Dear Bulls Fans, My Job is Killing My Basketball Career

Well, technically I’ve never been paid to play basketball so it’s not really a career, but I like to think that, the $20 a day my high school basketball couch gave us for food while traveling to a 3-day Holiday basketball tournament in Pekin, IL constitutes professional status.
The hours I’m working (6:00 PM - 2:30 AM, Monday-Friday) are finally starting to effect me though. Well, they have been from the start. It’s a struggle just to play more than one game now. I’m a step slow, I feel hungover, and the frustrating part is - I know that it’s not just because I’m getting older, because I’m only 25. It’s definitely the schedule. How do I know? I played a game for a rec league team in Westwood one time, on a Sunday, with 2 days of rest and a more normal sleep schedule than my usual 4:00 AM to Noon and guess what happened? I hit 8 3-pointers and scored 32 points, and we weren’t playing scrubs either. Actually…I don’t know if my hitting 8 3-pointers and scoring 32 points proves anything or not, but I wanted to brag about hitting 8 3-pointers and scoring 32 points in a game and document it somewhere.
It’s really the whole point of writing this blog too because why else would I want to talk about the depression about not being able to play my best and having people think that I am just that slow. I mean…I am slow… and white…but not usually as slow as I have been and usually when people think of me being slow, it doesn’t have anything to do with basketball.
It’s pretty frustrating though, because I’m not out of shape and I know that my quality playing days are not done yet. (No, I’m not in denial, I’m being serial here, dead cereal.)
So to everybody who plays at 24-Hour Fitness in Hollywood, I would like to apologize. The player you are seeing on the court isn’t me, it’s my evil, sleep deprived twin. I will get my game back together…someday. Probably, the same day that I get my career back in tune with a schedule more synonomous with the rest of the world. And once again, I’m being serial, dead cereal.