Happy New Year Everyone. I hope this blog comes at a good time for everyone. It’s about two full months into the new year now, and I hope you all are well on your way to achieving your 2016 goals. With that said I am currently working on some of mine as well. One of my goals for the current 2015-2016 season was to upload a highlight video every month. The reason for this being that not all my family, friends, and supporters in general get to watch every game that I play during the season. So I planned to make and upload a video with highlights from a couple of games each month of the season, showcasing some of the positive things I did on the court. As is clear to see I haven’t done that once this season. I know I know that’s definitely not good. However, as the saying goes, better late than never. So following is what I hope to be the first of a series of videos I will be uploading in the near future, catching up on all the videos I’ve missed so far this season. Hope you enjoy it. Also, as always, please feel free to comment and critique. It could be about the video or about my game. I’m here to learn and improve. Thank you. Magnificent Su
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I see myself as a music junkie. For years now I’ve taken a lot of pride in that. I even see myself as a music connoisseur of sorts. Hip-Hop & R&B music of course, but generally speaking I’ll say urban music in general because these days they consist of a lot of different sounds. I’m so much of a music junkie that I have a policy when listening to music of genres that I’m not familiar with. My policy is that I’ll give it at least one good, honest, and unbiased listen. If it’s good, I’ll rock with it, if not, to the trash it goes. We as individuals, especially of the urban community, we have to support our people and actually purchase music we deem to be good. So I’ve broken down my thought process on this into a few key points. If you like it cop it… I mean why not? You plan to give it more than a few spins. You like the music, or the artist, or who the artist is affiliated with. There’s obviously something about the music that’s drawing you to it. Spend the money and buy it. You don’t go to a store, see some clothes you like and steal it; you buy it. Now think of the amount of money you spend on clothes you don’t even wear for long periods of time. Clothes that you might wear once and forget about. They cost way more than the amount of money you’ll spend on a good song or album. Support good music… Now I know this is subjective, but the point remains the same. You like the music, so it’s obviously good to you. Why sell yourself short, and go through the pains of looking for a link when you can just hop to the app in your phone and purchase it. If you’re stuck in the old age and your phone doesn't have those features, walk into a store and buy a hard copy. It’s all the same. Computers have these same features by the way. Floyd or the field? Who would you take? What side would you be on? In my lifetime (a very short one) I don’t remember anyone in sports being so polarizing, both on and off the field of competition. This man has been nothing short of spectacular his whole career. This is the part where people start throwing shade (trying to diminish his accomplishments) because of his mishaps outside of the boxing ring. I’m here to discuss and offer my opinion on the man inside the ring and with that in mind nothing else is relevant. Now back to the Mayweather, the self proclaimed best ever, TBE to be specific; would you take him or the field when it comes to being the best of all time? My simple answer is yes. My complicated answer is actually a question...how can you look at his career and not say he’s the best ever? I’m not boxing fanatic or expert (I’ll go ahead and disqualify myself now), but the numbers don’t lie. 49 fights and 49 wins. Almost 2 decades of domination. Titles in 5 (not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4) different weight classes. I ask a legitimate question...what more does the man have to do? Yea, I know he won it with mostly defense. He didn’t knock enough people out. He has no punching power. However, riddle me this, every fighter he’s fought in recent history has known this going into the fight. This isn’t new news. This isn’t some out of the blue idea or fighting style that Floyd is showing people, he’s the same way in every fight. He has also won that same way in every fight. If I remember correctly, the saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Take me for instance, I’m 6’8” 230 lbs. If I was playing one-on-one in basketball against someone that was 6’0” 175 lbs, why in the world would I take one shot outside of the paint; post work all day. By the same token, Mayweather has won the majority of his fights a certain way, why change it? From the title of this story I think you can already get a sense of how this is going to go, but please, bear with me here.
