Swiss knife from a basketball family. Conversation with Rodion Kuruc / Day

Is it easy to be a professional basketball player?

Are not. It is not easy to be a professional basketball player, so it is important for us to feel a lot of support from the closest people. I really appreciate it. You live in frames where you are fulfilling other fictional conditions every day. The rules are very strict everyday. Not only in the so -called working hours, but also outside. Feelings of freedom are very lacking. Be in a box all the time.

Often, the realization of the athlete’s careers has been heard that the regime, rules and routine were not that bad, because the whole daily plan is usually clear and ordered. All you have to do is do!

On the one hand, it is cool, and it is usually very well paid, but if such a wheel turns constantly, it is very difficult throughout the year. You can look at everything on two sides. For someone, it seems that the athlete’s daily routine is great: training every day, frequent travel, race. However, if it happens for ten months every year, it does not seem so great. After the season, the club still has a team, you still have to get ready for next season, so sometimes you don’t even have the opportunity to get off the regime for a while. Such a nonstop comes. When we were together with Bračka (other Latvian national basketball player Arthur Kuruc – aut.) Together, we talked directly that it was sometimes so blessed to take a little free. I understand the players very well, who do not go to the random at all costs during the season, as it can give a lot of one week outside the gaming rhythm to rest from the daily routine or to cure any injury to the end. Of course, I always want to go to the team, but for example, the stage last fall, when I couldn’t do it because of the injury, was very useful for myself.

How easy or difficult is it to live with the dynamics when you are on a horse at one point – a talent for everyone – but you can be unnecessary after a few unsuccessful segments?

This is the daily life of the sports environment. Professional sports are very seriously tested by each person’s emotional and mental durability. Some endure it, others do not, but in some moments of career everyone goes through, and more than once.

How to overcome these difficulties?

I’ve been working with a psychologist for three to four years. Already in America I started to do so, now in Latvia I have my own psychologist. It helps a lot, and I think it is very difficult today for basketball players without such support. Not just basketball players. For every person, such support is very important, because we often go through great difficulties in our lives and only a few can do it on our own. The support of a psychologist can be very useful and perhaps even decisive for us as people and personalities to become stronger.

Nowadays, the athlete has to work more and more not only with physical but also mental strength?

I think I’m mentally a strong person. Perhaps also because I have gone through many difficulties, endured it and have hardened me. Maybe sounds cliché, but the difficulties really make it stronger. Overcoming them relieves and helps rise. Here’s an example with Bračku Arthur, who has not played in recent seasons for a long time, and it was really difficult for him to deal with it. He got into a different situation (UCAM moved from Murcia to another Spanish team LGO BREOGAN – Aut.) Where he was trusted, he gave the opportunity, and progress was obvious. Emotions came up, confidence in self -confidence, feelings of play. All this plays a very big role in every athlete’s performance. Of course, it helps very much if the right coach and the right teammates are next to it.

What is your recipe to overcome difficulties?

I am a workman and have always tried to prove myself through work. I am convinced that it always works, but it is impossible to escape from those top and down in a sports career. The inner feeling is often really the way you previously described – you can be on a horse and enjoy everything that is happening, but the next moment the situation can turn the opposite. I felt it very much when I was in the NBA. There I started hard. I played a lot and with a lot of confidence, the team (Brooklyn Nets – aut.), From which no one did not expect much at the time, played very well, but then there was one situation that you probably know very well, and everything went down quickly. At one short moment, everything simply collapsed. Emotionally, confidence in one’s own strength …

The « situation » you mentioned, which is obviously charged with a physical attack on your partner, courts and everything else, did you think was the main reason for the NBA’s career? At that time, there were big changes in the Nets team that made their « big trio » and you were in a shift deal with superstar James Harden!

No, no. The main reason was these accusations. I wouldn’t hide, I had a thorough head, and everything went away in the chain – the confidence disappeared, there was a huge pressure from the people and the media. It knocked me down thoroughly