NICK GRAHAM – PLAYER DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST & AUTHOR OF THE NEW BOOK “UNDERDOG” – EPISODE 909

Email – nickgrahambasketball@gmail.com

Website – nickgraham.org

Twitter – @cultureordie

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Nick Graham is regarded as one of the top player development specialists in the country. His new book “Underdog” will equip the reader with the mental and emotional toughness and endurance any committed competitor needs to run and complete their underdog race. 

Basketball teaching is in Nick’s DNA and he grew up as a member of a basketball family. Nick played college basketball at Washington State for his father Paul and Brittany, Nick’s sister played at Georgia State. Nick grew up around college basketball and credits his dad’s tenure as an assistant coach at Oklahoma State for developing him as a basketball teacher.

Since 2008 Nick Graham Player Development has contributed to the development of thousands of players worldwide most notably, Jimmer Fredette, Trae Young, a handful of other NBA players along with hundreds of Division 1 college players. In addition to on-court development, Nick has also assisted in developing players’ character and leadership skills off the court. 

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You are definitely going to want to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Nick Graham, player development specialist and author of the new book “Underdog”.

What We Discuss with Nick Graham

• “If you’re not living ambitiously enough to be an underdog, are you really living?”
• “What are we doing to create the emotional resilience, the emotional toughness, to be able to navigate the ups and downs, the peaks and valleys that competition is going to bring all of us.”
• “When you’re around great people. Just shut up and study.”
• “This underdog thing, it’s 31 stories to either inspire an underdog, to challenge an underdog, to affirm an underdog, to address the mental health of an underdog.”
• “What’s it going to take to break you?”
• “When you get the right yes, it’s worth all the no’s.”
• His dad’s struggles as an African-American coach in the 80’s
• The emotional resilience to overcome people telling you no
• “Are you running from something? Are you running to something?”
• Making sure you have the right people in your life
• Working on your mental game is a continuous thing
• “When you learn how to deal with the mental, then the physical becomes easier.”
• Tap into the joys that no one can take from you
• His two new podcasts – 12 and Only, Basketball Parent Development Podcast

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THANKS, NICK GRAHAM

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TRANSCRIPT FOR NICK GRAHAM – PLAYER DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST & AUTHOR OF THE NEW BOOK “UNDERDOG” – EPISODE 909

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Who Pets Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co host Jason Sunkle tonight. And we are pleased to welcome back to the Hoop Heads Podcast, Nick Graham, player development specialist and author of the brand new book, Underdog. Nick, welcome back, man. Man,

[00:00:15] Nick Graham: Man, it’s been too long. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:20] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Thrilled to have you back on. Looking forward to diving into your book, learning more about it, sort of the why behind the writing of it, and diving into the content and hopefully getting it out in front of a bunch of people here in our audience so they can go out and pick up a copy and support what you’re doing and obviously be inspired.

So first of all, Underdog, where’d the title come from? Give me a little elevator pitch about what the book’s all about.

[00:00:46] Nick Graham: Yeah, so I’ve always considered myself an underdog. And I think, so I’ll open up the book before we start the book. I have a quote and it says, if you’re not living ambitiously enough to be an underdog, are you really living?

That’s why I’m excited. I believe that everybody is an underdog if you live in life, right? And so I’ve always gravitated towards the underdogs as a basketball coach and a mentor, and that said just really attacking the mental I felt like for me to truly be what I want to be in a competitor’s life, because this book is not just for athletes, if the notion sports competition is 80 percent mental and 20 percent physical, then we have to look ourselves in the mirror and say, we are failing competitors because we don’t have enough resources for them as it relates to their mentality.

You take a competitive athlete, we’ve got the nutritionist, we’ve got the strength coach, we’ve got the stretch coach, we’ve got the this coach, we’ve got, but where’s the mental coach? Where’s the person to help them to develop, create an emotional safe space and to develop the emotions to be emotionally mature to compete?

Because we all know that competition, it is an emotional roller coaster. I was blessed to coach in the Big 12, and that’s kind of why I started this Big 12 podcast, but could you imagine, say, for example, Texas just beat TCU. They beat TCU on a road, maybe their best win of the year, then they come back and lay an egg against Iowa State.

Then they’ve got to figure out a way to pick themselves up because that Big 12 conference isn’t going to stop. But isn’t that competition? And so what are we doing to create something to be able to have the emotional resilience, the emotional toughness, and all that, to be able to navigate the ups and downs, the peaks and valleys that competition is going to bring all of us.

[00:02:44] Mike Klinzing: Was there an aha moment when you thought, I need to write this book or was it more of a slow burn to get to it?

[00:02:51] Nick Graham: Yeah, so like the first part of it was I felt like anybody that can say I’m a basketball trainer and a basketball coach, but let’s just talk about the basketball training. If you aren’t a mental coach, if you’re not helping somebody develop emotionally, then I think you’re not doing your job.

Especially at being a trainer because it’s different because it’s just you and them. It’s more sacred. So you have more an opportunity to develop in that space. Well, what was happening to me is I’m really good at that and I have a passion for it, but to be quite frank, because of the time I was invested in it, somebody that’s only training and not worried about the mental, they’re making more money than me.

So I was like, I owe it to myself for that. But other than that, but more importantly, I was so good at helping people in that space that I was just like, I think there’s more people that I can reach. I was so honored. I think one of the coolest things with the book is the person who wrote the foreword.

I think that you consider having a foreword and a lot of times it’s somebody famous and stuff like that. And I thought about that. And then I was just like, I think it would be dope if I had an athlete. So I have a guy, Demetrius Underwood, who I’ve trained. He was a D3 player, went from D3 All American to D1, and then went from D1 to being a pro.

A true underdog story. And I think he sums it up best. He says that Nick empowered me to develop the mental toughness by creating a safe place emotionally for me to develop that. And I think that if we’re honest with ourselves, while a lot of competitors won’t admit that, that’s what they need. So to answer your question, it was kind of a slow burn and the aha moment at the end of the slow burn, I was working with a kid that I talk about in the book.

