very excited about this. I am thrilled you took the time to do it properly, two and a half years. When I hear people like, yeah, we started writing, and three months later, we were done, I was like, don't send it to me.

• 1:54:02Speaker 03

  And hey, look, would I had preferred it to be one, one and a half? Sure. We had the intention, but you know, the, the process is the process, right?

• 1:54:11Tim Ferriss?

  The process is the process.

• 1:54:12Speaker 03

  You go through, you know, and we've been hands on, you know, from the jump. This has been so special to me. But it's like, I was joking the other day, you said, in, in writing about a book overcoming obstacles, we had to overcome obstacles writing the book.

• 1:54:31Speaker 03

  You know, that was, you know, that was a good one, man. And it was, it was such a, it was a tremendous process. And I think a lot of people will really, really be able to take something for themselves. No matter what they do, they'll be able to take something for themselves because, you know, it's been a team effort through and through. It's been one of those things to where I'm talking about people that I admire and situations that I admire from my own life that was like, oh yeah. And the moment you're just doing it, but then reflecting on it, it's like, oh yeah. That conversation that I had with my coach back when I was 21, that was-

• 1:55:06Tim Ferriss?

  Set off these ripple effects.

• 1:55:07Speaker 03

  That set off the ripple effect so I wouldn't freak out.

• 1:55:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, it makes me happy you took the time. I remember somebody said to me at one point, I was struggling as I do with any writing and I was struggling through a book and they said, oh, you're 90% done. Congratulations, there's only 50% left. And I was like, oh.

• 1:55:27Speaker 03

  90% done, 50% left, like, wait a minute.

• 1:55:30Tim Ferriss?

  Wait a minute, they're like, oh, trust me. And they're like, yeah, you'll see, you'll see what I mean. You'll see what I mean.

• 1:55:35Speaker 03

  No, that's great.

• 1:55:36Tim Ferriss?

  And I think, you know, athlete is an interesting term and letters to a young athlete. You might even say letters to a young competitor and people might be inclined to say, well, I'm not a competitor. And I would say you are, even if you don't compete with other people, there's a competition like we've been discussing between your lesser selves and your better selves.

• 1:56:00Speaker 03

  Absolutely. That ego.

• 1:56:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, we're all in the game.

• 1:56:03Speaker 03

  Everybody's in there and, and you know, it's, you know, like I said, giving you the tools and teamwork is definitely one of, one of the main tools. Of course, mental preparation, self motivation, getting yourself ready and going, but teamwork, working with others, learning how to coexist with people going after that goal.

• 1:56:23Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 1:56:24Speaker 03

  I think that's a huge, huge important thing that we definitely, definitely talk about because going to Miami, playing with the best two players in the world. So my ego had to take a backseat. I came in thinking I was going to be the number one scorer. In the league. Definitely in Miami, only because I said, man, they can score, but I can score too. And they're going to be making plays for me. That was in my head, but the math doesn't work. You know, you're going to have to learn how to coexist within this structure. Being the third peg on the stool, nothing wrong with that. But fighting that notion that that actually means something, putting the team before yourself and, you know, making those tough decisions that you have to make.

• 1:57:09Speaker 03

  Because it doesn't feel good, but the team is a done. So, hey, Chris, you need to play at the center. Guard these bigger dudes because you're the only one that can do it. Rebound the ball and get it to these guys. Like, no, no, no, I want to score. You know, you give me the ball. No, no, Spoh, you must have it wrong. You give me the ball and everybody else get out the way. That's how we did it. And it's not necessarily the case if you want to be successful. So that's like always kind of a thing that always took very importantly and took the heart. If you're going after a championship or legacy or greatness or something like that. And you're a part of a team. The team has to come before the person and what's best for the team.

• 1:57:50Speaker 03

  You know, might not be best for your ego sometimes and you have to be okay with that. You gotta tell your ego, take the backseat. Let yourself take the backseat. We're going to be champions, man.

• 1:58:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, sometimes that's what it takes.

• 1:58:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, man.

• 1:58:03Tim Ferriss?

  If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together and.

• 1:58:08Speaker 03

  Together, man.

• 1:58:09Tim Ferriss?

  Chris Bosh, at Chris Bosh on Twitter, also on Instagram at Chris Bosh. Official Chris Bosh on Facebook. The new book is Letters to a Young Athlete. I've really enjoyed this conversation. It's so nice to meet you.

• 1:58:22Speaker 03

  Same here, nice meeting you.

• 1:58:23Tim Ferriss?

  And is there anything else you'd like to, to say to the audience, any other requests, comments, questions, anything you'd like to add before we, before we wrap up?

• 1:58:33Speaker 03

  Oh, man, I just love starting a discussion. I think that's what the future is really going to be about. So I want this book to be a discussion and really, you know, all books and just be a civilized discussion where we can see where each other's coming from. Because I think nowadays, you know, things get polarized and kind of either taken out of context or being too much. I want everyone to know how important this book is to me, but. With that said, we want to start the conversation of how to be great, breaking those things down, how to constantly get over those challenges, like I keep alluding to, that are coming, and to have those open discussions and just continue to push the boundaries in a positive, great way. But let everybody know they can do it.

• 1:59:18Speaker 03

  If they have that thing, do it, don't wait, and you can do it.

• 1:59:23Tim Ferriss?

  Look in the mirror, don't complain.

• 1:59:25Speaker 03

  Man, problem and solution, look in the mirror.

• 1:59:27Tim Ferriss?

  Problem and solution, letters to a young athlete is the book. And I'm excited for you. That's, it's a big accomplishment. I know how much effort goes into it. And I'm thrilled that people will get to learn also the principles, right? You'll have stories, but also the principles that you've applied, not just to one thing, but to many things, even though you are best known for one thing. And I think, you know, in a way, the obstacles that you faced within the context of a book like this are a tremendous gift because there are battles everyone is fighting that we know nothing about. You've had to face and overcome obstacles yourself, and I think that is incredibly

• 2:00:12Tim Ferriss?

  humanizing also.

