Kansas, Zach Randolph, African American Community discussed on The Lowe Post
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Like, look, next day, we're putting you on the private jet, you need to fly down to Houston, how do you a lawyer and get this behind you, right? So I take all the steps and do that and I go through the year. And I'm still getting into, you know, heated confrontations and things to that nature. And I'm still raging. I don't know why, but like, you know, the technical files is one thing, but I catch myself, you know, doing that time, I'm about to get in a fight with Zach Randolph and, you know, I'm getting ejected out of games and things to that nature. And it was Dolly striking sound pressed it, right? Because it wasn't over. They never forgot about the incident. It was just too late to act on it at that moment. And so they came to me and they was like, hey, listen. You got two options, right? We still got a penalize you for your actions that happened last off season. So either we're going to suspend you without pay. They was talking like 25 plus games. Or they have this place down in Kansas that you could go to. And it's going to help you and you need to show that you're committed by going. And I'm like, man, man, I ain't nothing wrong with me, you know what I'm saying? But it wasn't a harsh conversation. So I go down to Kansas, I agree to go down. I go down. I'm not happy on the four hour ride down to Kansas, right? I'm pissed. I'm living. And I get there, and the classes were money through Friday, 8 in the morning to 5 in the evening, right? So I get to the classes and I'm in this in these class in this space where it's a luxury setup right like treating you the food and all this, but I'm in there with like, you know, one of the top spinal surgeons and anesthesiologists top doctors around the nation that have problems and had like that abused their power in workspace. And so I'm in there and I'm the only athlete in there the whole time. I'm like, all right, I'm here, so I'm gonna make the best of it. And I just started learning, right? I started learning from each person's situation and, you know, we had to do these different assignments and we had to, you know, read and hear the counselors out about putting yourself in certain positions and not in thinking things through before you do certain things or go in certain places and it helped me man like it really did. It helped me start to evaluate situations more have more self control over myself where it was like, you know what? I don't need to go out. I don't need to go to this place or I start to think about things when people invite me places and say, well, what's really going on over here? What's really happening? You know what I'm saying? And it made me a better man and I felt like 5 years ago, Zach, you could have never like no one can ever beat this out of me to tell this story. Almost embarrassing, right? But I was like, you know what? It's okay to share it because we're in a space now where you're going through mental health, right? Like so many people have mental health issues and the African American community. Like growing up, if you say that you're going to get help or get counseling or you going through something, you get laughed at. You become the butt of the jokes. So I wanted to let it be known to the world that it's okay. It's okay, especially to these young kids and these young people and these households in the African American community that are going through something that you never know they just need to go talk to somebody or go get help. You can save somebody's life. So like you see people taking their lives on a day to today basis because they can't have diversity or they're afraid to go get help because they scared of what other people are going to say. It's really fascinating to read it because again, the word rage comes up a lot in the book and you talk about the source what you think some of the sources are for the raid you felt and the sensitivity you felt of. Course racist either either explicitly or implicitly white people using the stereotype of the angry black man to further cement their power status into mean black people in the sensitive you felt to I can't feed into that, but I have to channel my rage into productive ways. It's really it's really interesting and that journey in the book starts with you driving from Beaumont to Boston as an 18 year old kid who I think you said it never done laundry before in the book. It never lived anywhere outside of Beaumont and all of a sudden you're living in a townhouse in Boston. And now we get to talk about some fun Celtic stories if you want. Do you want to tell you want to say something? What do you want to say? Yeah, so Zack, you know how sometimes I hit you with those countries sayings, on television, you say, I don't understand a word perk just said, well, what he just said just out, but I am going to say this and then you go ahead to divert into your topic, you know, here's another country thing about me that happened. I didn't know a damn thing about transporting cars. Like I didn't know I could call services and get my truck like shipped to Boston and I could catch a flight and actually go and they'll be there, you know, a week or a couple days later. So my country self got in the car with one of my good friends, George Davis, and we drove 30 hours, 30 hours with bags, packed, the truck feel, 'cause that's the only way I thought I could give my car to a Boston, right? And so we didn't have like Google Maps. We had a real road, man. That's a lot of us do. So he would drive, we would alternate. He would drive it from the gas meter went from four to empty and then we would switch over and during that time we would nap, but that's the country Ness, right? If it don't, like that's just me for boba Texas, I didn't know I could put my truck on an 18 Wheeler or whatever you want to call on the flatbed and shipping across country near the beater. I wouldn't ride. You talk a lot about Paul Pierce and the mentorship role Paul Pierce played for you. In serious ways, inviting you and your friends who were visiting. Like, yeah, you're all welcome at my house. You had a name for his house. You want to say what the name was for Paul Pierce's house? Yeah, it was club. She is Nick. But please, please tell, please tell the story about how you earned, I think it was $15,000 from Paul Pierce in either your rookie season or earlier in your Celtics career. Yeah, it was 1500. So that's less dramatic. It's still a lot, but it's like 15,000 is better. But it was 15 $100, so I remember home, Paul was a guy like, he wanted to see who had the killer instant in the mindset, right? So it was Marcus banks and Brandon hunter and myself, there was the three rookies. Well, Brandon hunter and Marcus banks was kind of like those guys that went to college three, four years. It was kind of stubborn grown man. They was kind of like rebellious in a way for us being rookies and rookie duties. So one day after practice Paul was like, I need to see who want to be here. I need to see you want to be here.