VLAD MOLDOVEANU – PRO BASKETBALL PLAYER, MENTAL PERFORMANCE COACH, TRAIN BY HOOPSKILLZ – EPISODE 603

Vlad Moldoveanu

Website – https://www.vladmoldoveanu.com/ https://train.hoopdrillz.com/

Email – vladmoldoveanu9@gmail.com

Twitter – @VladMoldoveanu9

Vlad Moldoveanu is a Romanian professional basketball player and a mental performance coach. He was born in Bucharest, Romania and fluently speaks both English and Italian. Vlad played his college basketball at American University where he was first team All-Patriot League in both 2010 and 2011. Following his graduation Vlad has been playing professionally in various countries across Europe.  Vlad is also a driving force behind Train by HoopDrillz, which is an online basketball training portal for players and coaches.

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Grab a pen and paper before you listen to this episode with Vlad Moldoveanu, pro basketball player and  mental performance coach.

What We Discuss with Vlad Molodoveanu

  • Train by Hoopskillz – an online training platform like Netflix or Spotify for online basketball training
  • How Train will help players and coaches
  • Learning the game from his mom, who was a professional player in Romania
  • “It has to come from them. That’s the first thing I always think of because I know what drove me. It was my passion. It was my goals.”
  • “The game has to be their passion. It cannot be yours.”
  • The need to make the game fun for kids
  • “It takes a lot of work to play in the NBA. Are you willing to put in the work?”
  • Youth basketball shouldn’t be work, it should be fun
  • “When you’re good at something you want to keep working on it, you want to get better at it.”
  • “We want to make sure as coaches, as parents, that we put them in a situation to succeed early in order to kind of grow that passion, grow that motivation.”
  • The story of how he came to the US from Romania to attend High School
  • Why he didn’t sign with West Virginia out of high school
  • Letting your ego get in the way of making good decisions
  • “Find the right fit, find the right people around you that can help you get better.”
  • Why he chose American University over NC State when he transferred from George Mason after his sophomore year
  • Starting his pro career with Bennetton Treviso in Italy
  • “My confidence comes from my preparation.”
  • The European system for signing players and the anxiety it creates
  • Finding the right agent that would support him as a player and the mistakes he made early in his career
  • His favorite cities that he has played in
  • His craziest European basketball stories – not being paid on time and having fans pack the gym for practice
  • What he does as a mental performance coach
  • Having a practice mindset versus a performance mindset
  • “We work on how to focus, how to visualize, how to self-talk, how do you self-talk to your advantage, not your disadvantage.”
  • Using “My good” instead of “My Bad”
  • Getting your process right as a player
  • Developing the ability to put a bad play or missed shot behind you
  • “The most important shot you’re going to take is the next one. That’s it. That’s all that matters.”
  • Focus on the “Next Play”
  • How social media impacts a player’s perception of themselves and what’s important
  • Helping players reach the “Flow” state where they don’t have to think about their technique or skill
  • Trying to get 1% better

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THANKS, VLAD MOLDOVEANU

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TRANSCRIPT FOR VLAD MOLDOVEANU – PRO BASKETBALL PLAYER, MENTAL PERFORMANCE COACH, TRAIN BY HOOPSKILLZ – EPISODE 603

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello, and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight, but I am pleased to be joined by a former, current, I’m not sure how I would describe you in terms of being a part of the Hoop Heads Podcast network, but Vlad Moldoveanu. Welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:21] Vlad Moldoveanu: Thank you. Thank you very much. I’ll always be a part of the family. I could tell you that I stepped away from it, but I’ll always be a part of the family.

[00:00:29] Mike Klinzing: I agree. I could not, I could not agree more. And we were just talking before the podcast that Vlad, if you’re not aware, was the original creator of our Pistons podcast and Motor City Hoops.

And now his co-host Bryce Simon has kind of taken that thing over and got it running. And first he went with SB nation and I was with the Detroit free press and he’s taken that thing to a whole nother level. So Vlad and I were just talking about how excited we were for Bryce to be able to have that kind of success with the pod that started here on our meager little network.

But nonetheless Vlad is a professional basketball player. He played his college basketball at American universe. And he’s been playing overseas since the time that he graduated back in 2011. And he’s also recently added being a mental performance coach to his list of accomplishments. And we’re going to dive into that a little bit, but first he wants to have an opportunity to talk to all of us about a new website that he’s put together.

That’s going to allow basketball players and coaches to have a tremendous resource that both players and coaches can utilize. The platform in different ways. Some will have lad take it from there and explain exactly what he has going on with train by whom.

[00:01:46] Vlad Moldoveanu: Absolutely. So Train basketball and just has been a baby of mine and my partners for, for quite some time now.

And well we talk, train basketball. We think we want people to think Netflix or Spotify for basketball training content. Right? So we started training because we believe the right coach teaching the right thing to a Blair at the right time in, in, in the player’s development you can unlock their potential.

Now our mission is to connect players from around the world with coaches around the world from my experience bling worldwide, basically everybody teaches basketball different and. It’s a beautiful thing to see it being taught different ways. If you think about it, when I stepped foot in the U S I had no contact at the age of 16 with the way us coaches were teaching basketball, it was very different compared to what I was using Romania.

Then I came back overseas and the way I was taught in high school and college was very different than my first Serbian coach ahead. So what I found very interesting is basketball being a worldwide game, you want different opinions, different, different workouts. And on top of that, you want to train with the best coaches as possible.

And that’s what we want to do. Train basketball. You know we saw a gap in the marketplace for both players and coaches on the player side. You can go to YouTube, right. And. You can put a lot of effort and finding the best content and you got to deal with ads, the content isn’t organized. And you know, the other option is to find a coach who sell their own content on the website.

So to me, it was important that you’re not limited to that one perspective, and you can also find stuff very easy because I was, I can get a message, a message of social media a while back Hey, how can I get better at shooting? How can I shoot like you? How can I do this? And I realized that a lot of kids they might not have the opportunity to hire a personal trainer.

They might not have the opportunity to work with really good coaches. So that’s what kind of like things start taking to me about train. And then I pitched it to my partner, Rob, and then things just took off from there. You know, and what we want to do is we want to help coaches and want to help players you know, coaches get.

Get a bigger audience, make some money off train. And then we want players to get better. We want them to have the best coaches available, teaching them certain skills. So in order to do that since we’re launching very soon we’re, we’re paying coaches, you know they, they can generate revenue on train.

For a limited time we’re paying $50 upfront for each course. You know, they can leverage their following. Coach account and train, you receive a unique referral link to share with your friends and followers and anyone who signs up on train and gets billed after the initial similar trial, they’ll get five bucks off it.

And of course, as a passive income from streaming. So that’s the biggest concept of the incoming or 30% of the subscription income and train. You know, it goes into a coaching pool and they shared that that share is on the coaching side. And based on how many minutes of their content is streamed.

So that’s, as quick as that can be about train you can find more information, you can email us at dot com or you can hit us up on Instagram or go train BB, so go train basketball and go train BB. So that’s the quickest thing that I can make up for trade because I’m super excited about it.

I’m super excited about it because I just want to help players get better. It’s a passion of mine. Basketball is basically my life and I just always looked to help kids. I’ve been doing it for quite some time now to help kids get from Romania to the U S on a high school scholarship.

I started a basketball camp here in Romania. So like, this was also a piece of the puzzle that basketball is I’m trying to create with my life.

[00:05:57] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. I think that it’s clear. Yeah. I obviously know you a little bit better than our audience does at this point, but hopefully they’ll know you a little bit better by the end of the podcast, but I know your passion that you have for the game.

And when I look at what you guys are doing with train, I think it’s super interesting. I think you talk about a place that you can curate a lot of the best content. So not only are you curating the content yourself, but then as you said, you’re having coaches that can come on and be incentivized to bring their content to train.

And then once you have that in place, now, if I’m a player, I can go and look and say, wow, I can learn from this coach or that coach. I can look for a specific type of workout. Maybe I’m looking for ball handling, or maybe I’m looking for shooting, or maybe I want to learn from an NBA player, or maybe I want to learn from a high school coach that nobody’s ever heard of.

And as we all know, there are great basketball minds at every level of the game. I think that’s, what’s always most interesting. We found that through the podcast, you can talk to. Well, high school coach, you can talk to a division, one head coach. You could talk to an NBA head coach and there’s great ideas and great minds everywhere.

And I think that’s what you guys are trying to do is put together all these great minds in one place that as you said, can help kids to get better. As you guys are building this thing out, do you eventually see where it’s going to be less of you and your team curating content from other places and more of it being.

Contributions from coaches. That is that eventually where you see this thing settling out.

[00:07:29] Vlad Moldoveanu: So the, the free version, the beta version that we’ve had out for quite some time that’s basically it the curated content, but right now the premium version is coming out with our own content. So that’s stuff that you’re not gonna find anywhere else.

That stuff that coaches that have signed up to be with us are recording for us specifically for us. So we’re super excited about it. We’re really excited because we really like the content we’re getting, where like the level of coaches. Now we’re getting just to name a few other, that player development coaches in the US, we’ve had Spanish coaches, Serbian coaches for remaining coaches Spanish coaches that actually coach at the top level is Spain, professional basketball.

We’ve had we’re very fortunate that we have disclosed in our platform and they’re creating content for us. So from a player standpoint, I think I’d be happy. I’d be happy if I was a player and I was trying to get better and I’m going to have the option to pay for a personal trainer.

So this would be the next step where I can just train myself. You know, you you’d have what you need here. Like you said, if you’re looking for ball handling, you can go search ball handling, and then you’re going to find quite a few coaches and see which one fits best for, for what you’re looking for.