• 2:00:14Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And that's what, you know, I like to call the pillars of getting through things, you know, the pillars of success. That's kind of like my work and title for it, you know, is perseverance, mental preparation, rising to the occasion, teamwork is a huge of them. Visualization is a huge, because I feel in my life, everything that's happened, I always saw it in my mind's eye first and did hours and hours and hours of imagining. And, you know, then it's time to put in the work after that. And you can't just sit there and dream about it. You just gotta go out there and do it. And, you know, work be calculated. Of course, you just can't go out there with no goal and just run around like a chicken with your head cut off. But you can identify that goal and then work backwards and say, okay, what do I need to do? And work hard at those things.

• 2:00:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, one step at a time. Chris, thank you so much for taking the time.

• 2:01:03Speaker 03

  Thank you, man. I'm so glad to be on here. It's great. I've been listening for years and it's great to be on here. Really cool. I hope it fits.

• 2:01:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it does fit. It's great to spend some time together. And for everybody listening, we will have links to everything, including letters to a young athlete in the show notes at timdoplog forward slash podcast, easy to find. And until next time, thank you for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered.

• 2:01:52Tim Ferriss?

  It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Theragun. I have two Theraguns and they're worth their weight in gold. I've been using them every single day.

• 2:02:36Tim Ferriss?

  Whether you're an elite athlete or just a regular person trying to get through your day, muscle pain and muscle tension are real things. That's why I use the Theragun. I use it at night, I use it after workouts. It is a handheld percussive therapy device that releases your deepest muscle tension. So for instance, at night, I might use it on the bottom of my feet. It's helped with my plantar fasciitis. I will have my girlfriend use it up and down the middle of my back and I'll use it on her. It's an easy way for us to actually trade massages in effect. And you can think of it, in fact, as massage reinvented on some level. Helps with performance, helps with recovery, helps with just getting your back to feel better before bed after you've been sitting for way too many hours. I love this stuff.

• 2:03:21Tim Ferriss?

  And the all-new Gen 4 Theragun has a proprietary brushless motor that is surprisingly quiet, it's easy to use, and about as quiet as an electric toothbrush. It's pretty astonishing. You really have to feel the Theragun's signature power, amplitude, and effectiveness. To believe it. It's one of my favorite gadgets in my house at this point. So I encourage you to check it out. Try Theragun. That's Thera, T H E R A G U N. There's no substitute for the Gen 4 Theragun with an OLED screen. That's O L E D. For those wondering, that's organic light emitting diode screen, personalized Theragun app, and incredible combination of quiet and power. So go to Theragun.com/Tim right now and get your Gen 4 Theragun today.

• 2:04:03Tim Ferriss?

  Or you can watch the videos on the site, which show you all sorts of different ways to use it. A lot of runner friends of mine use them on their IT bands after long runs. There are a million ways to use it. And the Gen 4 Theraguns start at just $199. I said I have two. I have the Prime and I also have the Pro, which is like the super Cadillac version. My girlfriend loves the soft attachments on that. So check it out. Go to Theragun.com/Tim. One more time, Theragun.com/Tim. This episode is brought to you by Tonal. That's T O N A L. Tonal is the world's most intelligent home gym and personal trainer. That's the tagline from their website, folks. So it gives you the one sentence summary. By eliminating traditional metal weights,

• 2:04:47Tim Ferriss?

  Tonal can deliver 200 pounds of resistance in a device smaller than a flat screen TV. It mounts right on your wall with no floor space required. I've had one for a few months now, after a number of close friends recommended Tonal to me, and it allows me to do things that I would normally need a huge gym for, like cable chop and lift or rotational exercises. And it allows me to do other things that are nearly impossible otherwise, like eccentric loading, which I'll talk about again later. Tonal is precision engineered and designed to be the world's most advanced strength studio and personal trainer. It uses breakthrough technology like adaptive digital weights and AI learning, together with the best experts in resistance training, so you can get stronger faster. One of my friends, who used to be

• 2:05:30Tim Ferriss?

  a competitive skier, very high level competitive skier, has doubled his strength in many exercises over a period of months. So what are these adaptive digital weights? Tonal's patented digital weight system makes thousands of calculations a second to deliver you a smooth weightlifting experience. Using their advanced electronic motor technology. And a lot of the buttons are built right into the handles themselves, into the grips. So you don't need to move around and it is extremely easy to use. Tonal lets you adjust the weight in one-pound increments and you can do it on the fly. Something that was never possible with traditional dumbbells. It's easy to dial weights up and down with just the touch of a button. Tonal also has built-in dynamic weight modes like chains, eccentric, and their patent-pending SmartFlex technology.

• 2:06:15Tim Ferriss?

  So you can experiment with more ways to get stronger, faster, without the hassle of extra equipment like chains and bands. The eccentric, which I mentioned, means that you can set a mode that allows you to say, just as an example, bicep curl 15 pounds up and then lower automatically 20, 25 pounds down. And it is incredible how much you can get done in just a handful of minutes when you use this type of technology. So, check it out. Try Tonal, T-O-N-A-L, the world's smartest tone gym for 30 days in your home. And if you don't love it, you can return it for a full refund. Visit www.tonal.com, T-O-N-A-L dot com.

• 2:06:55Tim Ferriss?

  And for a limited time, get $100 off of smart accessories when you use promo code TIM21. Like I'm ready for my first drink at checkout. That's www.tonal, T-O-N-A-L, dot com, promo code TIM21, T-I-M-21. Tonal, be your strongest.