His name is Bryce Cook. Bryce Cook is one of. I think he is, when you look at somebody and say, this is what a point guard is, you tell them to go watch Bryce. Well, Bryce committed to SMU, he’s from Dallas, he’s like a 3, 4 star recruit, like 5’7” but just had a huge presence. Bryce had two strokes. He had two strokes at 18 years old, now, like chiseled, an athlete’s athlete, and it took him Four years to go from having this stroke to getting back, reclaiming his D1 dream.

And so he had reached out to me early on in that process and he had asked me to help him, to train him, to get him back. And I was like, absolutely, I got you. And he had nerve damage, so he wasn’t able to do any of the things that he used to do. And I remember it was him and another young man, and I would just tell him, I said we’re underdogs we’ve got to approach things differently, and I could see that resonated with them.

They took pride in that, and every time I would say that, it would allow them to find a way to dig deeper and give a little more, and that was kind of my aha moment, and I took that, and then it turned out to be a bigger group the rest of the summer of college basketball players that I was working with, a kid named Justin Webster at UNLV.

And a host of others, and they all gravitated towards it. And that was my aha moment. I was like, man, I think that more people in this, in whatever competition they pursue, identify with Underdog. So this book can be the rallying cry.

[00:06:17] Mike Klinzing: What was the process for getting started writing it and then going through and getting it all done. How did you sit down to actually write? Are you one of those I get up the first thing in the morning, I write for two hours. Just what was your process like?

[00:06:34] Nick Graham: Yeah, so like me, like I gotta just experience life and just be entrenched and that’s what happened with the first book.

And so that’s why it’s great for me to be exposed to competitors and athletes. One, two, I was equipped, I was qualified to write this book because I’ve been around so many people that are underdog role models, I’ve been around Tyrese Maxey, I’ve been around Tyrese Halliburton, I’ve been around Trae Young, Chauncey Billups, Jimmer Fredette.

And so I’ve been around enough great people to see their habits. So like I can write to that Martin Luther King says that privilege is not something that we should be ashamed of. Privilege is something that we should be obligated to take our privilege and serve people that don’t have that same privilege.

I’ve been so privileged to be around these amazing people and get their secret sauce, so to speak. And so to give that, so once the part of it is just to be around them and then be around the other part of that is to be around people that are in need of that, that aren’t privy to that and see that and that brings that all together. And I write. So for me, obviously I’m a man of faith, so my mornings start with, my God time and my reflection time and my prayer. And then from there I would spill in into writing. So that’s kind of how I did it. But this book was kind of different because it was more of a stop and start.

Whereas the first book, it was just like, once I started, I didn’t stop. So life kind of got in the way, but I think that that was a good thing because I had my own fair share of unexpected underdog experiences in the middle of writing this book. And once I got to the other side of that, that kind of gave me the fuel to just kind of like put my head down and finish it.

[00:08:27] Mike Klinzing: Do you have an outline in mind as you started of kind of where you wanted to go with the book, did you have an overall vision of what you wanted it to look like and the writing process was just kind of filling in the details or was it, hey, I’m starting, here’s my starting point. And then as you’re writing the book, kind of took those twists and turns on its own, which, which one better describes kind of the process.

[00:08:50] Nick Graham: Yeah, like I said, I just pay attention, and it was just being around these people that are really, really great that are kind of like. There’s something I say in the book, it’s called the Windshield Phenomenon, and the Windshield Phenomenon is from a guy named Daniel Coyle, who wrote a book called The Talent Code.

I think it’s very interesting. He says, stare at what you want to become, and he talks about how one of the things he went around the world and studied talent hotbeds to see if you were born with it or if it was just your environment and he saw it was just your environment He said one of the things that they had in common was that they all had a bunch of uber talented people in their windshield And he says if you stare at something intently enough, you will eventually, become what you stare at and so like yeah for me just being around those people like and so much And I think that Chauncey Billups told me, he said, one of my best qualities is I’m a sponge.

One thing, whenever I’ve been around really talented people, I don’t care if you’re a basketball player, I don’t care if you’re a podcast host, I don’t care if you’re a Hall of Fame coach, I’ve always just appreciated that, didn’t take it for granted, and Kobe Bryant said the best advice he ever got was from Michael Jackson.

And Michael Jackson, the singer, said, when you’re around great people. Just shut up and study. And that’s kind of what I did. So like that just kind of like, I just had these lessons that like, and a lot of it was like notes in my journal from something with Chauncey or journal in my notes from like when I was able to observe Tyrese Maxey or spend time with Trae Young or whatever.

I think that was kind of the structure. And then for me, when I write, I don’t put myself on any sort of deadline or any sort of order, I should say. I just kind of write and then once I get to a certain point, I kind of put it all together like a big pot of stew.

And it’s crazy because it’s a piece of me that’s nervous that this isn’t all going to fit. And, but it all fits. So for me, this underdog thing, it’s 31 stories to either inspire an underdog, to challenge an underdog, to affirm an underdog, to address the mental health of an underdog. And so like, I kind of had an idea of like, Everything that an underdog would need, almost like a manual of stories to be an underdog.

And just like anything else, once you get started in that, and maybe I start with like 15 ideas. It’s easy. Oh, I should do this. Oh, I should do that. And next thing you know, everything is just giving you kind of inspiration. And then the other part of it is, I’m a big journaler.

So a lot of, probably 30 percent of my book was like already written in my journals. I just had to go back and rediscover it, which was kind of cool.

[00:11:53] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. Going back, I think in rereading journals, one of the most interesting things that you can do. I know that the things that I write down in daily notes and in journaling, and I’ve been trying to do a really good job of that for the last two, three, four years.