Background Info/Setting the Scene: For those who don’t already know, I’m currently in Germany playing for the Gießen 46ers. We are currently smack in the middle preseason. For my fellow athletes, I need not say anymore, you know what that means and what I’m currently experiencing. For my non-athletes that aren’t familiar with this particular time of the season, suffice it to say that it’s one of the more challenging/grueling portions of the season, and in some cases more so than the grind of the actual season. During this time, off days are one of your most prized possessions, or favorite past times so to speak. Usually we get one per week, and when they come about they are to be thoroughly enjoyed by doing nothing (speaking for myself of course). My off days are what I like to refer to as my Triple R day (Triple R = RRR = Rest, Recover, Recuperate). That basically means I quite literally lay on my a** all day and not do a damn thing. Even for food, I don’t cook, I order in. Full fledged bum mode is in effect all day. Only thing semi-strenuous that I do is go to the bathroom and maybe stretch but even that on some days, depending on how the previous week went, is pushing it. The Actual Story: About a week ago, after two back to back tough games on the road (we won one, lost one), we were given a day off. Now you can imagine how happy I am about this. I’m ecstatic. I can’t wait to get home and activate my bum mode. Also keep in mind that at this point it has been about a month since I left the crib (Houston, TX/USA), so I’m missing home very much. More specifically, I’m missing some good ol’ Nigerian food. This craving has been building up for quite a while now. So much that I found an African restaurant here in Gießen but they only served Ethiopian food which I don’t mind but definitely nothing like the Nigerian food I want. I get home after these games, eat some leftover food I had in my fridge, hang out for a little while, and finally go to sleep. I wake up the next morning hungry as usual (if you know me you know I don’t play with my food). However, at this point, I think it’s too early to start ordering food so I decide to kill time doing other things. To help keep me from going crazy from hunger I eat a Twix bar, a couple of Twizzlers, and cookie. As time passes, I start to peruse my little food delivery app; seeing what restaurants I might like and what I want to order. Is it going to be Chinese? Indian? Pizza? Or even some German spots that I hadn’t tried before? Then it occurred to me that I’m still craving Nigerian food. The lightbulb went off in my head at that point. I started to think if Gießen, a relatively small city, can have an African restaurant with Ethiopian food, then Frankfurt a very large metropolitan city, and a world hub for that matter, definitely has to have some Nigerian food. After-all, we Nigerians are everywhere (no joke, not bragging either, we really are everywhere). Next step was to fire up google and do some research. I proceed to open google and do a simple search for “Nigerian restaurants in Frankfurt.” Lo and behold, the hits came pouring in. Ok I’m lying it was only about 3 but still, that was more than I had bargained for so I’m gushing at this point. I can already feel my mouth watering... Perusing through the internet the other day (I was on twitter), I saw a link pointing to what I remember as something along the lines off “10 millionaires without college degrees.” Naturally I’m intrigued by this. With a headline like that I can’t help but ask the age old question of whether formal education is necessary or are life experiences the best teacher? Personally, I think there’s no one answer is correct. You just have to figure out what works for you and what you’re trying to do with your life, but that’s for us to talk about another day (feel free to share your opinions though).
Back to the motivation....while the link to the list was loading I was expecting to see the likes of Bill Gates on this list but I was pleasantly surprised by the list and the fresh faces on it. Most of whom I hadn’t seen or heard of before. Here are some common themes in all their stories.
