His Polish mother, Aneta, was also a basketball player who, as a former point guard, helped her son develop some of his dexterity but never pushed him into it. “I started out playing football as a goalkeeper,” Jeremy Sochan says. “I did drama. I tried instruments. They never forced me.” But it was basketball in which he began to excel. Despite the system? “Exactly,” he says. “Especially my time in England, it was pretty difficult. You can’t even find courts. It’s all in leisure centres and really expensive. To go on your own or with a couple of friends, you can be paying £60, even more.