And it’s interesting to go back and kind of reread your stuff and be like, Oh man, I remember when I was thinking about that idea or I remember that particular story. And it is, I think a great resource. It also tells you how much that we forget if we don’t write it down. Because you go back and you’ll be like, yeah, I’m so glad I remember that.

I’m so glad I wrote that down. And then there are other times where maybe my journaling habit wasn’t as strong and I’m like, and I don’t, I don’t, I’m not going to ever remember the details that I can go back to and read in my journal. So I could see where that could be a tremendous, tremendous help as you’re going through that writing process.

One of the things that I think struck me and just thinking about your book is the ability to bounce back from setbacks. When I think of an underdog, I think of somebody who, man, they, they got cut from a team or man, they had a huge loss, or there was a game that was really a big game in their career. And they, they didn’t, they didn’t play as well as they had hoped.

And now you got to come back from that. And obviously that takes a tremendous amount of resilience and toughness. So talk a little bit about that. Perspective and how you help athletes and how this book can help an athlete who’s gone through a tough situation.

[00:13:19] Nick Graham: Yeah, for sure. I’m telling you, you just Chris Pauled me and threw me to live and teed me up like this book, I talk about emotional toughness and I love that word because it’s redefining I think that it’s a lot of times that we stigmatize in competitive spaces, emotional, he’s too emotional.

But then we talk out of both sides of our mouth because we want somebody to have passion and show emotion. And it’s okay to recognize that it is emotional. It’s about developing those emotions and developing, like I say, an emotional toughness. So to that point one of the things that I’m excited about is there are people that mean a lot to me and I was able to celebrate and share their underdog story.

My sister my father. I talk about Bryce Cook, right? Like this guy, like I said, is on top of the world. And then he has four years before he is able to reclaim his dream, having a stroke and then have another stroke, nerve damage and to see him every day fight and to see his resilience.

And so then I talk about, there’s a two part chapter talking about endure the no’s. One of the things that like I empower the reader is to. Understand that when you are trying to do, be it overcome, whatever you have to overcome, no’s are normal. You know, every underdog has them. And that’s why like the foundation quote for the book is Nelson Mandela says, no ax is sharp enough to break the soul of a sinner.

It’s like, what’s it going to take to break you? And that’s one of the biggest things is to develop the strength emotionally, mentally, spiritually, whatever, competitively to not be broken. And so I talk about my dad and my dad obviously is an African American, but he was he was told no 17 times before he got his head coaching job.

He came up in the eighties where there wasn’t a lot of black coaches. There was only one black coach per staff. You know what I mean? And when you think about that, a lot of people, because they’ve never been in that space, don’t understand what that’s like. When you are the only African American coach and there are a team that’s made up of all or primarily all African Americans, then who’s going to have to have a relationship with them off the court?

Who’s going to have a relationship with their AAU coach, with their high school coach, with their parents. That’s all dumped on your lap. So it was just like a very, very, very much so a strain. But my dad, despite that, was really good at it. And he didn’t get jobs because he was black. Was that fair?

Nah. Was that right? No. But that’s what it was. And so for me to see him do everything right, never miss a day of work and just get up and fight. And this isn’t speculation. There were two instances, and I talk about in the book, Wichita State. My dad’s a great interviewer. He’s a great recruiter, so of course he can talk.

So he’s going to kill the interview. He feels like he has a job. He’s going back from the airport. There’s a All American football player that was on a committee that took him back to the airport and he just broke down crying. Big man, just a big dude, like a big dude, just broke down crying.

And he started weeping. And he said, you deserve this job, but you’re not going to get it because they don’t want to hire a black person. If that wasn’t even worse, he interviewed for South Alabama. This is about like this 13th, 14th, 15th job. He kills the interview. The athletic director says, we got our guy.

My dad calls home, tells me and my mom. I see my mom crying with tears of joy. It’s like, I’m just going to take him over to meet the president. My dad over here is the president. Tell the athletic director when he tells him I found my coach, Paul Graham. He said, that’s a black guy. We ain’t hiring a black guy here.

And I cried, my dad cried, but I saw my dad wipe his tears up the next day and go to work. And then he got his, he got his yes as a head coach at Washington State. And what I say is when you get the right yes, it’s worth all the no’s. You know what I mean? And so for me, again, that windshield phenomenon, that’s what I saw.

That’s what I became. So nobody could break me. Like right now, ironically enough, I’m sitting at a school at senior night. I’m sitting at a school at senior night and I was told that I was going to have a job here. I was the interim coach. They said they wanted somebody that could spiritually develop, that could player develop, and somebody that could instill basketball culture.

Where we went 15 and 2 this summer, we went to section 7 and killed it. Every kid grew spiritually to the point where parents emailed them. And obviously, I’m great at player development. I think if you train Trae Young, and you can train Chauncey Billups, and you can train Jimmer Fredette. So like, the whole summer, I was told that I would have a job.

At the end of the summer, after I did what I did, nope, no job.  No job. And right before that, I had a Division I coach, who I won’t name tell me that he wanted to hire me. I had kind of knew this guy, but I had never really sat down. He reached out to me, said he liked the way I move, he likes what I’m about. Like, he’s a Christian as well and he wanted somebody that could develop them in that space.

Somebody that was great at workouts and somebody that could recruit. Offered me the job. I’m packing up boxes. I’m telling everybody I’m having goodbye dinners, I’m looking up apartments. I go on social media. I find out on social media that the job that he offered me somebody had accepted because they posted the graphic.

And so that happened back to back. And that’s what I was saying in the middle of in the, like, I had already had like 30 percent of the book written. And then, like, I was doing so much basketball stuff that I had to stop. And then those two things happen. And I was like, after it took me about three days.

Like, I ain’t going to lie. I cried. I was hurt. I binge watched Suits on Netflix, but after I came to, I was like, okay. And so while that was happening, I had read something and they said, the best use of your pain is redemptive pain. It’s when you use your pain to comfort somebody else. And while, as that was happening, one of my favorite rappers is Fabulous.

