I just finished my workout three hours before tipoff. That's when my on court time slot is. Twenty five minutes, full sweat, getting after it.
I sit on the leather sideline seats to take in the view. The gold trim on the sideline. The history in the rafters. The smell of anticipation in the air.
Los Angeles Lakers home arena.
LeBron walks onto the court. A few fans see him and start to scream. Without hesitation, the entire crowd stands to watch him warm up.
But I'm not focused on LeBron. I'm locked in. It's the last regular season home game and we've secured our playoff spot. I'm going to play tonight.
Coach calls my name at the start of the fourth quarter. I take a deep breath as I sit on the floor in front of the scorekeepers table. I've been preparing for this moment all season. The final opportunity to prove I'm an NBA player. That I belong in the league.
My intensity is high. I'm physical. I try my best, but I'm horrible. When I rise up for shots I rush them. When I play defence I'm so hyperactive my feet don't stop moving and I give up blow bys. I fumble my drives to the rim. I'm not good. I'm sped up by the defence, by the game, by the moment.
When I reflect on the best basketball I've played, my NBL finals run, my Olympic campaign, my current season in Puerto Rico, the key has always been my ability to play at my own pace. My head is clear. The game moves slow. My body is in control.
I've noticed this in all the best players. They move to their own beat. I've tried to do everything to train this skill. Rhythm dribble drills. Two on one live traps. I watched Fred VanVleet do breathing drills while working on his pick and roll, so I copied that. Pace and control has been a theme of my training for years.
But I've never been able to pinpoint a specific theme or drill that’s made a real difference in games.
That's until last week.
I've been working with my performance coach Cody to improve my one on one defence. It's the part of my game where I feel the most rushed and out of control.
It was a close game. Two minutes left. I had started switching to give the offence a different look. Their best player came off a pin down and I was early in my talk. Switch switch switch. He caught the ball and we were left to dance at the top of the key.
Throughout my career this has been my least favourite part of the game. My relationship with defence has always been messy. In under 16s the state coach told me I couldn’t compete at the next level because I was too weak and a bad defender. At college, defence was the reason coaches gave me for not putting me in. As a pro I played defence with fear. I focused on not making mistakes. And when I did, I'd look at the coach, slap my hands, or pull my hair.
But this moment was different. I was excited for the opportunity. I was ready to make a play.
In a quick flash the gameplan ran through my head. Force right. He had the ball in his right hand. I jabbed at the ball. He quickly put it between his legs to attack left, but I knew this was coming. I slid my feet and cut him off. He put the ball behind his back, ready to attack my hip, but I grabbed his off hand and we raced to the paint together. He took two hard dribbles. I bumped him with my chest. He dribbled the ball off his foot out of bounds.
We got the stop and won the game.
I walked back to the bench. Something was different.
For the first time in my career, on the defensive end, the game had felt slow. My mind had been calm. My body had been in control.
When I talked to Cody afterwards we touched on the band work, the live one on one reps before training, the focus on defensive film. But it was a passing comment that caught my attention.
"You knew you belonged in that moment, and that slowed the game down for you."
I sat with that comment all week.
The Lakers game versus the NBL finals. Defensive isos versus when I have the ball in the post. College versus the Olympics. When I felt I belonged, I played at my own pace. And that's when I played my best basketball.
For most of my career I haven't felt I was good enough. On the court and off the court. The opposite of athat feeling, I'm starting to understand, is belonging.
Humans are wired to belong. It's a survival mechanism built into our DNA. Thousands of years ago, being kicked out of the tribe meant death. The instinct to belong runs deeper than thought.
Belonging is the quiet that arrives when your body stops scanning the room for danger. When the part of you that's always asking "am I welcome here" finally goes still. You don't have to earn anything. You're already in.
In my iso moment I wasn't trying to be a good defender. I wasn't playing a role. I was showing up as myself. Prepared. Present. Ready for what came.
In the Lakers game I was trying to prove I was an NBA player. I was chasing a version of myself that might be accepted. The trying itself pushed the game faster because I wasn't really there. I was somewhere else, chasing.
Same player. Different inner posture. Different game.
There's a piece of biology underneath this too.
When your nervous system feels threatened, including the threat of not belonging, the alarm fires. Heart rate up. Breathing shallow. Time speeds up. Everything gets noisy.
When it feels safe, the alarm stops. Heart rate down. Breathing deep. Time slows. Everything gets clear.
The game didn't slow down because I got better at calming myself. The game slowed down because my body stopped firing the alarm. Belonging is felt in the body before it's thought in the mind.
That's why Cody's comment cracked something open. He wasn't telling me something abstract. He was naming physiology.
The last week has been spent deep diving and reflecting on how to belong. I’ve realised teaching your body to belong isn't a technique. It's a process.
Self acceptance is the floor. You can't feel belonging anywhere without first accepting who you are. The work I've been doing with Cody, with my articles, with my own stories, is the foundation underneath everything else. Without that work, no environment ever feels like home.
Preparation matters too. The thousands of reps on court taught my body it could handle the moment. When the moment arrived, the alarm stayed quiet because the body had been there a thousand times before.
But the real shift has been giving.
For most of my career, the work has been about me. My pace. My confidence. My identity. My belonging. I've read the books, done the therapy, written the articles, all pointed inward. And there's been real growth.
But the deepest sense of belonging I've ever felt has come when I stopped focusing on myself and started giving.
In that iso moment, I wasn't asking the game to make me feel okay. I was offering something to it. The work. The focus. The willingness to compete. I wasn't pulling acceptance from the moment. I was pouring something into it.
The same thing has happened off the court. The days I feel most at home in my own skin aren't the days I've worked on myself. They're the days I've created something that might help someone else. The article that lands with one reader. The teammate I encouraged in the locker room. The sessions with a young player after practice.
Giving is the super secret sauce.
When you focus on yourself, the spotlight stays on you. Every flaw is amplified. Every mistake is evidence. The alarm fires constantly because the stakes feel personal.
When you focus on giving, the spotlight turns outward. You're not in the moment to be evaluated. You're in the moment to contribute. The alarm quiets because the question is no longer "Am I good enough?" but "What can I offer?"
Belonging arrives when you stop needing the moment to validate you and start asking what you can give it.
When I look at my career through this lens, every moment of my best basketball has been a moment of belonging. The Olympics with Will Magnay. The Jackjumpers with my friends. This season in Puerto Rico where I have embraced the team and they have embraced me. Every moment of my worst basketball has been a moment of trying to fit in. Houston. Nebraska. Garbage time in Los Angeles.
Same body. Same training. Different inner posture. Different game.
I haven't figured out how to feel I belong everywhere. Some days I still walk into a gym and feel the alarm fire. Some practices I still catch myself trying to prove instead of just playing. The work isn't done.
But now I know what I'm looking for. Not approval. Not acceptance from a coach or a teammate or a city. Something quieter than that. The feeling of showing up as myself and offering what I have. The game receiving it. The moment taking it.
That's the basketball I want to play for the rest of my career.
Belonging to the game. Not chasing it.
Offering to it. Not asking from it.