All right, next question. Somebody asked, what's something you weren't prepared for, good or bad, that comes with the NBA lifestyle? People might not believe me on this, but I literally never played basketball with the thought of one day I'll be playing for a lot of money. I always just play because I loved it and I wanted to be the best.

So I had no even concept of what it would be like to have money and to be able to take care of my family and to be able to do things I wanted to do. I didn't know what it would be like to be able to go to dinner and spend $250, $300 on a bill and that would be okay.

Like I remember calling my mom like the first week when I got my first few checks or whatever, and I was like, wait, mom, so like I'm good to go, to go get, like I'm good every day if I wanted to this week to go out to dinner and spend $200 and she was like, yeah, Michael, like that's okay.

And you know, my mom, like she's, she's still to this day wants me to be very frugal and whatever, but that wasn't even a concept in my head that I would have money to do, do stuff with. Like I, for some reason there's like a misconception out there that I grew up with money or whatever, but like my, I'm in a family of 10.

My dad was the only one that worked and he made $30,000 a year. And my mom was a stay at home mom homeschooling all of us. Like my mom would pull up to Panera and wait to the end of the day so they could give her the leftover bagels that they were going to throw out.

So, but the thing is like, we never felt, we didn't feel like we were broke, but bro, we were broke. Like my mom and dad did such a good job of making us feel like we had everything in the world and everything we needed, but we were broke. You know what I mean?

$30,000 a year for 10 kids. Like, I don't know where that misconception comes from that I grew up like with, with bread, but that was my biggest thing that I didn't really prepare for was the fact that I'm gonna have money, I'm gonna be able to take care of my mom and dad, I'm gonna be able to buy them a car.

I'm gonna be able to go to dinner when I want and not worry about the bills. So that was, that was like obviously a good surprise. And then, you know, something that's kind of a bad, a bad thing that I didn't really prepare for was kind of the loneliness.

You feel a little bit, um, just through the process of the season, all the traveling, all the nights in the hotel alone, all the, all the, um, it is isolating. Like you do feel very isolated, especially probably when you don't have a significant other and you don't have somebody who's traveling with you on the road.

Like most of my friends at this point are married and got kids. Even my two younger brothers, they're married. My sisters are married, got kids. So besides you, I never had anybody like pulling up on me. Uh, you know, I don't, I don't have a lot of friends. So I feel like the isolating fact of that can be kind of tough.

I would say that I would say the fact, I would even add to that, bro, because your experience is different because you had three surgeries and you're having surgeries in the midst of the NBA season. So like sometimes where you have that brotherhood, you're traveling with your teammates, you have them, you're staying back in Denver because you're doing rehab or we're in Dallas because we're at Dr.

Doss's office and you're having surgery. So even within, you know, most people have their teammates to lean on. Sometimes you didn't even have that at moments. Yeah. Yeah. And I think also the fact that I was homeschooled growing up, I didn't make a lot of relationships growing up. I got a few homies that are still my friends to this day, but like, I think that's another thing is I just never was a dude that had a lot of friends.

I had my family and that was, that was really all I needed. So I think the isolating fact about the NBA would, would probably be the thing that I didn't prepare for.