Pain. Pain Pain Pain.

Today I had a kind of like let's just say mock draft combine. This was pretty much the event that sees if you get a Talent ID invitation. Which pretty much means you're a top 50 player for your age in Ireland. And it's the only way in to potentially make a FIBA team. This case the U16 team for the U16 Eurobasket team. But obviously, you know something bad happened.

The start went great, had a great playmaking drill, made some good mid-rages and had an alright full-court dash. But then came the final test. 3 point shooting. It was exactly like the 3-point contest in the NBA. At the 3rd rack I slipped up a bit. Screwing up my grip. So I was down in time. I rushed to the 4th, but then, my feet just went beneath me. I tripped myself. My right knee jolted foward, then bashed into the rack, forcing my knee back again. And for the final blow, due to the so little time to react to it, I fall directly onto my knee, causing it to go back up, finally rolling onto my back. But the damage was done. Lying there in pain, punching the ground. I don't go down easily, but when this happened. Everyone knew that it was serious.

I couldn't play, I couldn't walk. I couldn't do anything. Instead of getting up, just to lie down again from the pain. I had to go to hospital for this. The doctors did all the tests. Like MRIs and XRays. Then I was told, I had tore my right ACL and couldn't play basketball for around 10 months. All the work. All the fucking hard work. All the time working through pain, missing time with family, missing a bunch of assignments. Millions of seconds put in just to get a shot, a chance at your dream. But 1 second. Erases it all.

As for everyone on my team, if you somehow see this, I know you'll do really well in your Talent ID sessions. Some of you will make the FIBA team. I know it.

I'm going to have a countdown on my bio with the amount of days till I recover. Let's say it'll take, 300 days before I can start playing competitively. I'm having surgery in a few weeks aswell.

At least I'll be on more now.

TOTEMS