I just like took me back to this fab song on a mixtape. And he said, when life gave me lemons, I made lemonade with mine. And that’s when I was like, all right. That I’m going to have to finish this book. And I had a different type of focus after that. And I took all that pain and put it into this book to comfort whoever else.

I ain’t going to be the first one. And so that’s what I’m saying. So it’s not like with this book, it wasn’t like I was talking to somebody I want to talk with my readers, so to speak. And let them know, hey, I’m in this race too, and no’s are normal. I talk about in the book, Sylvester Stallone supposedly was told no over a thousand times before somebody said yes to Rocky.

You know what I’m saying? The KFC, the original recipe, person who invented it, they said nah, this chicken isn’t good like over 900 times before they said yes. Walt Disney was told no over 350 times. And to me, it’s just like, man, these uberly successful people, and you start thinking about it and you start talking to people that have just overcame insurmountable odds.

And if you have a conversation with them, you’ll quickly realize that, yeah, no’s are normal. So if no’s are normal and everybody goes through them let’s not make that, let’s not disqualifies us instead. Let’s develop the emotional resilience to be able to deal with it.

[00:21:30] Mike Klinzing: So it’s interesting when you talk about that phenomena of being able to handle having somebody tell you no, and then being able to keep going and keep asking again and keep going after your dream, despite the fact that somebody is telling you no.

And I was just listening to a podcast this past week where they talked about. What you should do is anytime you go into a store, if you really want to learn how to deal with no, whenever you go to buy something, just walk into that store. When you go up to the counter, just ask them, Hey, can you give me 20 percent off?

And most of the time they’re going to sell but for most of us, that would probably be pretty uncomfortable. If I’m walking into target and I’m going up to the cashier and I say, Hey, I got a hundred dollars worth of stuff in my, in my cart. Can you give me 20 percent off? And maybe the cashier is going to ask you why, or the cashier is going to probably say no.

But what you’re going to do is you’re going to train that muscle of getting used to hearing no coming out of the other side of it, knowing that, Hey, it didn’t hurt me to ask. I’m still here. And now next time it gets a little bit easier. And obviously that’s on a different sort of a different level than what we’re talking about here in terms of our career or in terms of bouncing back as an athlete.

But I think what we’re, what we’re trying to get at is you kind of got to train that. Muscle, that ability to be able to hear no, stare that no in the face and then keep going. Right.

[00:22:59] Nick Graham: Yeah. I mean, especially in a society that we live in, because the thing is it’s like, while most people have had to endure no’s, most people hide their no’s.

And they only put their yeses on social media. And so when you’re a young coach, right? That coach that you’re looking up to, that’s A D1 assistant at a high major flying private with all that, you don’t see how many times he was told no. There are a lot of people that looked up to my dad that have no idea, they didn’t see the tears that he cried.

To your point, that is important because a lot of times it does disqualify people because they don’t realize that that’s just a part of the process. And either one of two things happen, right, one of three things, either that person is lying. Either they had it handed to them, or they were told no to a lot.

They were told no a lot. And that’s where I feel like we have to realize the competitor in me is like, man, if Walt Disney could have that many no’s, if this person could have that many no’s, if Rocky, Sylvester Stallone, if my dad, then I can endure it too.

[00:24:07] Mike Klinzing: There’s no doubt.  I think that to me, when I think about people who have had a tremendous amount of success, what you’re thinking about is people who do not give up. And I can’t even tell you Nick, the number of books that I’ve read that I’ve talked about. You’ve got to keep going. And obviously there’s a time where sometimes you’re doing a project, you’re working on something and yeah, maybe you need to abandon that because it’s not going to work.

But too often, I think people abandon something before they get to that point where it really takes off. It’s like that old theory of overnight success never happens overnight. It’s like, I can work on something for five years. And boom. Yeah. All of a sudden, after five years, maybe that thing takes off.

And just like for your dad, you get rejected 17 times. Nobody sees that your dad keeps plugging away, keeps plugging away, plugging away. And then all of a sudden it’s like, boom, now he’s the coach at Washington state. And some people from the outside are looking at it going, man, look at this guy. Came out of nowhere.

All of a sudden, he’s getting a Washington State job, whereas you and he and your mom know the real journey that, yeah, this, he got the job in whatever, in one day, but it was a long, long process to get him there. And I think there’s something to be said there for that resilience to keep coming back.

[00:25:22] Nick Graham: Yeah, no, no doubt.  And the thing is, you more than likely have what it takes, butif you don’t quit, if you keep showing up. You’re going to get better. You know what I’m saying? Like, you’re going to get better. You’re going to learn.

You’re going to have more experience. And all that. And yeah, it’s not fair and it’s unfortunate. Like I said, with my dad, because of his race. And to be honest, I think that was the same thing with me. But, I mean, it’s, everybody has something. You know what I mean? Like, it’s like, okay, like, yeah, it’s not fair, but I can’t let that stop me.

I just have to, I have to rise above it. I have to keep going. And it’s like, it’s the same thing in competition. Coaches have favorites, right? You know what, like, this guy has a longer leash. It’s not fair that I make, you hear it all the time. Well, if I make one mistake, I’m coming out of the game. Okay, like, when I mentor somebody, I’m glad that you acknowledge that.

Cause I ain’t in practice every day. Yeah, your coach might be hating on you, but let’s figure out a way to navigate it. So like, if you only make one mistake and I’m coming out of the game, either you going to quit or you going to figure it out.

But think about what you develop along the way. Now, that coach that put that much pressure on you, like I make one mistake, I’m coming out of the game. If you don’t quit and you don’t let it break you, even though it’s unjust. Guess who’s more equipped and more prepared to show up in the fourth quarter because I’ve been doing this every day.

