Raja Bell

I mean, you know, in the NBA, because I only spent that one year in the front office.

So, you know, I've had that conversation a couple times in that capacity.

Maybe a time or two as an older player in the NBA.

And honestly, at that level, it rarely works.

You did.

That's what I thought.

It rarely works.

These are, you know, it's the old adage of trying to teach an old dog new tricks.

Like these are things that they've been celebrated for at every stop of their basketball journey.

And now you're trying to tell that old dog,

I'm not going to celebrate you for that.

Quite the opposite.

I need you to do the things that you never wanted to do.

And that's a very, very hard conversation to have.

And it's an even harder conversation to digest and make the changes as the person being kind of talked to.

I would say this though, as I've come up with my kids through the high school and youth, football, basketball, what have you, kids listen.

You know, kids listen.

And it's not in a...

You know, they're not pros, so asking them to sacrifice everything that they dream of to be exactly what a team needs, if that means it's going to cut short their upward trajectory, isn't always fair to a kid.

I don't believe in that.