And that content you won’t be able to find anywhere else.

[00:08:46] Mike Klinzing: The coaches that you guys have that are creating the video content for you. Did you get those guys through personal relationships with you and your team? Or how did you go about seeking out the guys that are creating content?

[00:09:00] Vlad Moldoveanu: So yes, some I kind wish out to the ones that I knew and I thought that will be great on our platform.

And then at some point things kind of got bigger and you know, we hired someone to kind of do the scouting for us. You know, we took the basketball team approach and now we have somebody taking care of that. And then what I do is just you know, I share the same story that I share with you guys about train.

And if they’re interested they can do a deep dive into things with our video coordinator. You know, he has a whole guideline put together. You know, we really want this thing to take off and we’re doing our best. Really make it like Netflix, like I said you know, we’re aiming for the stars.

Like we’ve always had to you know our team has, all of us are basketball players, all of us are involved in the game some way or what not. So yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s been special just reach out to coach and tell him the story and getting the positive feedback. Like, oh man, that’s really cool.

Like I love when I hear that because that’s what I thought the, when we started it. So it’s pretty awesome.

[00:10:07] Mike Klinzing: We are recording on February 24th. What’s the release date, or we’re hoping early March, early March. All right. So that puts it probably by the time this episode airs, we will be right about at launch date, or it will be very, very soon.

So make sure. If you’re a player or you coach, make sure you go out and check out, train, get in contact with lad. If you’re interested in maybe contributing something to the platform. And I think it’s a really exciting thing for both players and coaches that he’s building. So make sure you check that out.

All right. Now we’re going to jump from that back into your personal basketball journey and go back in time to when you’re a kid growing up in Romania, tell us how you get introduced to the game of basketball and what some of your earliest memories of the game are.

[00:10:56] Vlad Moldoveanu: Oh, my earliest memory is basically what I, I didn’t even walk yet.

My mom was a professional basketball player, so I was in the road with her and basically from the day I was born, I was. On the road with her she looked me to away games. I remember being in training camps you know, hotel rooms when I was like through three, like it’s yeah, it’s, it’s been the norm for me the life.

I never had to adjust to it, I guess. So I was actually pretty adamant about when I was six years old to play soccer. I tried to one year it just wasn’t meant to be, I guess. And then I picked up a basketball officially when I was about seven, seven and a half. That’s when I kind of picked up a basketball and I was on a team until then I would just play by myself basically through my mom’s practice and stuff like that.

[00:11:39] Mike Klinzing: So nothing else besides soccer in terms of other sports, it was always just basketball.

[00:11:43] Vlad Moldoveanu: No. And that’s the thing, in Europe, too, that. I think the us has a better where kids are multi-sport athletes. I think that develops you know, that develops the, the child’s, but better overall as an athlete as a feature athletes put that way for me, it was always basketball.

And now if 34, I can tell you that I have all the basketball injuries possible because I only play basketball and it’s been the same physical exertion on my body. For what? 28, 20, 27, 28 years now.

[00:12:18] Mike Klinzing: What does basketball look like in Romania for a kid who’s seven or eight years old? That is on a team.

Just explain maybe the Romanian basketball system from a youth standpoint.

[00:12:30] Vlad Moldoveanu: Basically you get on a team, mostly private teams. Now I would say and that’s what you’d compare it to, I guess, an academy we started basketball and then they play, the biggest competition is like a national we go, we call it baby basketball and mini basketball, which is kind of the beginning of it all, you know for these ages 7, 8, 9, 10.

So that will be the beginning stages were to have one big national tournament every summer. And then after that age, you start playing more of a, like a league approach. If you think about it,

[00:13:05] Mike Klinzing: Does your mom like coaching you?

[00:13:08] Vlad Moldoveanu: She’s actually the president of basketball for the racial right now and she’s never really coached me.

I think that’s a really tricky. Subject for every parent coaching, their young kids. I’m trying to kind of finding is hard. I’m finding it’s hard on my own you know, with my kids fortunate that the oldest one really wants to be in the gym with me. But I understand that it’s a thin line when you coach your own kids, it’s a very thin line.

And I’m trying to be mindful of that. And then instead of how hard it was probably for her to even just to give advice after the game it’s just, you have so much information you want to give as a professional, like she was, and even now, and it’s, like I said, it’s a thin line you know how kids are how it is.

I know how I was, so I’m just I’m trying to learn from that and take it on to, you know with my own kids. And yeah, I’m trying to be good with it.

[00:14:03] Mike Klinzing: What’s the hardest part for you as a parent? I’m curious. Cause I can, after you. Piece I’ll share mine kind of just the way that I’ve tried to approach it with my own kids.

So I’ve shared a couple of times on the podcast, but I think it’s worth revisiting here after I hear kind of your perspective. When you think about how much to push your kids, how much advice you give them, just share sort of what your strategy’s been.

[00:14:26] Vlad Moldoveanu: It has to come from them. That’s the first thing I always think of because I know what drove me.

It was my passion. It was my goals. You know, you can’t put a price on that. And when I saw I was just in the us for like three days just this past weekend that’s all we had off. So I went and the second day my oldest was like, Hey, let’s go to the gym. I never asked him like, Hey, let’s go to the gym.

We got to go to the gym. No, it has to come from them. To me, this is the first and most important thing is it has to be their passion. It cannot be yours. And then from there. I just tried to also make it fun. Given the age my son, my oldest son is eight, so I always try to make it fun when I work with him.

As much as I want to teach teaching only pivoting and passing and the right form of shooting to give him the, the, the step three we’re now, now it’s like, everything has to be steps. Everything has to be a step back a sys there, but three. So I’m trying to find it fun. And how can I make it fun for him at eight?

Without really being you know boring. I think that that’s been the hardest for me when I work him out. But if it comes from him, he’s I feel like he guys, the workout, I let him guide the workout as far as like, I have some bullet points that I want to really teach. And then it’s like, I really want to get some shots up and I’ll throw in like a shooting drill because I can see he’s getting bored of the ball handling or the pivoting the fundamentals of it.

I’ll throw out to like throw in a curve ball every now and then. But for me, I’m very fortunate because he really loves the game. He really loves the game. You know, he wakes up at like 6, 6:30. He watches the game that happened night before. So he knows everything.

[00:16:10] Mike Klinzing: That’s very cool. And I think you make, what to me is the most important point that I was trying to make with parents, which is it has to come from them.

And ultimately if it doesn’t, if you, as the parent are pushing and you want it more than they do, for whatever reason that ultimately leads to, I think, bad outcomes, at least a bad outcomes for the kid as an athlete. But I also think it leads to bad outcomes in your relationship with your kid. If you’re always dragging them and making them do things that they don’t want to do now, again, that doesn’t mean you just let them sit on the couch and eat a bag of potato chips all day.

There’s obviously some pushing that has to be done, but. I think if the passion comes from the kid, ultimately you’re going to end up having more success. And I give this story all the time, but my son who is now a high school, sophomore, He’s played since the time he was a little kid and always just the kid who loved being part of a team and was a really hard worker and practice and always tried his best, but didn’t have wasn’t wired the same way I was wired.

I was wired. I’m sure. Glad, just like you were aware, you couldn’t give me enough stuff to do. And I was on my driveway working on my game all the time when I was a little kid and then going around the playgrounds and playing as I got older and just working on my game and trying to get better. And my son wasn’t, wasn’t really wired that way.

A lot of ways as a dad that was frustrating and it was very difficult sometimes not to drag them to the gym or say, Hey, we got to go and we got to go work out and you know, you’re going to be a kid that probably is going to have some ability. You’re going to be pretty tall. So let’s start working on it.

And I just kept having to dial back and dial back and I would ask, and I would give them opportunities, but I never went over the edge. And that is hard to do. It is really, really hard. Especially when you’re somebody who’s competitive and somebody who had such a good experience in the game of basketball that trying to dial back, like that is really difficult.

And then, like I said, he’s a sophomore now. And really, I would say probably after his eighth grade season and even more so last year after his freshman year, that light bulb came on and suddenly he wanted to get to the gym and suddenly it wasn’t me saying, Hey we got some opportunity here to go and shoot.

It was him saying, Hey, when are we going to, when are we going to go today? Can we get this workout in? Can we do that? And once it came from him, the amount of improvement that he made was not comparable at all to the type of player that he had been before. And I think you make, as I said, a great point that it has to come from them.

And when it does, that’s when you see them really working hard, because at that point, It’s important to them. And it’s not just important to you as the, as the parent. And I think that’s something for all parents to keep in mind without, without question, it’s a fine line to walk. As you’re finding with your kids in the just as a parent, no matter what choices you make, right.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s basketball or life, we’re all flying by the seat of our pants, trying to figure it out and you just hope you’re doing it. Right.

[00:19:16] Vlad Moldoveanu: Absolutely. And when I was thinking back to you know, I’m trying to always tell myself it’s his story is not mine. And why I say this is because if.

Like my biggest dream was always playing the NBA and I was, I guess, as close as it can get you know, I went undrafted in 2011, then I was getting ready to sign a training camp non-guaranteed deal with the Suns. And then the lockout happened, came to Europe and just, it didn’t make sense anymore.

Once I got married and had kids, it just didn’t make sense to go back and try to play G league or something like that. And when I hear him like he wants to play in the NBA, that’s his thing right now. And I love it. And I always have to take a step back and think like, okay, I cannot live my dream through him and he needs to work for it.

And I always tell him, I’m like, that’s fine. If you want to play in the NBA, it takes a lot of work to play in the NBA. Like, are you willing to put in the work? I just know, not now, but like for the future, you’re going to have to put in a lot of work to get the MBA. So like, I’m trying to give him like nuggets of this.

