Fellowship Church Grapevine

700 people lived in our dorm. Only 3 out of 700 went to church. And my teammates were like, “Man, what’s wrong with you?  Why don’t you smoke the weed with us?  Why don’t you do the dope with us?  We have all these hooker’s on the road and you don’t even have sex with them.   You don’t even have sex with Lisa. What’s wrong with you!?”

Day in and day out I felt large levels of loneliness. I went through depression because it was just falling apart for me.

Yet, by God’s grace and power, he gave me the ability to remain strong.  But every day before practice, I remember I’d get there early; I’d get all taped up and get my uniform on and I would go up this staircase to this little window overlooking our gym where we’d practice and I would say, “God, I give basketball. I give this whole thing to you.  I am in Sodom and Gomorrah.  I don’t know why I’m in this hell hole. Use me, God, in any way possible.”  I had to pray that over and over and over again every single day.

I met a guy on my team named Rodney.  Rodney was the wildest guy on the team.  He was a phenomenal athlete. Everybody was scared to death of him, and the coach would always put me with him on road trips.  Rodney and I had a couple of discussions about my life and about Christianity, but nothing in depth. He was like talking to a brick wall.

My freshman year I sat on the bench pretty much the whole year.  We’d play on ESPN or some other national television show and my mom would call and say, “Honey, I saw you. You’re hair looked great on the bench.”