Like I can’t make one mistake. So like why everybody else is folding like what you did to try to stop me it doesn’t break Like I say that there’s a story in a book of a young man, Dalen Koontz. Dalen Koontz started at Colorado as a freshman. Sophomore year was terrible. I mean, it was god awful terrible.

The last part of his sophomore year was even worse. He was barely playing, so he transfers to Northern Colorado the next year. Next year, Northern Colorado, he played Arizona. He had 33 points at Arizona. He outscored. Colorado in the Pac 12 when he played the entire league. He outscored that season in one game.

But it was like I did a podcast with him and it was like because he went through that, that allowed him to be here. And what I say in that chapter of the book is Tough times, if you don’t allow them to break you, they will create a better you. So it all comes down to that Mandela quote, like, if you show up and you can’t break me whether it’s just because it’s hard or whether it’s because you hatin whatever it is, I’m going to look adversity,  I’m going to look at my haters. I’m going to look everybody in the face and you cannot break me. Look and see what you become.

[00:28:17] Mike Klinzing: When I hear that lesson, what I think of is can I go through those tough times? Can I face up to them? And then when I come out the other side, can I take those lessons that I learned when things were tough? And now when things start to turn in my favor, because I kept working, because I didn’t pout, because I didn’t give up, because I didn’t groan and moan and say, what was me?

Instead, I looked it dead in the face. And I just kept working. And even though, as you said, it might feel unjust. It might’ve been wrong, but there’s two ways you can handle that. You can either quit and go in the tank in that situation, or you can double down and continue to be even more of the player and the person that you are.

And then to your point, I think when you come out on the other side, then you get the results, like you just described where, Hey, I outscored my previous season in one game, like that doesn’t happen to somebody who gives up in the face of adversity. That’s somebody who fights through that adversity. And I think.

That’s not an easy thing. For thing for people to do, especially when you look at today, Nick, you look at the, the, the culture that we have in college basketball and high school basketball in terms of just, if things don’t go perfectly for me, wherever I’m at, what am I going to do? I’m going to leave. I’m going to transfer.

I’m going to go somewhere else. And I think too often. We run from that adversity instead of kind of staring at the face and figure out how can I work through it? And then what do I get on the other side of it? So to me, I see that that’s a, that’s a big challenge in today’s basketball world is you got to balance.

Obviously, sometimes you get yourself in a situation where yeah, transferring is the right thing because. But I think a lot of times kids are getting bad advice and they end up jumping ship when maybe it’s just a chance to, Hey, yeah, I’m not playing as much as maybe I thought I should, but man, if I fight through it, look at the opportunity I’m going to have next year.

I think too often kids run from that. So I don’t know just how, how you’ve handled that with. Kids and players and parents that you’ve talked to in terms of that.

[00:30:26] Nick Graham: Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s definitely challenging. I talk in the book, there’s a quote that says the difference between a buffalo and a cow is they both can sense storms, but they respond in different ways.

Buffalo sees a storm and he goes full speed into it. A cow sees a storm, as slow as it is, it tries to outrun it the other way, which is impossible, right? And so just being a buffalo, but I think that One, the thing that I tell them is, is are you running from something? Are you running to something?

Because like, I say that a lot of people hustle backwards, right? They fight, they keep fighting the same external battle because they refuse to fight the internal battle. That’s going to allow them to overcome the external battles. So the first thing I say is, okay, what’s going to change?

You’re going to be the same person with the same problems because at the end of life, I’ve always tried to develop somebody, no matter what your coach does, you can thrive. Coach is too hard on me for every person that says coach is too hard on me. I got somebody to say, coach is too soft on me.

You know what I mean? It’s always going to be something. So let me develop the skill, but let me also develop the mental makeup to whatever happens, I’m going to overcome it. And yeah, with that being said, there may be a time at the end of the year where we reassess and say maybe coach was being dishonest.

You know, maybe I see the writing on the wall and maybe there’s another opportunity, but say, for example, like with this, with Daylon at Colorado. I remember encouraging him. And the same thing with Nick Clifford, who’s having an amazing year at Colorado State. He went through the same thing. And he was down in the dumps.

But Nick Clifford is a borderline NBA player because when he was at his darkest moment in Colorado, he still showed up to practice every day when he was sitting on the bench. He still got up shots. And now, even though he did have to leave, He’s thriving so let’s just like that. Yeah, just kind of controlling what you can control But the other part that I enjoy about the book is we get real and talk about making sure you’re embracing your mental health journey to be able to deal with this Making sure that you understand that you can’t do this alone.

Making sure you have the right people in your life. You know, because if you hold this stuff inside, like there’s a chapter in the book that’s talking about care how you cope. Making sure like if you’re going to be an elite competitor, aka an underdog, you better have healthy coping.

Because life is going to life and things are going to happen. Coach may mistreat you or coach may not even mistreat you. He may be so stressed out cause he going to get fired that he’s not in a place to give you what you need in that space. You may just not play. You may get cut. You may not get like what I told you happened to me this summer.

And if you don’t care how you cope. When you isolate, you might turn to a substance, you might lose, you’ll do that instead of developing healthy coping so you can get through it. Because the other part of it that I talk about is, I don’t want you to just get to the other side of it. I want you to get to the other side of it healthily.

I want you to get to the other side of it. Because some people do get to the other side, but they turn into an a hole along the way and then they get to the other side and they don’t have anybody to celebrate with because they treated everybody like crap because they didn’t know how to handle the hurt because it is when you are when you put everything into something and it doesn’t work man that’s a different kind of hurt and it’s lonely and it’s dark and if you don’t deal with it which a lot of us male competitors do and we just swallow it and act like everything’s okay. That ain’t going to work. It’s going to catch up with you.

[00:34:10] Mike Klinzing: When do you think that mentality started to switch? Cause what you just described when I was coming up as a player and in my early years of coaching, there was definitely that. Hey, you keep all that inside, you internalize it, you’re not going to share that you’re struggling with this or with that.

