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Basketball Fans – What team are you with? Boston Celtics or the Los Angeles Lakers?

Two National Basketball Association (NBA) rising stars, Jayson Tatum (Celtics) and Kyle Kuzma (Lakers), flew down to have dinner with us here in Melbourne and we took a bunch of CreativeCubes.Co members with us to chow and hang.

These athletes face similar challenges like any business, from looking after one’s health, to focus and burn out.

On todays vlog see the conversations and learn from their own life lessons.

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Transcript

Tobi Skovron: What’s really cool is, he just got in the car, and he’s coming to meet us at dinner. So, we get to spend a little time with him a little later.

Jayson Tatum: That and sometimes we’re on the road, for like 15 days, and then we go to 9 different cities. So, I would forget what day it was, or forget what hotel room I was in. And, that was the biggest adjustment for me my first year. It’s just so many games, it was kind of tough on my body at first, but you get, you get used to it.

Jayson Tatum: Yeah. Gary helped me a lot. Marcus Morris, one of the older guys, and, just any questions I had, with anything basketball, non-basketball related, they were always there to help me. Because it is, it is a big transition from [inaudible 00:01:07] to NBA.

Gawin Fernando: I want to know, about coach Pop. You know, how was he as a coach? You learning things off him? Is he stealing things from you? Does he try to learn you? What’s your feeling?

Jayson Tatum: Yeah. It’s a unique experience. We don’t have a lot of time together before we try to win the gold medal. But, everybody’s trying to get to know each other, and spend as much time with each other as we can. So we have a lot of team dinners, with our coaches as well. But I like Pop a lot. He actually has a great sense of humour.

Gawin Fernando: He does?

Jayson Tatum: Very funny.

Gawin Fernando: Yeah.

Gawin Fernando: I’m scared of being on the other side of the screen [crosstalk 00:01:50].

Jayson Tatum: He can be mean,

Gawin Fernando: Yeah.

Jayson Tatum: But he’s funny too.

Gawin Fernando: You sort of respect the meanness, because he’s telling you, because probably true, right?

Jayson Tatum: Yeah.

Gawin Fernando: Or, it is true.

Jayson Tatum: He knows what he’s doing. He has five championships, [crosstalk 00:02:04] so he knows what he’s doing.

Kyle Kuzma:    I mean, not really. I mean Front office, they don’t really expect me to. I’m sure you guys know, you guys have front offices. You have sports, organizations that run you guys. Probably for me, the only thing I can control is on the basketball court. What I do, on a day to day basis. That’s kind of always been my motto, and how I approach things. You know, whether it’s sports, business, family, whatever, friends. Just try to control what I can control. Because all the other stuff, you think about those type of things, it can distract you from what you really can’t control, without you even knowing it.

Gawin Fernando: Because I mean, obviously, being in the Lakers, whether you like it or not, you’re always in the lime light. Big or small no matter what the news is, it’s always breaking headline right?

Jayson Tatum: Yeah.

Gawin Fernando: Do they, coach you professionally to handle that sort of stuff? Or do you as a player just, I mean, because that’s a really grounded answer. There’s a million right answers, and that’s definitely one of them.

Jayson Tatum: Right.

Gawin Fernando: Do they coach you through that? Or they just expect you to be like, you’re here to play basketball, do a great job, you’re talented, let’s go.

Jayson Tatum: I’ll be a little bit of both. I mean, I wouldn’t say they teach you, what to say, how to act. You know, at the end of the day, we’re all grown men, you kind of make your own decisions in life. And if you make a fucked up one, then you know, you’ll see-

Gawin Fernando: You pay the price.

Jayson Tatum: You pay the price.

Tobi Skovron: It’s amplified in LA though right?

Jayson Tatum: But, me, I always try to, you know, make the right decisions. From a basketball perspective, come Carmelo Anthony, there’s somebody that, you know, is super talented. That has so much skill and so much knowledge of the game. Kobe Bryant, he’s not in the NBA but, I’ve trained with him. Who else? Those are like the main people really. I like to learn from legends. So, I’d probably say, maybe. Yeah.

Tobi Skovron:  Thanks pal. Good luck man. I’ll probably see you tomorrow night.

Jayson Tatum: Yeah.

Tobi Skovron:  I’ll be, I’ll be at the game.