I would have slammed the door and hit the gym.

I would have ate, slept and drank basketball until, by next year, coach would have had to play me.

I would never have quit.... never.

Now, I think we can all agree that the interview was only his side of the story and there’s always 2 sides to every story.

And, in the interview, I found Bam a most likable guy, who brimmed with confidence; had nothing but good things to say about his teammates and coaches.

However, there were somethings that caught my attention:

1) He said that he was chatting with a teammate when a player went down (it had to be Cone) and coach had to yell at him 2 times to “get in the game.”

I can’t imagine being on a basketball team and not being laser focused on what was going on in the game. Not even realizing one of your teammates went down, because you are immersed in some sort of chit chat is inexcusable in my view.

If I’m the coach, and you’re doing that, you are sitting.

Hell, my coach in high school would have had me turn in my uniform.

This is not practice, it’s the big game, and here’s where you learn about how well scouting reports did, the skills and deficiencies of your opponents and a whole host of things.

Whether sitting or playing, this is where you learn. It’s like a basketball classroom.

So yeah, I think this statement revealed a lot about what might have been going on.

2) Although he said he bonded with the team, he admitted that he didn’t really know Aleve very well, except to say that he was a really humble guy.

This was sort of a disconnect to me.

So there seemed to be a certain amount of detachment from members of the team on his part and the game time mind set as well.

I think that the stops and starts with Covid played a big role in this as well.

He was an extremely talented freshman, who wasn’t able to develop and integrate with the team as well as he would have, because of the constant interruptions and distancing protocols associated with Covid.

As he himself said, he couldn’t compare his college basketball ball experience with a season without Covid because the Covid season was all he knew.

And that had to be a disappointment from what he was expecting when he was in high school.

Bam has a huge upside but at this point in his development, we all saw that he was a little lost on defense.

But don’t get me wrong, I really liked this kid. I saw him doing big things in the future. I’m really pulling for him at GW and beyond and I’m so sorry the way things worked out.

It’s just a very unfortunate circumstance for VT and I only wish the very best for Bam going forward.