And again, it goes back then it goes back to the passion, like, okay, Matt, now he’s passionate stick over. He needs to understand that if he wants to make the NBA has to put a lot of work in and now he’s passion can take over and take him to the gym a lot. And then it becomes too. Okay. What do I do in that gym?

But before that it has to it’s kind of like a train it’s just, you gotta have the right pieces heading into a workout. And first of all, it has to come from the kid the passion and know what goals they’re working for.

[00:20:57] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. There’s no question about that. And everything goes a lot smoother when it’s being driven by the kid, as opposed to it’s being driven by the parent.

And unfortunately in youth sports. So often what we see is that the parent is driving it and it’s not so much. I think what I see flat is you have kids who they’d love to be on a soccer team, or they’d love to be on a basketball team where they’d love to play flag football or whatever the sport is, but they might want to play that game where they play once a week and they have one, one hour practice.

That’s. Versus the eight year old whose dad wants them to be in the NBA and that kid’s going to a trainer three days a week, and then they’re going to speed strength and agility four days a week. And then they’re playing six games in a tournament on the weekend. That’s where I think it gets dangerous where the parents are pushing that level of involvement on a kid who quite frankly, isn’t ready for that.

And I think you have to eventually get to the point where as a parent, you’re able to step back and see, as you said that it’s not your story, it’s the story of your child. And that story may be different than the one that they want to write maybe entirely different than the one that you want to write.

And I think as parents, it’s not always easy. As you said to walk that thin line, you have to be very self-aware about what you’re doing. And even then I can tell you from firsthand experience, even then it is really, really hard not to. Not to push, not to push too much. And you gotta be very careful when you do that.

[00:22:36] Vlad Moldoveanu: Absolutely. And let me give you a quick story about what we just went through or we’re going through right now with him because he played baseball regularly baseball, and then we was pretty good natural at it never played baseball before really his life. You know, he’s tall, he’s coordinated.

He’s just an athlete you know, our oldest and he start get recruiting, like travel baseball, this and that. So we kind of chose like the highest travel baseball program possible around and it was cool. And then there are no winter. They had like two practices a week and no games. And I can tell you now, two or three months in, he’s not exactly.

No. I’m like, okay, maybe you got to take a step back. Like we thought he wanted it, but at the same time, okay. We, we didn’t understand you know, probably the commitment for him. And then he probably didn’t understand that he’s not going to actually play a baseball game until April, and he’s going to keep working out.

Like you said, they would do like speed and agility. And they had two, two practices and no games. And now it’s like, okay, this is not as much fun. So I, I can totally relate to all of them because it’s like, okay, like how do we how do we deal with this and not throw too much at a kid where it’s more play and less like organized practice all the time, where the way I see it is how can I feed his passion?

And then that will take over and you can put it in a structural way where they get better. And like you said, they can have the speed and agility. They can have their own trainer, all of that stuff. But you know, to me at 8, 7, 8, 9, 10, like, it’s just, it’s always just the game anyways. Like if you love it, is it never like, like Kobe was talking about pressure and stuff like that.  It’s never it.

[00:24:30] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It doesn’t feel like work. I can honestly tell you that until, I guess when I got to my freshman year of college and I didn’t play very much my freshman year and went through and just like your son and baseball, we had games, but I didn’t play very much in them. So it kind of felt like I didn’t have any games was going through a lot of practice.

I think that’s the first time for me, that basketball ever felt at all, like work up until through my high school career. Basketball was never. Any second that I spent on, it was not, I never considered at work. It was just something that it was fun where I was just, even if I was in a gym by myself working on my game, like that was not, that was not tedious.

That was not need grinded through. That was me being out there going, man, I love this. Like, I want to get better. You can’t give me enough. And I think too often we get kids to the point when they’re 8, 9, 10 years old, that youth sports becomes work for them instead of it being fun. And it being a game and it’s look, there are some kids who are ready for some of the things that we just described, but I think there are many, many more that just are looking to play the game and have fun and eventually figure out where their talents are, where their interests lie.

And sometimes I think as parents we see that there’s, we think there’s only one pathway for them to get to whatever goal we as parents after them, whether that’s to be a high school player, most parents. If you boil it down, they, they hope that their kid can get some kind of athletic scholarship, but you, and I know both know how difficult it is and how good you have to be in order to be able to have that become a reality in whatever sport it is that you’re pursuing.

And it’s, it’s a really, really challenging thing for parents to navigate because today, compared to at least for me, when I think about what things were like here in the U S when I was growing up, you had lots and lots of kids that were multi-sport athletes in an oftentimes those kids could be, they could be the point guard on the basketball team and the quarterback on the football team and the shortstop on the baseball team.

Well, now, because so many kids specialize so early, it’s difficult. You can still play three sports, but it’s really hard to be the best player in those sports, right? Because you just, it, so many kids are doing into this specialized training, but I think what we do is we have. Losing a lot of kids a lot earlier than we would have in a different way.

And so it’s the system, no matter what you do, it’s never going to, it’s never going to be perfect. And I think to go back to our sort of original premise of this conversation is as a parent, you kind of have to walk that line and figure out what’s best for your kid, for your family, for your situation.

And you never know if you’re doing it right, because you don’t get to go back and do it over. If it doesn’t turn out the way that you hoped. So it’s a, it’s a challenge.

[00:27:21] Vlad Moldoveanu: Absolutely. And, you know when I started this whole sports psychologist journey and before I even started working with players I’m always intrigued by my own story.

And like, when was I more motivated when I was less motivated and why? And I was going through the whole motivational process. I was learn about like three theories the fear of silver that their nation, the motivational channels and all this stuff. And then it kinda hit me when we kind of went to like competitive or competence motivation.

So when I got to it, I was like, oh man, this is it. And it’s so simple that people overlook it. Like, when you’re good at something you want to keep working on it, you want to get better at it. Right. And what are your kind of like bad at it, which is a negative versus. You kind of just say, okay, that’s enough.

Like, I don’t like it, it’s not as much fun. Right. And that’s really how, when I think about basketball is how my career was through it.  I’m more energetic. I played better. I practice better. I work more when I have some kind of results and it’s the same with the kids through. So we want to make sure as coaches, as parents, that we put them in a situation to succeed early in order to kind of grow that passion, grow that motivation and that way they can get there and not just pushing them.

Oh, you got to keep working harder. Like the kid doesn’t have any wish to get better is not very good at it at that point. And all it makes do it. It makes the kid resentful of the parent or the coach or whatever it is. So to me that was like, okay, how can I find like, what he’s good at? And then kind of guide him because once he’s good at it, he’s going to work more at it.

He’s gonna want a more work more at it and it’s going to come from them at that point. So I feel like as, as a parent and as a coach is so important to guide the kids find what they’re good at. So they get that. A little bit of success. And then at that point, it’s going to be so much easier in the future, coaching them, parenting them whatever sport or whatever area you choosing.

[00:29:44] Mike Klinzing: It has to be fun. Right. Cause that’s why look let’s face it. That’s why you picked up a ball. That’s why I picked up a ball was because we were surrounded by, and maybe we were kids and your mom, obviously. And I remember my dad gave me a ball when I was young and, but I kept doing it because it was fun.

And if we take the fun away from young kids, they’re going to eventually burn out because you can only, you can only work so long and so hard on something that you don’t have a love for. And that isn’t it. Like I said, that it’s not fun. You’re not going to do it very often. So think of back to your own story as a player.

When did, when would you say the light came on for you in terms of wanting to really work and get better at it where you took it? Just a little bit more seriously than you did when you were really young. When did you say, Hey, I really want to start it’s more than just fun to me now. Now I really want to start getting better.

Do you remember that moment?

[00:30:40] Vlad Moldoveanu: Well I think it was pretty early but then I would say the light came on. I guess I had more than one light if I think about it. The first one was when I got the US, before going to the US I had some offers to Europe at some pretty good European academies, high level.

And I made a choice to go to the U S and I was like, okay, I kind of have this prospect high prospect, whatever you want to call it in Europe. You know, I was on this umbrella and then when I went to US I kind of just reset my mind. And that, I think that was the first time I start playing mind games myself, and I still do that now as a player which is just funny, but okay.

I’m resetting everything. Nobody, no one I’m stepping from the US you know, how can I become a division one player? How can I become at least a three-star recruit? And that’s when kind of thing, start to start putting I put together the pieces and then I had the coaching staff in high school.

That was amazing. And they were always pushing me to, and they were pushing me such ways. Like we just mentioned earlier, like, Hey, do you want to come and work out at six? Am it wasn’t oh, you got to work at a 6:00 AM. It was, you came all the way over here for a minute. Do you want to come work out at 6:00 AM?

And when they were asking me that way, I was like, yeah, like, let me get better. And I’m sure there might’ve been other kids, like in my situation, I was like, okay, no, like, I don’t want to work at 6:00 AM. So it depends how you see it and how you perceive things. And that’s kind of when the first light came on and then, I had some fairly, a fairly successful high school career you know, had power five offers this and that.

And then I went to George Mason and I had the same thing early success, and then I had no success. And then I was like, okay, this is not fun for me. And it’s not the way. It’s not like the way out to transfer, but I was like, this is not what I’m looking for. If I want to become a pro, I need this kind of role.

I need this approach. And. That’s when the biggest light of my career came on. When I transferred, I was out 12 months and I was like, I have two points, two rebounds per game at George Mason. Like I went to America and coach Jeff Jones was now at ODU. He was like, okay, this is your team next year.

But in order to be your team next year, you have to earn it starting today. And I just became a gym rat like three times, three times a day in the morning shooting, go practice as a team, go live separately because I wasn’t playing. And that’s when everything kind of clicked for me at American Hawaiian coach Jones he was okay.

