We’ve always enjoyed former Duke star Paolo Banchero as a basketball player but his personality is severely underrated. We’ve seen little glimpses: his playfulness when a TV reporter tried to get him to repeat the mistake he made when he said he’d prefer to play UNC in the ACC Tournament rather than Virginia Tech (“oh no, you’re not gonna get me again!”)
Then there was the bizarre scene where a British reporter not well versed in American sports mistook him for Patrick Mahomes.
He also did a very cool
spot for The Brotherhood when he was at Duke where he sat by a fire and said “Why Duke? Well this (pointing to the fire) ain’t it.”
And we’ve admired his rapid ascent in the NBA.
But in this week’s Brotherhood Podcast, Banchero had a conversation with Cameron Boozer and said something exceedingly smart about the toughest part of transitioning to the league – especially as a 19-year-old:
“I mean, I would say for me, for me, I mean, it’s more so off-the-court stuff, like just being on your own. College, you wake up, you got weights, you got class, practice. Your day is planned out pretty much every day, and you are busy from the time you wake up to like, you know, 5, 6 p.m. You know, you’re busy.
“In the NBA, it’s like, you know, you got one practice from 11 to 1 or whatever, it is 12 to 2, and then you got the whole day to just do whatever you want or to chill at home. And so it’s like finding stuff to do in that free time is like, I think it’s every rookie kind of deals with it, where it’s like, wow, like, I really have the rest of the day to like, what am I even about to do? It’s kind of like, especially as a 19-20 year old coming in, it was like, I’m not even have any hobbies yet.
“My only hobby is basketball right now. So I was just playing video games or chilling at home. So I think that all the games, obviously, it’s a lot more basketball being played, a lot more traveling.”
Making it to the league would be an amazing accomplishment for anyone, but Banchero is right: there’s a lot of loneliness. We remember hearing about Kevin Garnett as a rookie and how lonely he was when his teammates went out and he couldn’t go. He spent a lot of nights alone in hotel rooms. At least Banchero had better video games.
And when Boozer’s time comes, he’ll have an infrastructure that players from most other schools won’t find: we don’t have up-to-date stats, but he’s got roughly a 50-50 chance of having a former Duke player as a teammate. Banchero himself has Wendell Carter and Tyus Jones as teammates. Odds are pretty good that a member of the Brotherhood will be there to help Boozer adjust.
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