What Chasing My Dream Actually Gave Me

Christmas Day. My fifth year as a professional basketball player. We had a busy morning preparing for an undermanned South East Melbourne team. A 5pm Christmas Day game. South East competed, fought, and played harder than us. We lost by double figures. I played horribly.

Fuck it, I thought. Let's play some Christmas songs and eat some food at a teammate's house.

My childhood dream of playing in the NBA felt miles away, I just sucked in a game, but hanging out with friends, enjoying food, Face Timing Beth — there was this inner happiness I couldn't fake. I felt peace.

If you'd told 15-year-old me that at 25 I still wouldn't have made the NBA, I would have assumed my life was a failure. But sitting in that room on Christmas Day, I realized something strange: I was living a life I actually loved.

Not because I'd achieved my goals. Because I made the most important decision a person can make, to hunt down their dreams.

At a young age, I fell in love with basketball. The ball bouncing on outside pavement. Watching my Michael Jordan DVDs and trying to replicate his moves in the backyard. Posters of Dwyane Wade on my wall. LeBron shirts. Books by Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. My entire childhood was obsessed with playing in the NBA.

At 15, I moved across the country to pursue that dream. I left my family, my friends, my hometown—all for basketball.

The decision to chase the NBA became the most important decision I ever made. Not because of where it led. Because of what it built along the way.

I started my freshman year at the University of Nebraska because I believed it was the best place to help me make the NBA. That came crumbling down fast.

The homesickness hit first. I was 19 years old, 15,000 kilometers from home, in a place where I knew no one. Late nights in my dorm room, staring at Instagram, wishing I was somewhere else. I'd call my parents and try to hold it together. Then I'd hang up and feel the weight of how alone I was.

On the court, I crumbled under pressure. By my junior year, I was barely playing at all. Relationships failed. Grades were poor. I was unhappy off the court and not performing on it.

I hit a low I had never experienced before.

But the dream—that stubborn, impossible dream of playing in the NBA—gave me purpose. And that purpose was enough to survive. Not to thrive. Not to enjoy. Just enough to get out of bed in the morning and keep putting one foot ahead of the other.

Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist who survived the Nazi concentration camps, wrote that those who survived often had something to live for—a task to complete, a person to return to, a reason to endure. Purpose doesn't make suffering pleasant. It makes suffering bearable.

That's what the NBA dream was for me in college. A reason to keep going when everything said I should quit.

I dropped out from Nebraska and signed a contract with the Adelaide 36ers. My failures in college forced me to look in the mirror. If I wanted to stop my past from repeating itself, I had to create a new self.

So I studied. I dove into psychology and philosophy. I read about mindfulness, gratitude, discipline, how to create daily habits. I started meditating every morning. I challenged the core stories I told myself—the belief that my worth came from basketball, that failure on the court meant failure as a person.

I wrote down my values—the traits I respected and wanted to live by. Kind. Hard-working. Curious. Each day, I tried to act in alignment with those values, regardless of how I played.

Off the court, I built something new. I created workout groups with other players. We spent hours in the gym—not because a coach told us to, but because we wanted to get better. I surrounded myself with people who were also trying to grow.

You don't discover yourself by waiting. You create yourself through commitment.

The hunt for the NBA was forcing me to become someone I respected. The pursuit was building me into a better person—whether I ever made it or not.

After three years in Adelaide, I moved to Tasmania. At 25 years old, barely playing in the NBL, the NBA felt impossible. But I kept chasing.

And somewhere along the way, I noticed what the chase had given me.

I woke up to my roommate Fab making coffee in the kitchen. I got to the gym in the morning and the team embraced each other with high-fives. I did long-distance date nights with Beth where we would dance and play Uno.

Small things. Daily things. But they made up life.

The pursuit had given me all of it. Purpose to wake up for. Skills I'd developed through years of work. A sense of meaning that didn't depend on results.

When we lost on Christmas Day and I played horribly, it didn't break me. Because the hunt had already given me what I needed.

In the next twelve months after that Christmas day game, my dream came true.

I went on a historic streak with the JackJumpers to win their first championship. I was Finals MVP. I made the Australian team and competed at the Olympics. And then, amid it all, my agent called.

"Jack, the Houston Rockets have sent through the contract. They want you to sign with them."

I stood with my wife on the streets of Melbourne and just stared at my phone. The moment I had been waiting for since I was five years old.

But the feeling wasn't what I expected. It wasn't immense joy or otherworldly happiness. It was calmness. I had achieved my lifelong goal at 28. But I didn't need it to feel complete. Chasing my dream had already built a life I loved.

When I arrived in Houston, I set a new goal. A new dream arrived. And I jumped back on the hunt.

The destination didn't change anything. The pursuit already had.

There's a French sailor named Bernard Moitessier. In 1968, he entered the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race—the first solo, non-stop, around-the-world sailing race. Nine months in, he was positioned to win.

Then he did something inexplicable.

Instead of finishing, he abandoned the race. He sailed past the finish line, around the Cape of Good Hope again, and kept going—toward the Pacific, alone.

He sent a message to a passing ship: "I am continuing because I am happy at sea, and perhaps to save my soul."

He chose the voyage over the victory. The sailing was the point—not the trophy, not the record.

I think about him sometimes. The man who realized that the chase was enough. That the destination was never really the destination.

Chasing my NBA dream was the most important decision I ever made.

It gave me purpose when I was drowning in Nebraska. It forced me to build myself into someone new in Adelaide. It filled my days with meaning in Tasmania—the friendships, the routines, the small moments that made up a life worth living.

In the end, whether I achieved the goal almost didn't matter. The moment I did, a new one appeared the very next day. The point was never the arrival. The point was the pursuit.

Today, I'm chasing new things. Building a family. Becoming the best basketball player I can be. Becoming a great writer and helping people go after their dreams.

The goals will change. The chase won't.

If you have a dream, go after it. Not because you'll definitely achieve it. But because the pursuit itself will build a life you're proud of—a life worth living, whether you get there or not.