And I think now we’ve all come to recognize that, as you said, you’ve got to have people there with you to be able to, to help you through it, to be able to help you to talk through it. Somebody that you can go to that you can trust, whether that’s a coach, a parent, a teammate, a friend, a professional, whoever it is.

And if you look back in the past, like that used to be considered, Oh man you’re weak if you need a mental, a mental strength coach, for lack of a better way of saying it. So when do you think that shifted? Cause I do think obviously It’s made a huge, huge difference for people who are willing to admit that they need help and look for help.

And again, it makes you not just a better person who’s healthier, but I think it also ultimately makes you a better athlete on the floor when you’re playing.

[00:35:23] Nick Graham: Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:35:26] Mike Klinzing: So just talk, when do you think that shifted in your opinion?

[00:35:29] Nick Graham: Yeah. So like, I mean, I still think we got work to do, but I just think that social media catches a lot of flack, but one of the good things about social media is that I think that social media and then, like, so many athletes have had the courage to speak up on that, whether it’s Kevin Love whether it’s I seen Della Donne, I think she’s taking some time off to address her mental health and whatnot.

I think that that’s been great, and I think that coaches are more open to it. I think, one, because they have to be, because they’re putting pressure on them, so I just think that all those things continue to happen and for me, that was why I felt like I had to write the book because it’s one thing to write a book like this and talk about things like that, but somebody that’s kind of like a hip hop culture athlete that’s grew up as an athlete talking about it, I think that’s going to hit different.

And one of the things that I’m really excited about George Condit, who I helped recruit to Iowa State. So he was professionally, he was competitively depressed. They had only won two games, he was getting cancelled on social media, athletic wise, and I watched him play and he looked like he didn’t want to be out there and he looked like he didn’t belong out there.

And after about the third game, I did something similar with Lyndale Wigginton when he was a freshman and I was just like, this is how the conversation normally goes. What’s good bro? How you doing? I’m good. Are you sure? Yeah. No you’re not bro. You’re not good. I can tell. How you know? Because I love you, I care for you, and I’m your big bro.

Like you look like you’re not happy. I said, you look like you don’t believe that you should be out there. I said, what do we have to do to get you happy? He didn’t even know how to answer that because nobody in a competitive space has ever asked him that. So we developed like organically developed a six step plan and this is in a book, a six step plan to get him back.

The first thing I did was like remind him of who he was. So I would send him clips of him, his YouTube mixtapes to remind him, Hey George, you still that guy. You’re still that guy. Then we developed, we celebrated small victories. Like he was in Oklahoma after we got to talking, he made the best post move I’ve ever seen him make.

Made a move. Like, did a little fake spin, did a jump hook. Man, this dude from Oklahoma blocked it to the fourth row. But, it was progress. Like, he wasn’t moving like that a week ago. So, I called him and we celebrated. He’s like, what are you celebrating for? I got my shot blocked. I was like, look at how you moved.

And so, funny story, man. That’s where we started. Then the next year, Iowa State went to the Sweet 16. He FaceTimed me from the locker room. He’s the captain. He started Graham. We did it. And he’s like, man, to think this started with me getting my stuff tossed into the fifth row. And so like, yeah, and I FaceTimed him today.

He’s on the cusp of getting an NBA 10 day contract. He’s in the G League. He’s playing for the Puerto Rican national team. But like, if we would have never created a safe space for him to talk about that, like he would have just continued to swallow that. And like he’d probably be selling insurance or working for Abrams Rent A Car or something.

[00:38:52] Mike Klinzing: When I consider what we’re talking about here, you see, I think, way more athletes than anybody would like to admit that are in those places like what you just described where a game that They’ve loved their entire life suddenly becomes a place where they don’t want to be because they can’t get outside of their own head and they can’t let, there’s no outlet to let those things get out, which would allow them to get back to a space where.

The game is fun again. And I think when you talk about, especially high level division one college basketball, or you talk about a guy who’s playing professionally, you’re talking about coaches whose livelihood. Is dependent upon that performance of their players and those coaches, just like players, coaches are under a tremendous amount of pressure.

They can’t get outside their own head. Yeah. They can’t get outside their own head. And so then they’re putting pressure on the players and it just becomes this cycle where everybody’s kind of dealing with, yeah. And everybody’s kind of dealing with the same thing, but nobody wants to talk about it. I think the more you can get that out in the open.

[00:40:08] Nick Graham: I would take it a step further. They’re not even aware of it. So like, I never thought of it like this, but what you just said, like I play for my dad and me and my dad don’t have necessarily the greatest relationship now. And they had a lot to do with it, but I wanted to please my dad.

And when I played, I played with so much pressure. Because if I turn this ball over, my dad’s job is in jeopardy. So the more my dad’s job was in jeopardy, the more without him saying anything, I could feel that tension and I could feel that pressure. So I’m saying I lived that. And it’s crazy, with George, one of the things that we did was remind yourself of who you are, celebrate the small victories.

Another thing that a lot of people do is, they think that it’s going to be an easy fix. So I made sure George was prepared, it took yourself a long time to dig into this hole. So you can’t expect to dig out in two days. Like, I’ve told you this story, I’m Peter Positive and giving you all these things.

Like bro, this is a slow grind so I think a lot of times that’s where we fail too is like we don’t give them the whole picture. This is going to be a slow grind. It’s going to be a day by day thing. And the other thing is, it’s not going to show up. Like with George, I told him that progress is going to precede promotion.

And what I mean by that is your progress that you’re doing, this isn’t going to show up in the next game. I think so. A lot of times we walk into it and we expect, okay, like I’m in a good place now and the next game I’m going to have a good performance. And when it doesn’t, I abandon it. Or I did all this work.

Now I had a good game. Now I can leave the mental stuff. No, it’s like, that’s not the way it works. That’s like saying I’ve been working on my shooting. I’ve been making shots. Now let me stop working on my shooting. And then you wonder why you’re in a shooting slump two weeks later. So it’s a continual thing.