Like I I’m going to give you the free reign, like even in practicing scouting, if, if the best player on the team was like shooting guard, Oh, the, I go be the shooting guard. He was like, go get a shooting guard, go do your thing in practice. Like be whoever you need to be for us and scouting to prepare us.

And the same time be get better. And that’s when he kind of hit me. And that’s when I hit the ground running the next year and early success again, it was very important to kind of feed that feed the hungry feed, that passion, like things aren’t working. So but like I said, I had two lights go off first time when I got to the U S and the second time when I basically, I kind of hit rock bottom after my freshman year at Mason,

[00:34:07] Mike Klinzing: Let’s go back in time.

We want to take one step back to how you got to the U S in the first place. And then we can dive into a little bit more of each of those specific situations, both high school and your two college experiences. How does a kid from Romania? How do you, what’s the process for you coming over to attend high school in the U S what does that look like?

What did it look like for you?

[00:34:29] Vlad Moldoveanu: First of all, I was blessed to lucky. I tell you that. So before I went to St. John’s college, high school in Washington, DC there was also a Romanian a kid that attended St John’s and he’s one of his assistant coaches came to visit in the summer. And then somehow some way I got to work out that he saw me, you know the kid, Andre, he had he was coming from basketball family too.

So like our families knew each other. So when the coach came to Romania he put a workout in for me and some of the guys and you know, two of us got scholarships to go to us. So like I said, it was more of a luck and bless type thing then really sending back then CDs and all this stuff.

So it was, it was a different era and I got lucky. I think it’s a lot easier now you know, to get over to US than it was in 2004,

[00:35:24] Mike Klinzing: What was the cultural adjustment?  

[00:35:26] Vlad Moldoveanu: Oh, huge. Huge. And here, I’m talking about school, I’m talking about basketball. I’m talking about the fact that I live like two hours away from school my first six months, because that’s the only host family they could find.

So that was it like waking up at like 4:30 AM to go to school get back at like 9:30 PM and then sleep five, six hours and then get back in the car and drive back to school. On top of that, it was the Catholic high school experience, the, the private school experience compared to Romania we had a dress code and everything had to be done.

Right. And it created a lot of discipline for me too. And again, I’m thankful for that because yeah, go to a private school is very different. Just every assignment had to be on time. Everything you couldn’t miss classes, everything was related. You know, your success on the court had to be related with your success in the classroom, within the school system.

Then as far as like lifestyle stuff, it was like, it was a culture shock, but at the same time for me and the way I am, I thought it kind of just fit me like a glove. So other than really missing my family, I thought I was, I was, I was good. You know, I really liked it and it just fit me and my personality.

[00:36:48] Mike Klinzing: When did you start to realize that you might have a chance to achieve your dream of becoming a division one player? Was that something that came pretty quickly after you got to the U S or did it take you a year or two to kind of get your bearings underneath you and really figure out what kind of player.

[00:37:09] Vlad Moldoveanu: It came pretty quickly, I think also because it was at Mirage back then, whereas like I was six, nine as a sophomore and I was a stretch for already. I was, I the ball very well, but out I was shooting it. So yeah, it was just, it was early because I guess because of my height and my ability to shoot the ball, it was like, okay, I think that works for us.

So I had smaller division one schools recruiting me as early. I think I was like three, four months into my sophomore year.

[00:37:41] Mike Klinzing: What do you remember about those initial conversations with coaches when the first coaches start calling you and talking to you, do you have any memories of maybe the first conversation or so you have with a college coach here in the state?

[00:37:52] Vlad Moldoveanu: Well, I was very quiet because I was feeling my English was super fluent at that point which was very hard for me at the beginning. Especially in the schools. And on the basketball on the basketball side of things. So it was more like just listening and trying to come learn the ropes because I had no idea what college basketball really was like until I got there.

I that’s where I learned about college basketball. When I got to the U S until then I had not much idea of like you know, college athletics.

[00:38:22] Mike Klinzing: So what’s the decision-making process like for you? What are you thinking about in terms of what you’re looking for in a school? Are you thinking about the academic piece of it at all?

Are you looking at coaching staffs? What ultimately were you hanging your hat on when it came to making a decision about where to attend college?

[00:38:40] Vlad Moldoveanu: Well, what I would tell my kids are,

[00:38:43] Mike Klinzing: well, what’s the, yeah, what’s the audit. What’s the honest truth. I’ll tell you. So here, before you answer, I’ll tell you my honest truth.

So I have a daughter who’s a senior. And she’s trying to decide where she’s going to go to school. And she’s a kid who, in her entire schooling career, she’s never had a B, so she’s a complete straight a student from kindergarten through 12th grade has never had a B. So basically she could apply to pretty much any school around the country.

And I’m guessing she probably have a pretty good chance of getting in. And I was a good student too. I think my GPA in high school was like a three, six or three seven. So I was a good student. This was before weighted grades where my daughter’s GPA is like, I think she took one pottery class, so she doesn’t have a five, but she’s whatever, 4.9, five or something, whatever.

So, anyway, my point is, as I’m having these discussions with her about where to go to school and what are you looking for this and that she’s like, well, what do you, what did you look for? I’m like, well, I don’t know. I didn’t care about anything except basketball. I mean, I just, I looked at, Hey, can I get a division one scout.

Oh, you’re offering me a scholarship. Sure. That’s what I’m going to go. And so when she starts talking about, or my wife’s talking to her about academic programs and what does the campus look like and how many students are there and this, and I’m like, look, I can’t really help you with any of that. Cause it was completely irrelevant in my decision.

Sounds like probably same for you.

[00:40:04] Vlad Moldoveanu: Yeah. It was all basketball oriented for me. Clearly I was more worried about the basketball side of things. But again, what, what my process was it wasn’t perfect. I don’t necessarily regret it, but I wish I was more patient. I wish I did my due diligence as far as like what for you would look like not just one or two.

And it’s hard as a kid because. It’s hard to see your success three years from now as a 17 year old kid you, you want to now you want a success now, especially once you had in high school. So I’m okay. I’ll tell you a story. So I was recruiting by, it was West Virginia coach beeline, and he was he was my guy from day one.

And I, I love everything about him from coaching to the men. Who’s I, he was off the floor. The way we talk, the way we, we connected and my visit to West Virginia. I went to commit. I was like, it was my first school I’ve ever been through. I don’t want to care. Like I feel connected with this coach.

And then that’s when it kind of struck me with the business side of things. She was like, well I only have one scholarship left. I want you, you’re the guy that I want. But Patrick Patterson, who’s a local kid in West Virginia has a committee yet. And it’s coming from like the governor or the president of school.

They’ll kind of have to wait for him to come in before signing you. Of course. One thing I tell all the kids that I work with check your ego at the door. Somebody should’ve smacked me on the head, told me that, please, because I do check my, you go to the floor. I had the door and I was hurt. I had a big ego and I was like, oh, you don’t want me, you want, I was like looking back.

I’m like, okay Patrick was a five five-star recruit. I was like three and a half. So I was like, okay, well, why, why, why is your ego in the way right now? You know like the book that Ego’s the Enemy

[00:42:02] Mike Klinzing:, great book, by the way, that’s an incredible book. Anybody who hasn’t read it, you got to get out there, Ryan holiday, you got to get out and get ego is the enemy.

[00:42:10] Vlad Moldoveanu: Absolutely. And my ego was definitely my enemy and I was okay. I, I wished somebody would check me back then it was like, okay, just be patient. Like, he didn’t say he doesn’t want you. He just said he can’t do it right now. And then I kind of rushed it after that in a month I committed to Mason because they were like super hot on me for a year now.

And in my opinion, I should have taken my time more because long-term I had my doubts about Mason and my fit with nest system because of the style play. So I was more worried about at that point. Know, only basketball as far as that goes, but it was just the fit basketball wise that I would tell it kids now it’s like, first of all, go where you’re really want it.

And where it makes sense for you as far as like the player you are right now and the system they run versus whatever is being sold. You know, because I think a lot of players like, oh, I’m I want to go high. I want to go in a par five, whatever. And they have no success. They end up transferring and it, to me, I feel like it wasn’t the level to me, it was just more fit that wasn’t right.

So just find the right fit, find the right people around you that can help you get better. If basketball is all they care about, just find those people that you’re connected with, they’re going to help you get better. And that and your parents know, and your high school coaches know that those people, they stick around and they want to be there.

You know, they want to help you be the player you envisioned to be. So I think that’s what should have been. But for me, it was more like I want to go to West Virginia. It didn’t happen because if I followed away two more months Patrick would have committed to Kentucky and it would’ve been done deal.

I was going to go to West Virginia. So. You know, for me, it was my ego got in the way and I rushed it after that. I rushed it because it was my senior year. It was November. And instead of just waiting and going to visit because I should’ve went to Kentucky to visit when Tubby Smith was coaching.

You know, I had quite a few options Jamie Dixon was at Pittsburgh. He was looking at me and you know, we’re talking. So it was just for me, what I would tell the kids is really find your own path and make sure you have the right people in that coaching staff and that school to support you, to have the success that you need or want on off the floor.

[00:44:46] Mike Klinzing: I think it’s hard as a kid though. When you think about the kids who are looking for, like, again, let’s say that in your, in your case, let’s say you go to a power five school and maybe you don’t get on the floor. Much or you don’t have as big of a role as you were eventually able to play when you were at American and yet at the same time, it’s hard for a kid.

You said it. I would say it like coming out of high school. Like I thought I was pretty good. I remember looking at the guys that were signing scholarships before I eventually signed mine and like saying I play against these guys all the time. Like I’m as good if not better than them. And I think I should be playing at such and such a level.

