The Coronavirus - What Does That Mean For You as a Basketball Player?

What's up, guys? Coach Ethan here was not expecting to make this video today, but as you guys know, the past couple days have been crazy. You know, in America, the coronavirus really has just kind of set in as a real thing for us over the past couple days, with everything that's gone on. As you guys know, the NBA season suspended, NCAA tournament canceled. All of the major conference and mid major conference tournaments have been canceled. Spring sports at the collegiate level have been canceled. A lot of them at the high school level have been canceled. In the state that I live in, it's looking like they're going to end up canceling the state playoffs for basketball. This is a time that none of us saw coming. But I want to talk about what this means for you personally as a basketball player and what we need to do going forward. The first thing that this really helps us to realize is that we don't control everything. A lot of times it can feel like if you put in enough work, you spend enough time doing the right things, then things are going to end up going this way for you. But this is time where you're going to realize that you don't really have all that much control over what happens to you. You know, you might work as hard as you want to, but B. NC Is going to come and say, oh, you can't play March madness this year, you know, and it sucks. It's really tough to put in all that work and then have it taken away by a virus, by something that you have no control over, that nobody controls. But, you know, that's life sometimes. And this is another lesson that I think we're learning, you know, as a country right now, but really over the entire world, you know, we're kind of learning that, you know, sometimes things happen and we just don't have control over them. Now, obviously, I live in America. We're just now starting to lock a lot of things down. There's some cities that have public places locked down. And, you know, as time moves on, I'm expecting that to become more widespread. Obviously, if you're in a country like Italy, my prayers are with you guys. You know, in America, we're trying to prevent that from happening. So, you know, everybody's really on edge here, and hopefully we'll be able to kind of slow things down until, you know, our doctors and everything can catch up to what's happening going forward. It's a bit of a weird situation, you know, for. We talk about, you know, AAU season. Aau, like the actual organization has suspended all tournaments for the next month. So even if you had a tournament that wanted it to keep going, AAU is not allowing it. So there's going to be no AAU for the next month at least. And it's possible that that extends longer than that. So we've got to be ready for whichever scenario we get, meaning you got to stay ready. But also understand that, again, you don't control anything. You might put in all the work and they might say, no AAU this year, which, you know, sucks for, especially those guys in their last season of aau, guys who are rising seniors. Very tough situation to be in. And obviously that's a big part of recruiting as well. But again, you have to understand you aren't in control of everything, but you got to control what you do control. So for now, do what you can do. All the gyms are shutting down in a lot of places. My state of Pennsylvania, our governor, recommended people avoid going to the gym. And there have been counties in my state that have completely shut down gyms, so you might not be able to do that. Get outside and do some ball handling, some shooting, as much as you can. Again, do your best to stay ready, control what you can control, and everything else is going to work out how it does. So this is not a time to be fearful or panic. This is a time to be proactive in what we do in order to slow down this virus and ideally be able to stop it going forward. So obviously, listen to what everybody's telling you. Wash your hands. If you can find hand sanitizer, use it as often as you can. All those little things are going to help to slow down this virus, to keep you healthy and in turn, the people around you also healthy. That's very, very important. We have to come together as people and understand that it's each of our responsibility to be healthy, to be clean, so that we can stop this virus. Okay? It's on you, it's on me, it's on everybody. So understand that responsibility that you have, that's our main priority right now. And. And if we all come together, I think we'll be able to do it. Last thing I'll say is, again, this is out of our control. But understand that things are changing quickly, and with a virus especially, you never know if it's going to mutate and symptoms are going to go away or whatever. So understand things are changing, stay ready, stay alert, do what you can control, what you can control, and we'll be all right going forward. Again, guys, be clean, be safe. I'LL talk to you guys soon.