When people come home from work, they normally don’t want to talk about work. The same goes for NBA players even though their job isn’t what some people would consider a “real job”. They normally don’t want to talk about hoops off the floor.
In a sitdown interview with Sixers Wire, Philadelphia 76ers guard Josh Richardson explained that basketball players don’t like talking about hoops off the floor. That is their time to relax a bit and get away from the game.
During his time in Miami, he played with Hall of Famers like Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh and other veterans and he learned a lot from them, but off the floor was not the time to learn.
“It’s cool, honestly, the whole time I’ve known him (Wade) like Bosh, Luol Deng, all of those vets, Amar’e Stoudemire, basketball players don’t like talking about basketball all the time,” Richardson explained. “I know people who aren’t around us really expect us to like bounce basketball ideas off each other all the time, but a lot of the time it’s like we go to dinner and just kick it.”
So what is exactly is talked about between professional athletes when they’re away from the court?
“We talk about whatever,” he added. “We talked about football the last time we spoke. So it’s a lot of different stuff.”
So basketball players are just regular people? Huh, who would’ve thunk? That’s something a lot of people really lose sight of. They see the skills and they see them on TV and think they’re superhumans, but at the end of the day, they are just normal people with normal interests who just happen to play basketball for a living.
This means that they go through their slumps and they need to have people to talk to when they need some advice. For Richardson, if his shot isn’t falling and he’s having issues on the floor, it’s his mother.
“If my shot’s not falling? My mom,” he said. “She was my trainer until I got to college. She played in college. She was a referee, she coached, and that’s why I was always around basketball when I was younger because my mom was always coaching and reffing.”
It doesn’t hurt that his mother is a member of the Air Force so she gives him a sense of discipline and hard work. That hard work has benefited him his entire career as he has gone from a second-round pick in 2015 with the Heat to being a legitimate starter in this league.
So at the end of the day, basketball players are just normal people. They just happen to play a game for a living and Richardson is just a normal dude walking the streets of Philadelphia and living his life. [lawrence-related id=22990,22955,22883]