And look, I ended up having a really good career. And it worked out for me, but there’s lots of kids who are in my situation that are I was certainly as a recruit. I was considered a very, very, very borderline there wasn’t one player. When I signed my letter of intent, I was, that was the only, that was the only division one opportunity that I had.

And I probably could have gone and played division three and had a really, really great career. But nobody at that time could have told me that, Hey, division three might be a better fit for you because I thought that I was a division one player. It’s hard to argue with a 17 or 18 year old kid. And I think you make a great point that wherever you go, you have to find the right people.

And I think if you find the right people and you’re connected with the right people, that whatever situation you’re in, that you can, it was going to turn it. It’s going to turn out well for you. If the people that you have that are supporting you are on your side, but that’s hard to do. As a 17, 18 year old kid to make those kinds of decisions where we’re a lot more equipped at our age today, to be able to look at it objectively and figure it out versus when you’re 17 or 18, your ego and how good you think you are is probably pretty inflated.

Let’s put it that way, especially in the age of social media.

[00:46:55] Vlad Moldoveanu: Absolutely. And another thing is just when when you’re a kid and it’s like, like you said it was like, do I want to go D one D two D three, whatever. First of all, see what role you really want? Like, what role are you going to be happy?

And because if you want to be a big fish in a small pond which has worked out, for example, for me, I was super happy at American. Like I loved it. I loved it because the type of person I was the type of player I was it all kind of went hand in hand and. We have this kids that commit, oh, I just want to go to Duke or it’s just an example.

But I want to go to Kansas. I want go to Kentucky and they go, and then after one year they transfer right out because then no chance of no business of being there. And they could have been, you know I don’t know a superstar. I had like a small D one school or is the same story with a smaller D one player that could have went through and being an All-American.

Right. So to me, just find the right fit for you, the right level for you. And the, the, the people that are gonna support you reach your goals too, because it goes hand in hand the team’s success with your success. It all has to go hand in hand for that person, to that player to be happy to, to understand that, to enjoy this because at the end, they only a handful of players get.

So, if you’re going to live those best years of your life in sports, you want to make sure you’re happy at the end of the day, because you don’t get a do over.

[00:48:38] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. You don’t get to do it again. That’s for sure. And no matter you could tell that to a young person, a million times as a guy, my age, and it still doesn’t really?

Yeah. It just doesn’t, it just doesn’t sink in. Cause it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean anything to a kid. It wouldn’t have made it, it wouldn’t have meant anything to me. If somebody would have said that to me, when I was a high school player or a college player, it would have meant nothing. And yet now you realize as you get older, how fast things go and just how fleeting opportunities that can be.

And if you’re in a program where it’s not the right fit or you’re with a coach that doesn’t appreciate your particular skill level, or maybe it’s just a style of play that doesn’t. Your game, you can, you could lose a year, two years, three years, and those years you just don’t get them back. And you only have, as you know, the clock is ticking all the time on your playing career.

My playing career take did I got done with school and my playing career went from playing to all of a sudden that 22 thing that I had done for my entire life. Suddenly I wasn’t doing it anymore. At least not on the same level. I mean, obviously I was still playing, but not in any way, shape or form, like it was as a high school or college player.

And you’ve been fortunate enough to go on and continue and be able to play beyond college and play a lot of years professionally. And we’ll talk a little bit about that here in a minute. It’s still that clock’s ticking, I guess, unless you’re LeBron, right? It seems like his, his, his clock. I’m not sure that thing a thing just keeps ticking.

I’m not sure when it’s going to, when it’s going to stop ticking, it’s just a, it’s incredible. But other than other than LeBron, for the rest of us, that clock stops ticking. You only get so many years, you only get so many opportunities. And I think kids don’t always, don’t always realize that. And especially now because of the transfer portal, it makes it so easy to jump from one place to another, this and that, that I think you made a great point about taking your time and really looking at the situation and trying to figure out what is best, because look yet it’s easier to transfer now than it’s ever been, but I still think if you can find the right place out of the gate, you’re probably going to be better off.

[00:50:51] Vlad Moldoveanu: Absolutely. And I’m throwing a story on this. When I was transferring, I was looking at American of course. I was looking at Lehigh. I was looking at Boston and then all of a sudden NC state came. Nowhere. Okay. So they offer me and it just, I wouldn’t want good that time. I went my gut and I was like, I got to go to American.

Like, I’m a DC guy. If you asked me of where, how do I play at play like a DC guy? If you asked me, like, even people that watch me play overseas and stuff like that they’ll never understand me. I’m not playing wise mentally. I’m not, I’m a DC guy. Like I grew up in DC, basically. That’s where I kind of shaped my personality on the court, off the floor.

So I played different I talked trash, I dabbled in all the crazy stuff. So When, when it came down to, I was like, okay, I have a chance to go from not really playing at George Mason 10 minutes, a game live and minutes of game, my sophomore year, I was like to go to NC state really interesting.

And that’s when they recruited, they had JJ Hickson. So I was like, oh, that’s a great person for you. And then that’s when the light bulb came on. It’s like, wait, I’ve heard this story before. I’m going there to be a complimented complimentary guy to someone that might be gone in one year. And what happens after like, I’m the guy that’s going to help JJ and the team have success, but what happens to me after JD goes DMV after one year, you know?

So then I was like, okay, know what? Like my gut is telling me to go to American. It’s going to be fine. You know, it’s going to be fine. And it was, and it was the smallest cool. Basically I was recruiting back then am so fortunate because it was just an amazing story for me after that. But again, I could have went with a big fish again.

I was like, oh, I used to stay, go ACC, that’s it go to the go and NC state right now. Yeah. You know, and my gut was like, no, like check your ego. You know, I learned to check my ego at times and I’m like, don’t don’t let it fool. You don’t let it fool you just because it’s, it’s something that looks amazing.

It just might not be the right fit for you and you might have to pass on it. And I learned that the second time around compared to the first time.

[00:53:10] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. If you had that same choice coming out of high school, I’m guessing you probably would have went to NC state.

[00:53:15] Vlad Moldoveanu: Probably would’ve went to NC state, but honestly, there’s so many teams that are like so many colleges that are like a better fit for me.

Like thinking back for example, Tony shaver was at William, Mary, and his system was beautiful for me. But I wasn’t. I was like, okay. So if I’m going to go to the CA where Mason is, I was like, I gotta go to school that wasn’t the final four. I can go to Williams. They never been to an NCAA tournament at that point.

Again, it was my ego that I had to learn how to check and it was my story. And I had to learn the hard way, I guess,

[00:53:45] Mike Klinzing: Talk to me a little bit about the transition from college basketball to pro basketball. You talked a little bit about your near miss with the sons and the lockout and how. I ended up sending it over to Europe and then it didn’t make sense for you to come back to the U S to give it another shot with the MBA.

So just talk about how your pro career gets started over in Europe. And then we can dive into some details about your bout your pro career.

[00:54:12] Vlad Moldoveanu: Absolutely. So I went to, to play in Italy top level team Bennetonn Treviso. You know, if you think of Benetton, think Tony Kukoc, Andrea Barngani, and Mike D’Antoni coach to coaching it.

So it was really high level European basketball. I was very fortunate for that kind of first contract as a rookie. That’s very rare. Now, as far as the first year playing wise, very unstable rollercoaster. And I would say maybe up until. A while back, I would have been like, okay, it was the coach’s fault.

It was my fault. And what I learned last few years of my life is just take ownership of everything. And I understand that it was my fault. It was, it was my fault because I just wasn’t ready. I was already mentally for it. I wasn’t ready for the business side of things. I wasn’t ready when I was stolen.

That was going to start that I didn’t start. When I was told that I was going to play 20 minutes a game that I didn’t play 20 minutes a game. When I was told that I was going to take total shots a game, I didn’t take 12 shots a game and I let all that affect me. So that’s why I just, I have to take ownership of that first year and really be like, okay, like, that’s just like, I’d take ownership of my success.

I have to take ownership of my failures through. And it was, it was a rough patch for me because you know, coming from a top 20 division one score, come off a bench in Italy, this starting about mid season. And going back to the bench I don’t think I scored double digits from February on February, March, April.

I don’t think I scored double digits more than one time. And it was a struggle for me. It was a struggle because I didn’t adjust quick enough. It took me one year to adjust basically.

[00:55:54] Mike Klinzing: Did that shake your confidence at all? Or did you just kind of figure out, Hey, I gotta take a different approach.

[00:56:02] Vlad Moldoveanu: No, my confidence comes from my preparation. I never let one affect the other. Because I really believe in you know, we’re working hard putting, putting time in the gym and it doesn’t mean I’m a bad player. It means that I just didn’t do a good job succeeding within the boundaries and within the role I had.

I think that’s very different than me being a bad player. I knew my worst. I knew my value. But I just had to find the right environment, the right team for me my second year, that that was crucial. That somewhere that I was just jump on, like, it’s not just about the money. It’s not just about, you know the level, but you know, the money wants to turn pro is very, very important.

Of course. So it was like, how do I rebuild this? You know, after a missed year,

[00:56:51] Mike Klinzing: What does that process look like? So you’ve played in several different countries with a lot of different teams. So when you’re thinking about, okay, here’s my year ends with team X in country, Y and now I’ve got to go to. A new place or I’m going to look for a better opportunity.

What does that process look like from the end of one season to the beginning of the next season, in terms of getting there and getting a contract signed, figuring out where,

[00:57:18] Vlad Moldoveanu: oh, and it’s like anxiety provoking and the mental side of things. It’s everything you don’t want it to be. But is the nature of European basketball?