[00:42:26] Mike Klinzing: It really is. And I think it’s, the mental part of it has been so discounted. For so long and I think I love how you talk about in the book that when you think about performance that 80 percent of it can be traced back to your mental state and where you’re at and how you can take advantage of what your mind does and your mind can do things in a positive way.

And your mind can obviously do things in a negative way. And I think the first part, like you said, is just to be able to recognize it. And once you recognize it, then you can start to deal with it and have conversations. And to your point, so often, I think as basketball coaches or basketball trainers, we spend a ton of time.

Working on the physical part of the game and I’m working on my technique. I’m working on my skills. I’m working on all that stuff. But the reality is, is if you’re not mentally where you need to be, to be able to execute those things in a pressurized environment, I mean, we’ve all seen it, right? The performance of what somebody can do physically is held back by what they can’t do mentally.

And I think what you’re doing and what the book shares is, how do I bring that to light? And then how do I deal with it so I can perform at my best when I’m on the court?

[00:43:48] Nick Graham: Yeah, no, you’re exactly right. And for me, I think that maybe it’s because of the competitive experience I went through playing with that pressure.

That I approach it backwards. My experiences tell me is when you learn how to deal with the mental, then the physical becomes easier. But the thing is it takes time to deal with the mental, but you have to be real. You can’t finesse that. You can’t fake that, you know? And I’m just grateful on my life’s journey that I had those encounters at a young age.

To be able to be empowered and have the courage to do that. And when I do that with the athletes and competitors I work with, every time it’s just like a release. Like, they walk in so heavy and they walk out a completely different person. Same Lyndale Wiginton his freshman year. We’re at Iowa State.

He’s the first 5 star in the history of Iowa State. Nobody from Nova Scotia has ever been to the NBA and everybody’s saying he’s going to be the guy. One and done, one and done. And he’s just wearing this and wearing this pressure and it’s heavy and it’s getting heavier every day. And he doesn’t even know how to deal with that.

And so we play the first game, he lays an egg. Not because he’s not trying, not because he’s caring. It would be the equivalent of everybody else playing, and you’re playing with like a 60 pound weight vest on. He had an emotional, mental weight vest on. So it finally came to a head when he got benched. He got benched when we were playing in…it used to be the San Juan shootout, but there’s a hurricane, so we played in South Carolina, Myrtle Beach.

So he gets benched. And one, he’s a young kid, so he doesn’t know how to handle that. So he’s just internalizing that. He doesn’t know where to go for help. So he isolates. He’s embarrassed. He doesn’t know how to do it. Just carrying it. So we leave and it was like the perfect setting to have the talk because we’re staying in a beachfront Hilton Hotel.

So we’re walking back to the hotel from the dining place on the beach. So perfect time to have this conversation. I was like, hey, are you okay? Yeah, I’m good. You know, extra tough. Are you sure? Yeah, I’m fine. I was like, man, I said I care about you, right? He says, yeah. I said, when you care about somebody, when you see them hurting, you hurt.

So I’m hurt with you right now. And as soon as I said that, I could just see the release. And he finally, he said, you really want to know what’s wrong with me? I said, yeah. And he just unloaded it all. And I just listened. And then after that, I said, okay, we develop the game plan. This is how you got to deal with it.

I said, one, you got to talk to people. I said, you want to make it to the NBA, which he did. I said, you and the coach, you got to be on the same team. You got to have a communication. It’s like a marriage. Because you need him to coach you, and if you don’t have a relationship, so anyways, he goes and talks to him.

The guy goes and has this monster double double. And the rest is history. He goes and next game he has 28 against Iowa, a few games later 33 against Baylor. But it all started and then we started getting in the gym, working on this game. But it all started with being there for him mentally and creating a space for him to release that so he could be the player that he was created to be.

[00:47:20] Mike Klinzing: So many kids don’t have that, right? They don’t have that sounding board. They don’t have somebody that played that role for them that you played for Lindell, right? I mean, it’s just without somebody there to, to take that talk, to be able to hear that. And really, truly listen and give that player, as you said, a safe space.

So many guys, so many girls, get that trapped in their own head and then they can’t get out and it just keeps spiraling and it keeps getting darker and darker and darker. Yeah. It just keeps getting darker. And before you know it, that’s when you get into, again, as you called it, the competitive depression.

I think about what. Kevin Love talked about, what Demar DeRozan talked about, what Elena Della Donne talked about, that here’s this game that they’ve loved for their entire life, that they’ve played, and it’s brought them so much joy. And then suddenly you’re in this place where, where the game, which used to be maybe your safe haven, The place where you went when you wanted to get away from other stuff or you wanted to enjoy it.

And now suddenly it’s no longer a safe space. And man, that’s a scary place to be.

[00:48:33] Nick Graham: For sure. And it’s like that pivoting back to George’s, another one of those things, that’s what happened to him. So I asked him and when they get in that space, I said, why do you love basketball? Why did you fall in love with basketball?

And then they’ll say something. I said, no more surface joys. I said, because if it’s how many points you score, you started, I said, somebody can take that from you. When I’m talking about the joys that nobody can take from you. So with George, I’ve made him, we recognize, tap into your joys.

You know what I mean? And so his was like, one, every time that he plays, it’s a organic family reunion on the weekends because his family comes and they going to break bread together. You know, being able to compete at the highest level, being able to celebrate something that you’ve worked for with people that you care so much, lifting one another up and just not have like even in a loss, he started getting no more surface joys.

And I said, tap into those joys. Nobody can take those away from you. You can count on that and play from that space. And that was another part of the recipe to help him get out of it. And what made me feel so good about the George thing is when I talked to him today, he talked about something that we, this was like two, three years ago that we talked about because the last step was repeat your recipe, like record your recipe.