Don't be afraid to do some research of your own as well. You never know what you will be inspired by. Magnificent Su Hello everyone, Hope everyone had a great summer. This week in the U.S. is back to school week. Great to see pics of all the kids, and the adults going back to school and getting better in general. Below you can watch and enjoy (comment and critique as well) my latest highlight tape. This is my seventh installment in the series. For the people that have been following me for a while now, I hope these highlights do a good job of highlighting (see what I did there haha) the strengths in my game and some of the improvements I’ve been striving to achieve. The highlights are from this past season in New Zealand. This year I played for the IMS Payroll Hawks of Hawkes Bay. Before I continue, I would like to send a big shout out to my friends and adopted family in Taranaki. It was really unfortunate how things played out and I wasn’t able to return to Taranaki. I would have loved to be back but things didn’t work out. However, when I arrived there to play against the Mountain Airs I was welcomed with open arms and that good old Taranaki hospitality and I enjoyed being in New Plymouth. With that said, It was a tough season to say the least, not to mention some personal hurdles I had to overcome as well. All in all, it was another successful season in my mind, I got better, I grew, I made new friends, I experienced new things (and a different region of New Zealand), I learned some more about myself and my game, and of course as noted in my previous blog post I got to play against one of my best friends a couple of times. I was also blessed to come home with a few awards. Australiabasket.com All-New Zealand NBL Center of The Year - 2015 Australiabasket.com All-New Zealand NBL 2nd Team - 2015 Australiabasket.com New Zealand NBL All-Imports Team - 2015 Now to the video. Watch and enjoy. Please don’t forget to critique as well. Thank you Magnificent Su It had been a long time coming. We dreamt of this moment. We talked about this moment. However, what I think was most important is that we worked for this moment. A few days ago, as I took the court for what for some was a routine regular season game here in New Zealand, for me it was a commemoration of some sort. A culmination of a lot of different elements and most of all, God willing, a glimpse of more to come. To this point you’re probably wondering what I’m talking about. A few days ago I was able to be on the same court, on a professional level, with one of my brothers and best friends Chris Hagan. Now for some this may seem as not that much of an accomplishment but for me it said a lot. It said a lot because this was something we talked about and planned for about eight years ago when we first met and became friends. Ever since we became friends, Chris and I have worked out together, pushing each other to be better every day. The summer preceding my freshman year at Rice, it was all in preparation for that opportunity to play together. A couple of games into that season Chris had a devastating season ending injury so we never really flourished on the court together. So from then on it was rehab and working out in preparation for the next season because that would finally be our opportunity. Then life happened and Chris transferred from Rice. That was tough but we still had hope. Even though Chris was at a different school, we still spent our summers working out together, critiquing each other, and pushing ourselves to be better. Then we turned pro. We even had the same agent, and the conversation never stopped, we even got our agent on it. All in the hopes that we might finally have the opportunity to play on the same team once again. We held out for that on several occasions and it never materialized. As time went on, neither of us seemed to let go of the idea or dream that we would someday, somehow, or someway be on the same court together on a professional stage. Well on April 26, 2015 that day came to pass. It is still on some level surreal to me but it was one helluvan experience. It was the first time we had been on the court in some official capacity since the fall of 2007 and I enjoyed every moment of it. Being that we are both highly competitive individuals, I was trying to kill him out there and I don’t think he would have had it any other way. During my teams preparation leading up the game, I was giving spy tips to my teammates on all the tricks he had in his bag. What he liked to do and what he didn’t like to do to make sure we stop him. Even though my team came out victorious, it was great to play against my brother like that. Leading up to the game we had a chance to catch up and all the conversation seemed to boil down to was the several times and instances where we talked about how it would be when we get on the court together. I believe, the lesson to be learned here, the moral of the story, and what I think might be lost in all these sentiments and emotions, is that when you stay focused on the goal ahead and work towards it, all that’s left is for it to happen. More importantly everyones path is different. Chris and I took two very different paths through this journey. He came to Rice and left, I came to Rice and stayed. He played in New Zealand for two seasons while I was on the other side of the world doing my own thing. We’ve both had our own personal trials and tribulations during the journey but some how someway, staying focused and working hard through it all we still ended up at the same point, and on April 26, 2015 we were at the same point and on the same stage. My team won the game by the way. This post wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention that. My prayer is that this is just a glimpse of more to come in our ability to achieve all the goals we’ve set for ourselves. Magnificent Su |
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