You know, you’re basically unemployed. Every May, every June, unless you sign a long-term deal.  Yeah. That came with a lot of anxiety, honestly, because I didn’t know where my next job would come or when I knew kind of what I wanted from the next job you know, my role, what I want my role to be.

But that whole summer, you don’t actually, I waited up until I would say late August to sign And it was kind of nerve wracking because a lot of teams were in training camp already. You know, most of European teams started training camp early August, the first two weeks of August. And I was a national team back then and I was still not signed.

And I think I was the out of my friends, I was of the only one that was not signed. And I just learned to have patience on that time to do live, deliver the uncomfortable situation with anxiety and be like, okay, I need the situation to be right for me to be successful. And if I’m just going to pull the trigger on any good money I just missed the opportunity for the future to set myself up better.

So yeah, it’s nerve wracking. You think about three, four months where you’re just unemployed, no income coming in and you just strain you just strain. And that’s where that’s sort of different. I see. You know, when I was talking about my son working out right now for four or five months without a game, that’s kind of the life of a European Pearl, where they play nine, 10 months a year, they have two, three months to kind of maybe four, depending on the league you know, to just work on their game.

So. For me, it was just, okay, let me work on my game, let me figure it out and let my agents do his job and find me the teams that, that are right fit for me.

[00:59:12] Mike Klinzing: What was your process for finding an agent that you could trust?

[00:59:15] Vlad Moldoveanu: And I went through, through all of that, to that, that I wish I could talk more about and I wish I could talk to the more college kids about it, or even maybe Europeans.

Because again, I went at that time I went with a really big agency. And I learned that again, the, the big agency they have the big players. So like, I like more of a personal approach, maybe some players like talk to their agents twice a year, but for example, my agent now dang Russ for Stephen Miller.

He’s been my agent for roughly six years, I think, seven years. And we’re more friends. Like we talk about soccer, we talk about any basketball stuff. And very rarely we actually talk about my contracts or how I played. At this point I were war friends, like he’s he’s more of a friend to me now and he keeps it real with me.

You know, I was like, why do you want this type of money when you don’t play worth of it? You know, I appreciate that more than, oh, I’m going to get you though. You, well, what do you want? 300. Yeah, I’ll get you 300. And then the agent comes in and gives you 100 and th they’ll promise you someday, you can’t you can deliver.

And I’ve learned that a lot of agents do that just to sign a player. And I think that the rules are changing right now with the FIBA. We’re actually the players are gonna end up paying the agents, not the clubs. So a lot of change around that, which was very necessary F if you asked me, but yeah, it’s it was quite a roller coaster because I didn’t know so I was like, oh my God, they have stuff very.

Oh yeah. That’s it. That sounds good to me. Oh, great. But wait, I’m not Steph like a lot of wake up,

they get you with a pitch. It’s just like any business when they come in, like it’s a marketing pitch. Right. And they do all these videos and they show you all this stuff, all the clients, all they did for them. And it’s like, okay, you have to realize if it’s a big company. Usually those are like the 1% is like the NBA years.

So it was like,

[01:01:23] Mike Klinzing: You want that personal touch. Right? You want somebody that is going to care about you and be invested in you and your career and not just have you as. Another number that they can put up on a board somewhere where they don’t really know you or they don’t invest in your career because clearly you’re going to need somebody to advocate for you and to be able to get you the right deal.

As you said, to be able to find something that’s going to set you up so that you can play not just one year, but you can play multiple years, like you’ve been able to do over the course of your career. And I think that there’s, there’s something to be said for that personal touch and really having a connection.

And the fact that you talk about being friends with your agent, to me, look, that’s the kind of situation that you want that yeah, it’s a business relationship, but you want somebody that cares about you and is concerned about your future.

[01:02:11] Vlad Moldoveanu: Absolutely. And they have to a few things that I think an agent really needs is one to understand the level of basketball really, really understand it.

I mean like, no, all the European leagues, all of the leagues that is representing players in to really understand a level to always be on the side of the player. Because I’ve had issues with my money was extremely late. Like we talking like one year late.

[01:02:37] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I believe it. Trust me. I believe that.

[01:02:38] Vlad Moldoveanu: Yeah. Yeah. I think in Poland when I left Poland I got five salaries, so I got paid five months, a 10, and then the next five months I got them like 12 months after. So, but you want the agent to always be on your side. So usually the bigger companies, what I, what I’ve seen. So I want to speak from my own personal story is not anybody else’s.

I don’t want to put a bad rep on any agency, but the bigger agencies, they kind of tend to locate. Like you don’t like to split, oh, you want to cut him, share. We’ll find him when you team, and then we’ll get you another Blair just to make sure that you sign a Blair from us. Right. And I don’t like that approach.

I think we. You gotta be players first you’re presented the player, not the club at the end. They but a lot of the bigger agencies are more worried about their, their, their bottom. And then,

[01:03:31] Mike Klinzing: Keeping the club, keeping the people in the clubs happy. Right?

[01:03:34] Vlad Moldoveanu: Yeah. Be the clubs have making the money coming in, so that’s fine.

But yeah, actually I was in a special situation with, with Turkish club where I think if I would have fired my agent, I would have been able to sign with that team, but I would never done it. I would never done it because I knew he, the reason why this club was kind of running away from me or my Asian per se, at that time was more of an issue of him defending a player and his financial rights.

So. To me, I couldn’t do it I would never do that. So yeah, it’s a very complicated situation. I was saying with agents because there’s not a lot of information out there sometimes about the FIBA rules and how it works when players sign a contract of agents and all this stuff.

And especially for the Americans coming out of college, I think it’s very difficult because they get this pitches I told you about and they signed an agent and they never find them a theme. And then nothing happens and kids either retire early for no reason, or they just don’t do a good job taking care of the players.

[01:04:40] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. As a young guy, it’s tough. Right. It’s tough to figure out and be able to navigate. It’s just a world that you’ve never been in before as a 22 year old, who’s graduated from school and try to figure out. And unless you have somebody there that you can trust that you can figure out, maybe your family helps you and do some research and talk to other players.

Maybe you can get yourself in the right situation, but I can see where it’d be real easy to get yourself into the wrong situation with an agency and ended up short-circuiting your career where you just, things kind of just die on the vine and you can’t get what you, what you need. And that’s that’s unfortunate and obviously you just, you just have to, you have to do your research and you have to try to figure out who’s going to be the right fit for you.

And, and then trust that your research is good. And then obviously the longer that you’ve been in it, you’ve been able to figure out, navigate and understand what it is that you’re looking for in an agent and what you need them to do for you. And sounds like you’ve landed in the right place. So that’s been a positive.

When you think about where you been, what’s your favorite city? You’ve played.

[01:05:44] Vlad Moldoveanu: Oh, that’s hard. So many good cities. I would say the Treviso in Italy that was my first year. It was absolutely amazing city, amazing fans. And then I think second would be, it would be telling Estonia. It’s funny now with everything going on with, with you know, Russia and stuff going through Estonia, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

And it was amazing. It was absolutely beautiful, amazing amazing Baltic country really good people. And the city was just fun. You know, you can find anything you need, everybody spoke English and it was a super easy transition. So I would say between those two.

[01:06:21] Mike Klinzing: Very cool for it as an opportunity to be a young kid and be able to go and live in different places and just expand your horizons.

And I think that’s one of the things that when I think about. Not getting an opportunity to do that after I graduated from school, I think probably, yeah, I missed out on some basketball probably, but I think just missing out on the travel piece of it and just being able to see other places and travel around and see different cultures and eat different food and interact with different people.

I think for anybody that had to be a, a tremendous opportunity to grow and learn and just experience these other cultures that without the game of basketball, you never would have had an opportunity to explore.

[01:07:05] Vlad Moldoveanu: And funny you say that actually, my first year, I went to Rome twice and I didn’t see anything.

Cause I was just like, okay, I gotta get my rest. I have a game. I’m not doing this. I’m not here to like go on vacation. And to this day, I haven’t seen a Rome and I played nearly one year. So yeah, I took a different approach later on in my life, but I wish I would have enjoyed it more when I was younger too.

It’s like travel a little bit more instead of like, oh man, I got a really like, I have a day off. So I’m like resting today. I’m not traveling anywhere stuff like that. So I wish I would have done a little more of that in enjoying it. They just thinking, okay, I’m just staying in a house,

[01:07:46] Mike Klinzing: Just like we talked about before.

Right. You’re when you’re young, that seems like I got forever today to get.

[01:07:53] Vlad Moldoveanu: Yeah, exactly. On my way. I got to get to Rome.

[01:07:57] Mike Klinzing: Exactly. Exactly. It’s funny how it’s funny, how life works. All right. Before we dive into the mental performance stuff, which I want to get to here before we wrap up, I want to ask you, this is a standard question for anybody who’s played European basketball.

What’s your craziest European basketball story. I know you have one. You can keep it one that you can share. So keep it PG 13, let’s say, oh

[01:08:21] Vlad Moldoveanu: Yeah, I know I had to play my career now. I don’t care if I put people on blast though. It’s okay. Quite a few, honestly, quite a few that have that. To me, it’s just the craziest stories in general. Why I’m seeing this. Is that I would have to send letters to clubs to get paid. And I had quite a few situations where it was like that like that the money keeps coming late. And the only way they would pay me is if my, my agent sends a letter saying, Hey, you guys are past the 30 days please speak soon or he’s going to leave the team or he’s not going to practice or so.

And if I ever stopped practicing, I was the bad guy. Right. But I was like 37 days behind a paycheck. So to me, that’s that’s the crazy part about it. Cause like we literally haven’t sent like a letter and then within two days you have the money. So I’m like, why didn’t you just pay me at the beginning with why do I have to send a letter every month to beg for my money?