Like from a mental health standpoint, if you’re a spiritual person, a spiritual standpoint, like a physical person, how much water are you drinking? Like all these things record your recipe. You know, like, so that way you can replicate it. And here he is two years later, still following that recipe. And it has him knocking on the door of an NBA contract.

[00:50:20] Mike Klinzing: An incredible story. When you think about just, again, how much the mental side of the game impacts what players do on the floor. And I think the more we can educate people, the better off they’re going to be. And I think your book goes a long way towards getting people to think about. What it means to be an underdog and to be able to develop that emotional toughness, that emotional resilience to be able to come back from things that might knock an ordinary person down if they don’t have somewhere to turn to be able to talk with someone about it and help them to, to get and find that joy in what, in what they’re doing.

So share with people where I know the book is coming out within the next week. So let people know where they can pick up a copy of the book and give that, give that pitch of where they, where they can go to get it and reach out to you. And then I want to talk about the podcast that you have going to kind of wrap things up.

[00:51:15] Nick Graham: Yeah. So nickgraham.org is where you can buy it. It’s on books a million. It’s on Barnes and Noble, Walmart. And of course, Amazon. If it’s all the same, purchase it directly from me ’cause I make more money. You know how that goes there.  All those options are on the website.

You can stay updated with the book by, follow me on Instagram inspired by Nick Graham is the Instagram and yeah man, that’s it. That’s where you can get all my information. Nickgraham.org. So, yeah. Awesome.

[00:51:53] Mike Klinzing: Awesome. Make sure you get out and pick up a copy of Nick’s book. The book is fantastic.  You will love it. It is something that is totally and completely necessary in today’s world of athletics where there’s more pressure than ever on athletes at all levels. And if you can help your athlete, whether you’re a coach, a parent, a friend, anyone, a teacher. Somebody who can help a kid to get their mind in the right spot.

This book is going to help them and help you to be able to do that and give you that blueprint. Let’s talk about the podcast, Nick. Tell me a little bit about what you got going, some of your other projects. Let’s just discuss those a little bit.

[00:52:34] Nick Graham: Yeah. So one is just a passion. I love the Big 12, obviously coaching there.

My dad coached there. My partner, Dwight Thorn, played in the Big 12 for Colorado before they went to the Pac 12. Now they’re back. He coached in college. He’ll be a college coach. So it’s just a fun thing. We call it 12 and only where we break down the Big 12 on YouTube.

But the one that I’m really excited about is we just launched it. It is what I call a parent development podcast. One, I like that because it’s going to cause somebody to lean in, but the passion behind it is, again, using that privilege. Been privileged to grow up in the locker room, in the gym, in the bus rides, in the plane rides of a Hall of Fame coach who had a Hall of Fame assistant in Bill Self when I was at Oklahoma State as a kid.

I’ve been privileged to be around Chauncey Billups coach in Iowa State. Be around amazing NBA stars, Trae Young Tyrese Maxey, Tyrese Halliburton and so on and so forth. So what am I going to do with that? Am I going to brag about it? Am I going to just sit up there and just make myself, put myself on a pedestal?

No, I’m going to, Dwight and I came together to create this podcast because there’s so much bad information for parents and young players and young coaches. And so we, we want to hopefully our resume say that we know what it takes. We know what we’re talking about, but hopefully our character. Has deemed us as somebody that our audience can trust.

So like, we’re just going to cover topics whether it’s what is a college coach really look for if he’s recruiting your kid or what are some, what are some of the intangibles you need to develop or whatever it is. And so like, yeah, we just want to put that out there. We don’t want anything.

But we don’t want to be a part of the problem. We want to be a part of the solution.

[00:54:29] Mike Klinzing: Believe it or not, Nick, this podcast started out as a youth sports parenting podcast. That was the initial idea. Jason and I, when we started this thing in 2018, I would say the first 10, 11 episodes we recorded before we did any interviews with anybody else, we just were talking about different issues with.

Parenting and how to be a better focused on youth basketball. And we talked about coaching from the stands. And we talked about how you make sure that when you’re working with your, with your players and how do you choose, how do you choose a good AAU program and how do you, what are you looking for in, in a good coach and just issues like that.

And that’s kind of where we started. I think it’s, if there’s one thing. Honestly, that I feel like we could do to improve basketball in the United States, parent education to me is number one, because what I see is there’s so many people out there in the basketball world doing things right from a coaching standpoint, from an organizational standpoint.

And yet I still see a ton of parents and families. making bad decisions about who they put their kids in front of. And I think the reason why that’s done is because they haven’t gone through it before. They don’t necessarily have an understanding of what a good coach or a good program looks like. And therefore they make decisions.

Sometimes I’m not sure based on what, but to me, the more parent education we can do, I think the better off we are. with basketball here in the United States. So that’s a, it’s a great mission. Let’s put it that way.

[00:56:09] Nick Graham: Yeah, we’re just going to take the time because there is a need and I don’t want to do it in a way where I’m lecturing somebody.

I just want to give them information and things to think about. Dwight made a good point the last episode, like when he’s recruiting, he’s looking at how somebody treats their parents. You know, when he’s recruiting, he’s looking at how the parents act and stuff like that. So it’ll be fun.  It’ll be a fun little journey for sure.

[00:56:33] Mike Klinzing: Very cool Nick, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight. Really truly appreciate it. That’s podcast number two. We will have to make a plan to get you on for number three when the next book’s coming or as the podcast continues to grow.

Love the conversation tonight. Please go out and pick up a copy of Underdog by Nick Graham. Get the book. Very well done. You’re going to learn something as a player, as a coach. You’re going to get to read those 31 stories and you’re going to come out of there ready to be able to get yourself to a space where you can improve.

Your mental outlook on the game, and that’s going to ultimately make you a better player, a better coach, a better person. And I know Nick that that’s important to you. And again, thanks for your time tonight. Thanks for writing the book and to everyone out there. Thanks for listening. And we will catch you on our next episode.

Thanks.