You know, like I worked for it. Like we signed a contract, like why do we have to do all this? And to me, that’s just a crazy story. And then other ones. It was, I was in Italy and the fast game to practice you know, to support us because we were having a, a rough patch during the season and the fans came and they sang the whole practice and it was awesome.

You know, they were open practice and they were just supporting us. But also our stories when the situation is not supporting and they come and just cuss you out, I was fortunate to be on the good side of,

[01:09:55] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that sounds like you definitely want to be on the good side. It’s one thing to get heckled in a game, man.

But if you’re getting heckled in practice by your own fans, that that’s not good. That’s not a good situation.

[01:10:04] Vlad Moldoveanu: Yeah. It comes to the pressure for annual sports in Europe, so it’s okay. And it’s not okay. You know, it’s like of those things,

[01:10:15] Mike Klinzing: the passion, the passion is good and bad. Right? Exactly. Yep. That’s it.

All right. Let’s talk mental performance. First of all, tell me a little bit about exactly what it is. That you’re doing, what kind of players you’re working with, how you’re finding those clients. And then maybe we talk a little bit about some of the things that you’re working with players on.

[01:10:36] Vlad Moldoveanu: Absolutely.  So let me start where I find a clients. I don’t find them. They find me really whoever wants to work with me I’m, I’m open to it if it’s, if it’s the right fit, usually because I’ve had a mental performance coach for six years out of my 11 years. That’s where I developed my passion for it. And that’s where I learned most about myself, I would say as a player and as a person.

So what it is is just working on your mental game to put in a short way. And that comes from let’s say focus to motivational stuff that we just talked about how to deal with situations during a game control what you can control is one of my mantras it’s. Getting frustrated, for example, with the decision of a referee or a coach, and it doesn’t help you ever and a lot of players tend to have that negative reaction or was like, why am I on a bench right now?

And I found myself actually talking to my guys right now as the captain of the team. And somebody comes up and he’s like, oh, what are you taking me out? And I was like, why are you worried about why you take you out? Just sit down and take a breather. You’re then go back in, just focused on the now, you know instead of just, oh, the guy, this guy didn’t pass me the ball and stuff like that.

So overall what I work on with my clients on the, on the mental side of the game you know, I create a workbook that we go from goal setting to what is really a practice mindset versus a performance mindset. We work on how to focus, how to visualize, how to self-talk, how do you self-talk to your advantage, not your disadvantage and little details like this that really, really make a difference in the player’s life.

And I think it actually makes a difference in the coaches life too, as I’m debating go to coaching and in the future and the near future. I really find it very, very helpful.

[01:12:31] Mike Klinzing: All right. Give me an example of how you would try to turn around a player who has negative self-talk what kind of things would.

Encourage them to do to turn off that negative voice in their head and spin it positive. How do you get a player to do that? Or what are some exercises that maybe you have them work on to get them to get out of that negative self-talk

[01:12:55] Vlad Moldoveanu: Well, first I can be a good example of it actually. And as a shooter you know, I was always worried about percentages, right.

And when I, when I started working on myself it was, it was a struggle. It took me a while to understand. This next shot mentality, right? So as a shooter, I would have a bad night what’s really of a, was it was a bad night. Cause at this point in my career, I don’t consider any night a bad night he’s got their hoop and sometimes the ball goes in, sometimes the ball doesn’t go in.

As long as the process is the same, you’ve done everything. You could actually t the fact that the ball goes in the basket. I would say, it’s not something that you can control. If the process was the same way, your shot would look the same. Every single time you focus your sharp, then you just let the ball go.

And sometimes it goes into, sometimes it doesn’t, that’s the way I see it right now at this point in my career. So for example, I had a lot of, self-talk a lot of negative self-talk when I was a little bit younger because of the shooting part. So let’s say I would just shoot bad from the field, especially three point shooting and I’ll go over five that on one night.

And what I found out is after my first or second miss, I was always in my own head somewhere or not. I was like, you gotta make it, you gotta make your next shot, like putting pressure on myself or you know, I would just try to find excuses. Right. And. Then I kind of flipped it. So my self-talk started in the pregame where I was like, okay, I keep telling myself I’m the best shooter in the gym.

I’m the best shooter in the gym. I’m the best you’re in gym. I keep repeating stuff like that to myself. Then once it became in the game I used some that my mental coach preach to me. He said, you know what, when you make you just say a lot of play, a basketball player, say my bad how often do you hear that from a basketball player?

You know, you put your finger up, my Al my bad, my bad. And he was like, okay, when you make a shot, just say my good. And it was an interesting concept. And I started using it in practice. And

[01:15:01] Mike Klinzing: That’s cool. I never heard that before.

[01:15:02] Vlad Moldoveanu: And that became mantra for me. And then what, what I tell really my younger athletes to find a reset point because negative thoughts.

And positive status it was just, you just want to keep everything in check, be balanced. There’s the whole idea of it. And for example, for me is the rim. And I find, I look at the rim whether I miss a shot and maybe I’m a freeze line, I’m just the first free throw. And I look at the rim, I just say a reset to myself and I know reset for me.

It’s just like clear your mind. You’re done next. Like now you’re live in the present, live in the now the most important shot you’re going to take is the next one. That’s it? That’s all it matters. It doesn’t matter if you’re one foot definitely to line or whatever. And with my younger athletes, I feel that that works very well.

They find a point in digital. Were they look at for one second, they say reset and they can find they reset themselves and get themselves out of that negative emotion, that negative self-talk. So those two options are and have been good. Good for me and good for my athletes. So I will suggest actually, if you, if you do have a shooter, just use my good, my bad and reset or next play.

The next play you know, you make a mistake and you don’t want to stay in the past. Whereas the turnover Ms. Shot I always say next play. Very often when I have a bad blast, the next play in my head,

[01:16:31] Mike Klinzing: I think that’s a really good way to be able to train yourself, to focus on the here and now, which anything that you read from a mental performance standpoint that you want to get into that flow state, right?

Where you’re not worried about what happened before. You’re not worried about what’s going to happen in the future. You just. Completely focused on what you’re doing in the moment. And you kind of let that natural instinct, that muscle memory that relying on, you talked about it earlier, that the reason why your confidence because of your preparation, right?

So you want, you don’t want your brain to get in the way of the preparation that you’ve done from a physical standpoint, so that you could always be in play at your best, in your experience thus far, working with players, is it easier or harder to work with a player who is more experienced or less experienced?

In other words, if you have a player who’s less experienced and that could mean a younger player, or maybe just a player who’s not at as high of a level, there may be more of a blank slate versus a player. Who’s, let’s say Ben, a college player, a professional player who has more experience, but also brings more baggage.

Do you think it’s easier to work with one or the other? Or is that really not honestly,

[01:17:47] Vlad Moldoveanu: I haven’t worked at any, any pros other than myself, I’m a work in progress, but most of them, most of my kids are 14 to 18 right now. Okay. And they have different battles than what I would have or that I think approach would have.

You know, because I hate to say it, but the highlight culture to stuff that you talked about, the social media how much pressure it puts on them. I had to keep telling me one time. So these planar youth academy and then, oh yeah, the, the coach from the next level up is coming through to watch us play this and that.

And he was like a nervous, nervous wreck. I said, okay, let’s kind of break it down see what you can control, what you can not control what are the pros and cons and this and that. And then I’m like, So why are you really nervous? And he’s like, well, if I played bad, what are my friends going to say?

And I was like, wait a minute. I was like talking to the whole time, like you started telling me that you’re a nervous wreck because you know, the scope is coming and this and that. And it’s like, yeah, but if I get blocked and it gets on Instagram and I’m like, I was like, really? This is, this is the issue.

Like, and I find that very often, it happens very often. Whereas the literally scared to like make a play because of my, I ended up on the wrong side of their social media whenever they played friends or whatever, they played people that like follow each other. And it’s unbelievable to me. Like, I’d never thought of it until now.

Honestly, even like, as a pro, I never thought of it like, okay, I got dumped on. Guess what? Okay. He posted it. Amazing tag me into it. If you want good play, what do you want me to do? You know, It’s the, you can’t live in that culture where it’s like one plate and you know, it’s one post and you’re like, oh, I just, I got a great post for Instagram.

Great. And you played horrible. So like, what’s like, what’s more important. Like the 200 likes you got on Instagram or the fact that your team lost or that you had 20 and 10, like let’s, let’s find the balance of it all. Whereas kids nowadays, to me that that’s, that’s the most frustrating part, you know as a mental performance coach you know, they lit, they lit this controlled.

They let this dictate the way they play, the way they approach things. Like like, oh, how do I look doing this move? I was like, I don’t care how you look, doesn’t this move. Like if it’s the right path or it make that one, don’t make the one behind the bag, just because it’s a highlight.

[01:20:34] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. Well, the problem is, is that so much of their life now is lived through the phone, even in terms of just how they communicate in normal life. Forget about on the sports side of it, but just person to person they’re just, they’re on their phones and that’s how they’re, that’s how they’re communicating.

So you have that piece of it. And then just like, as an adult, it’s easy to scroll through whatever social media you want and look up. People’s photos and look at people’s video clips and be like, wow, this person has a great life, or this person has this. Or while it’s just look at this vacation that they’re on and all these different things that we as adults can do.

And yet we know that it’s just one singular snapshot of, it’s not a real true vision of anyone’s life. And for kids when they see, okay, they see that highlight or they’re comparing theirselves, or I think about lad, they have kids that like, think about the number of kids that are posting the offers that they get on Twitter.

Well, like when I was a kid, like I knew that there were some guys around me in my local area that were going to schools, but I didn’t have any idea outside of a 10 mile radius or 20 mile radius around my house. I had no idea what anybody else was doing or how many kids were signing here or going there or announcing they were doing that.

Now you’re a kid. I mean, you can see. Every single thing. So not only are you seeing like the four kids in your area that got a division one scholarship, but you’re seeing all 500 kids across the country that are announcing on Twitter, that they got a division one scholarship, and you’re trying to compare yourself to that.

And it’s just not, it can’t be healthy. And I know I’ve talked to several college coaches on the podcast about how they handle social media and just trying to get their players to understand that you can use it as a tool. And there’s a lot of good things about it, but certainly it can, it can be a really difficult thing for people to deal with.

And I think it’s, it’s interesting when I think mental performance coach social media is not the first thing that popped into my head. And yet hearing you say that I could definitely see where for a 13 to 18 year old basketball player, that could become a really, really huge issue that could impact the way they play on the floor.

[01:23:02] Vlad Moldoveanu: Well, you talked about, right, like you, I guess one of one of my goals is to get them to play in that zone right. In the flow that you talked about. And like you said it to get them there, you got to get the brain out of it. And all of this stuff is it’s puts it puts so much pressure on them.

And what I tell my guys is, is really simple. The more you mastered the technique, right? The dribbling, the ball, handling the shooting, all of this stuff, you give yourself more space, more room in the brain you know, to work with the other stuff, to see more stuff on the floor you know, to get yourself to the zone.

Because if I gotta think about, always about like, how do I dribble now? Because my ball handling is not up to up to par, right? Let’s say I’m a point guard. I get pressure full court and. You know, ball handling is so-so well, first of all, I can’t get you to any flow because you’re going to be worried about dribbling the ball.

I can’t get you to see everything on the floor and play at your best because you’re going to be worried about dribbling the ball. You’re going to be looking like, oh, where’s the ball. Oh, pressure me. By the time we get to office, it’s hard to like start any office. So the first thing I really told him is just this massive technique master the skills, the actual physical skills that require playing basketball.

And then once we do that, once stuff becomes easy for you. Then we kind of just we take off some pressure of the brain where they don’t have to think about it. You know, like somebody reaches full court. I go through my legs, change direction. I beat him. I don’t have to think about every single dribble.

So we’ll when we start like that. It gives me a lot more room to work with and. Easier to get them to a flow state of mind. But the problem that like I told you, I faced is what does it look like after that for them? You know, it’s, it’s, what are the frustration that for, for kids, it’s a lot of frustration where someone doesn’t work out they just, like we talked about earlier, patients, stuff like this, they don’t have it.

I didn’t have it. So that’s the first thing is like, they get frustrated with a bad play. Then they get frustrated with others that they cannot control. And at the end that, to me, that’s the cherry you know, the cherry on top, it’s just this, this, this highlight culture where all they think about is how can I make the flashy play, not the right basketball play?

You know, how can I do this and that and that, and. As a mentor coach, I only have so much power in that because it does come from the coaching staff too. And I have players that, not going to give out names, but their coaching staff is the one that’s promoting highlight culture.

Right. And that’s, that’s, to me, that’s a bigger problem because you know, then I’m fighting a battle against a coaching staff that basically chooses their minutes and the player so much. And you know, you have the coaching staff. That’s like, okay, well, if you guys promote that if, if after a game, you as a coach, you post your player stats or you do like you post some highlights of, of your, of your team plane.

It’s all highlights of blocks, dunks and you know, nothing. That’s team-related, it’s not like a one-man show type stuff. And I’ve seen that, unfortunately then that, to me, that I have an issue with that, but again, it’s not my business to bring it up to a coaching staff.

[01:26:52] Mike Klinzing: That’s what you’re going to get.

Right. If that’s what you are praising, if that’s what’s get out, it gets put out into the public eye, then that’s a message. It may not be an intentional message that the coaching staff was trying to send out, but it certainly is a message that kids get and kids see, and they look at it and Hey, if this is what the coach is promoting, then this is what I need to do.

I think when you go to a game and you’ll see a kid crossover, another kid, and the kid will, even if they just stumble, like that gets the biggest cheer from crap. Today, forget about good basketball. Forget about winning basketball. Keep people get the most excited about somebody crossing somebody up and making them stumble or fall.

That’s what brings the biggest cheers from crowds and I, and you know, I, I never, I personally never understand it, but then all you gotta do is go on social media and look at what are the videos that people watch. And they like seeing people break ankles and having somebody fall down. Those, those are the videos that get lots of likes.

And so it’s understandable.

[01:27:58] Vlad Moldoveanu: You mentioned that. Okay. Maybe I show my age right now, but I remember Aaron Craft at Ohio state and he’s had a fairly successful career overseas too. And he was the guy that was his garage, 94 feet, right. Like baseline to baseline. And I can guarantee you that we’ll find it.

We’ll find a clip of him falling at some point, right. In, in those four years at a highest state. And that is literally 0.1% of possessions that he had Ohio state where he just fell one time and he really pressured your guard for four years. So how many turnovers has he caused? You know, how many deflection has he had and you get that one?

That one highlight, right? Like like a big man gets dunked on and now how many shots does he can test? You know, how many shots is he altar? Okay. How many blogs does he get? But like, it was like, he’ll get dumped on. And unfortunately that’s that’s the world that we live in now. And it’s, it’s like you said, it’s a matter of.

How coaches use that and they can use it, their advantage or disadvantage, or depending on the players, they want to get you to college high school because now recruiting is high school too. So it’s, it’s a whole different ball game.

[01:29:14] Mike Klinzing: Basketball is certainly a lot different than it was in the past.

And there’s a lot of positives and there’s a lot of challenges. And I think when you talk about mental performance, it’s an area that in the last five to 10 years has become more and more and more important. When you talk about a players career from a players, just a high school player to a college player, to I’m sure, a PLO, a pro player, as you described with yourself, having a mental performance, coach yourself for the past six years, I can only think that that has been invaluable to you as a player because it’s something that back 20 or 30 years ago, Nobody worried about it.

Nobody thought about it. It wasn’t something that anybody even considered and the game isn’t a better place because we do have people who understand how important your mind is in performing and performing well. And I think it’s, I think it’s really important. I think it’s something that I’m sure you’re going to be able to continue to grow and do as you transition out of being a player and no matter where your coaching career ends up taking you, I think the mental performance piece will always be a part of what you do.

[01:30:24] Vlad Moldoveanu: Oh, absolutely. It would be a huge part to me. I just start with that. Even if I, if I get into like actual basketball coaching full time it will be a huge part of it, a huge piece of it because I think that’s. That’s where he becomes successful, really, because when I was in high school, another thing that stuck with me when my, my high school coach said it was like mental is too physical, like forest one.

And from, I’ll tell you this from a six, nine guy that had made before dunks and his 11 year pro career it was more mental. It was all mental for me. I can’t, it’s just, I literally had, I think, four dunks or four or five dunks you live in a year pro career and I had two in college, so,

[01:31:08] Mike Klinzing: Well, I’m a six three guy who I’ve probably, I’ve probably had, I never dunked ever in a game.

And I probably have dunked in my entire life probably 10 times, but on probably a rim that wasn’t 10 feet. It was probably, it was probably 95 degrees in the gym. I probably barely fudged it in. So I can certainly relate to the fact that. You can be a pretty good basketball player and not be able to dump that don’t get me wrong.

I would have loved to been able to jump like Rex, to be able to jump like Rex Chapman and be able to do all that stuff. But that was not a, that was not something that I was gifted with. So you have to figure out different ways to do it right. And get it done.

[01:31:51] Vlad Moldoveanu: Yeah, absolutely. And to me, that’s what I say.

Like the mental part was huge for me. Either becoming the student of the game, either learning how to deal with anxiety facing more athletic players either whereas my self-talk whether I was learning how to visualize before games. You know, learning how breathing helps either energize me or calm me down all of these tools that just help you.

And I’m a big fan of just the 1% how can I get 1% better? How can I get you 1% better?

[01:32:26] Mike Klinzing: It certainly does. There’s no question about that. All right. Blowing past an hour and a half here. So before we wrap up, I want to give you a chance to, again, share how people can reach out to you, share where they can find out more about you.

Give us the train website again and just share how people can find out and connect with you. And then I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:32:51] Vlad Moldoveanu: Absolutely. So for me, it’s @VladMoldoveanu9 on just about on any social media.

[01:33:01] Mike Klinzing: We’ll definitely have that on the show notes. So it’ll be good.  We’ll get it out there for people.

[01:33:07] Vlad Moldoveanu: You can find it on VladMoldoveanu.com or https://train.hoopdrillz.com/ We’re super excited about that platform. And if you ever got any questions can just reach out to me about social media, I’m on social media and I’ll, I’ll respond as quickly as possible and help anybody out.

You know, if I’m like an open book if somebody needs help and if I can help, I would love to, especially since the basketball world to me is a tight community and we all want to grow the game the right way.

[01:33:43] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely is.  And I’m always amazed by the willingness of guys like yourself and other guests we’ve had on the pod to share. And. The ball is amazing when it comes to making connections. And you said it earlier in the pod about just basketball being your life and how important spend to you. And I certainly feel the same way.

And the podcast is just given us a platform to be able to connect with great people who are doing great things in the game of basketball like yourself. And we’re still thankful that you’re a part of the hoop peds family, and that you were willing to jump on with us tonight. And we talked for an hour and 40 minutes, and I feel like we could easily double this and keep talking.

And there’s just a ton more to, to continue to, to, to discuss a left, to have you jumped back on again at some point, but thank you for your time tonight, lad really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening. And we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks!