Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: 1234-5678 910 1112 episode 375 the Rant Evan Muhammad part two the return it's been a pandemic since we chopped it up on a sideways rainy day. We discuss all the changes that have happened to him thus far since then. On top of still playing himself, he has a much bigger purpose. Starting his own training service MVP performance. He talks about his unique methods, his unorthodox way of thinking to get athletes to be the best they can be. All that and more. My conversation with Evan now.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: 1234-5678 910 1112 1234-5678 910 1112.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: 3311.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Eight three.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: 8211 8910 the rant has been brought to you by the Premier flag Football League of Liquid Long island legends. It's an adult flag football league which has a multitude of fields in both Nassau and Suffolk county with games played on Sundays. The spring season is upon us and is rapidly approaching starting April 7. Interested in signing up a team? Interested individually coming on as a free agent? What about reffing? Be sure to follow and dm us at Li Legends on instagram.
Welcome to another edition of the Rant. I'm your host, Ralph the ref. I'm with a super special guest, somebody that's was originally on the rant. I don't even know what episode. Cause we've done so many during the pandemic, and I think we're both in a good, different mental space, and I'm really excited to catch up with him and speak to him. And I've always wanted to tell you this personally. I remember, and I forget what post it was, but this man has some tattoo on his thigh. And I was like, you know what? That's a perfect place to put a tattoo. So I ended up getting two, and I probably wanna get a leg sleeve at some point, but I always wanted to let you know. You the inspiration, man.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: You did tell me that actually at the. When you were reffing at the one of the leagues, and I just kept.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Looking at your thigh, you probably thought something was going on. But I'm like, it's just.
I'm all about, like, placement tattoos. But I got my man, head honcho of MVP performance basketball training, somebody that used to play Holy Cross, St. Joe's and is a pro, and somebody that I like to say is one of my friends, Mister Evan Mohammed, man, appreciate you, man. How are you, man? We have so much to catch up. But just first and foremost, I just want to congratulate you on all of your continued success of, you know, staying somewhere around the game. I know it's very hard around the margins, especially as you get older, when you start thinking about, you know, you're playing time, and you're probably at the point where it's like, your mind is at the peak of playing, and now you're starting to see your physicality. Not to say you watched, but it just. It's a little harder to guard a 23 year old.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: You're right. 100% right.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: So, you know, I had to figure out a pivot, so I started getting into reffing, and, you know, you're doing such a great job with all of the kids training, so I'm really interested to see where you are and just catch up with you, man. So just talking about. We're taping this on April 2, 2024. What's your life like now in terms of, like, basketball? And we'll talk about how you got into everything.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: So I would say the biggest thing, the best way to sum it up, is I feel like I'm stepping into who I've always been in the sense where my story, my upbringing, being that nerdy kid that started late and made it to. As far as I've made it, I always told myself, since young, I wanted to do it to inspire the other people can do it, that it is possible no matter what, even if you started late, don't have the genetics undersized.
And I've proved it, and I'm trying to instill it into all my kids, and a lot of them have seen crazy success in such a short time.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's an interesting window into how you approach things. So I'll just say, first and foremost, obviously, I haven't seen Evan play in a long time, with the exception of some of his stories, where they go like, yo, ev, is that dude. He can do those smoke. So I'm just like, there'll be some times where I'll see a move where it's like, it's so far away from the basket, and you shoot it with such confidence, you know, I just think, as a referee, you appreciate this. Cause I kind of started when it was, like, the height of the beginning of Steph Curry, and at the time, I was reffing a lot of Cyo games. And I just remember this was the first time I've seen third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade kids just basically shirking their coaches, like, advice and just shooting really far. Now, this skill didn't catch up, but the confidence was there. And sometimes you just need the confidence to shoot that so some of those moves, I think, are something that you. You could tell that it's not like a whimsical shot. It's something that you practice over and over and over again, and it also lends itself to, you know, your creativity, your size, your dribbling, your handle. A lot of that goes into it. So I think the first thing that I want to say before you train somebody, I think they have to get to know how immersed you are in just the skill of it. So I just want to talk about some of the moves that I've seen. I'm not talking about a specific move, but just more so.
The confidence of doing those moves, executing it in a game, it has to come from just practice and practice. Right.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: A lot of it, I would say a lot of it is from practice, but a lot of it really just comes from the love of the game. And, like, when you just love something so much, you spend so much time with it, you'll try everything. And sometimes certain things that might seem unorthodox or not the norm, they might feel right in the moment. And even when I train now, the way I train, like, if you were on the other side of the gym, you would be like, what is this guy doing? But I just try to find different ways to challenge myself to. If we're talking, making shots, I'm gonna do a 360 with my eyes closed and then land and try to find the rim as fast as I can to shoot it. And I think those little things are preparing you for those situations in the game, as opposed to just trying the same shot as much. Where people will go, I'm going to make 100 in the spot of the same shot. Nah, I'd rather try 50 crazy shots where none of them are the same, because, in reality, basketball is a perfectly imperfect game. You don't really ever do the same thing twice.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: Right, right. And I'll say, you know, just watching somebody from the likes of, like, Kyrie Irving, sometimes, I'm like, if you isolate a move and you break it down into four moves, I'm like, first of all, I've never seen part one, and I've definitely never seen part four, and I've never seen two or three, and I've never seen them definitely in concert with each other in combination of executing a move. But that just also comes from the improvisation of just constantly working on your game. Right. So what I wanted to ask you is, now that you identify yourself as a trainer, does your playing have a backseat now? Because now you're. You're more focused on that or is it still like when, when is the, when is it gonna give? When are you gonna be like, you know what, I'm not gonna play anymore? Or does that give you your edge as a trainer that you're still kind of out there and playing?
[00:08:29] Speaker B: I don't know if it's necessarily the truth, but it is what I tell myself that I have to keep playing. I have to keep, I feel like I have to be my avatar in a sense, like the people I train if I want them to listen to me, buy in, trust what I say. First of all, I have to be able to do the things that I'm showing them for sure, because they're not normal things you can just walk into a gym and do. And it gives a sense of discipline where I know I have to get up, do this workouts for health, for my enjoyment. It is my stress free and I make up a lot of my drills and I make them up when I'm in the gym by myself. So I think the fact that I can show improve is a huge part of my business model.
And it's interesting.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Interesting. So here's the question that I have for you.
You know, as we talked about previously, and everyone knows that listens to this show, I've been coaching volleyball for such a very long time and we've won many times over. So I know for me, sometimes I'll have a kid go into the club circuit. Now, I'm not involved in the club circuit. I just coach high school. So, you know, when they come to my team, I'm confused that they don't know all of the elementary things, like the basic stuff, and sometimes they want to get into the advanced things. Now, when it comes to your training philosophy, is it something that you have to kind of know the foundations first before we start doing those advanced moves? Like there has to be some sort of baseline of understanding because I'm pretty sure my son, who, you know, he's eleven years old, he can't dribble correctly. Like I keep telling him, that's, that's a, that's a discontinued, like, that's illegal. You can't do that.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: So I would imagine that you can't just bring him and then, you know, he's starting to do 360 moves when he can't dribble properly. So what is the baseline of like somebody's knowledge base of playing basketball before they're already ready for you? Or do you kind of like, are you able to custom tailor fit somebody who doesn't necessarily have the skill, but aspires to have the type of handles and all of the shooting that you can teach them.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: I think since I've been involved in training for so long, I've dealt with every age from beginner, the most beginner kid who can't walk and chew gum at the same time, to having professional athletes. So I've always been able to regress or progress my training based on where they're at, based on what I. What understandings they have.
A lot of it really goes down to their behaviors, because a lot of the way we are on the basketball court, I truly believe you can learn a lot about a person in life. So, first, I'm gonna. We're gonna. If you don't have a foundation, we're obviously gonna lay down the foundation and go from there. But in that session, you will get challenged to do something where you prove yourself wrong, where you didn't think you can do it, and you will do it. And that's probably happened 100 times out of 100 times.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, first it starts with the. The boldness of trying it. Right. And the audacity of believing that you can do it. And even if you don't, it's like, you know, at some point, it's gonna happen if you keep trying it. Right. Yeah, I think that that goes with anything. Even if you're not decided that you want to be good at something, the fact that you constantly show up day in, day out, it's just like, you. You. It's not possible for you to ref 800 games and not be good at reffing. Like, it's not. Even if that's not your intent, if you just ref that amount of games, it's not possible for you to not be good. Now, I did want to ask you, you know, before you were starting to think about training, and then you were. You were helping out in certain areas, but, you know, it takes a lot of courage to just, like, branch out on your own and say, you know, I could do this, you know, especially sometimes. And, you know, basketball is a lot. It has a lot to do with, like, credibility. Right.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: This. This guy didn't play at a d one school. This person didn't play, like, high in high school. And it's all of those questions until they see you. But I know a lot of it has to really come from within of the belief that you can do it. So I want to start about the origins of you going, like, starting to plant the seed of saying, you know what? Maybe I do have something here. Maybe I can do this and branch on my own. How did that all start?
[00:13:01] Speaker B: So where did it all start? So I always knew I was gonna be involved in training, and just from how much I loved training when I started going to Jay Hernandez as a young kid. And that kinda, in my head is what I base. That's how I see the training business in my head, in a sense, everything based on that model, that's a good model to have. Great.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: I know I didn't see him, but I probably would have been. Oh, yeah.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: Shout out, Jay. Shout out, Jay. I just seen him a couple months ago.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: One of Hofstra's finest.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Yeah, he's the assistant of the Brooklyn Nets now.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
But then over time, from high school to college, me and my friend John Petrocelli, who I'm sure most of us know, plays in Italy, right when the off season would come, he would always just say, yo, what are we doing? What are we doing? He just left everything up to me. And we would get results. We would get results through experimenting.
And I started to fall in love with it. And I think I'm like, I'm a naturally creative person.
So now that I have my own platform, in a sense, I am more creative than ever, because there are no restrictions. It's what I see. It's how I want to implement everything that I am very knowledgeable about. And I always prided myself on not just being someone who, oh, you wanna get better at basketball? Okay, let's go to the court. Nah, I can see you are missing this, but it's not a basketball thing.
I know how to train you in the weight room as well.
And then that's where the two come together. And then the most important part, the third part is the mental. So through me trying to learn myself and fix my own issues, read books, I'm able to get a lot of kids out of there, like, mental funks playing out of nerves.
So that's why it's so important to buy in to my process with me, because it requires all the units working together as one.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: I'm so interested about this relationship that you have with John, only because he's a pro. He's doing very well. He's been doing very well for a lot of years.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: Very.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Then he just comes and sees his boy and goes, like, I got you got the keys. Like, and of course you've gotten results, but, like, where does that trust come from? What makes him not want to take, you know, somebody that's tried and true. And I'm not saying you don't got the credentials now.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: No, you're right.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: I'm saying, like, in the beginning, what made him want to give a chance out to you?
[00:15:47] Speaker B: I think it's just we've been through the trenches together since 1515 1617 was the same offseason. Every summer, we would do our regular season.
Whenever it ended, we would just pick back up and go full circle. And I guess we just. He just felt he continued to get better. Continued to get better. And even, like, when I asked him to do a testimonial on my. On my page, which I read, which was beautiful, he said 15 years of training, I was like, wow, right?
[00:16:22] Speaker A: Because you're in the trenches so much that you don't even know how big the ditch is.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And the funniest thing, one time, he was like, yeah. I was telling one of my teammates, we were talking about trainers, and he was like, yeah, you know, like, I have a guy back home. I don't really gotta worry about anything. I just go home, we get in the gym, and he tells me exactly what we're doing. And I just listened and I was like, yo, that's fire. Who are you talking about? He was like, bro, I'm talking about you. I was like, oh.
So I kind of always had people like that just, like, reminding me, yo, you've done this. Yo, you've done this. I've had, like, a very supportive corner. I had a lot of people in my corner that were just waiting for me to see what they're saying.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: Right. And you're not thinking of him like, oh, he's the pro. He's doing. You just think of him as your boy. Like, you're just trying to put in.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: And I still talk crazy to him.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: Of course. I've seen you talk crazy. So what I'm saying is, when he comes home, you're not like, oh, my God, you're going to give him that respect. You just like, you know what it is like. And I'm sure that you're at this point, you know, if it's going to be the 16th summer now, and he's trying to get right, you're still going to try to be more inventive. You're going to try to be more creative. You want him to. You want to hit him with the boom bat that he never got before, where it's like. So I'm pretty sure that whole, like, process of, like, making a new album and trying to impress your boy is like, that's probably the impetus of, like, how this all started. Because if you can get him right, how possible, how hard could it be to get somebody else elementary? So now that you got that, what really, really, really got you over the imposter syndrome of it, like, and I'll just, I'll just use my. Myself as an example.
And, and we talked about this off here of just like, you know, people will hit you with things like, yo, why don't you start your own team? Why don't you don't. Why. How come you don't train? Well, I like to ref. Yeah, but you, like, look what you do in volleyball. I don't understand why you don't. And it finally, you know, dawned at me, like, wait a minute. I've been coaching for 25 years. I got twelve championships. I've gotten all the hundreds of girls in nice and into college. Why wouldn't I do that? Because I can't say I didn't believe in myself. I'm just so immersed in helping the people that I'm around that I never think of it as, like, you know what? I could help up so many more people if I just focused on it. So when did that imposter syndrome start? Like, shaking off to say, like, you know what? If I could do this with John, if I could do this for all my people, like, let's. Let's get down. Let's. Let's do this for real. Let's. Let's, like, make an imprint. Let's make it. Let's make a legacy. Let's make it, like, a big influence around this area.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: I wouldn't even say Jon was the one. When Jon. When I really, like, when Jon started to point it out towards me, it was kind of. I was already stepping into who I was. But the biggest thing was I was doing so many different things.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: You were laser focused on it.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And until I cut everything out, I was doing the construction overnight, working for another training company, supreme, until my one thing became my one thing.
That's when it really all started to make sense. But I would say I really started to realize who I am with three clients that I still have to this day.
One of them started with when he was nine.
He's now a freshman on varsity at Roslyn. Yeah. I call him my biggest marketing promotional tool.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: You know what? I did my first boys Nassau playoff game, and it was Roslyn versus Wayne X. Out. Were you there?
[00:20:02] Speaker B: They lost. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: But they played well.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: Yeah. He's a freshman. You don't play much, but if you. So they have him on a. I call him two way. Two way player.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: Okay. He swing, he needs him. Got you.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: They send him down and he go get 25, I'm sure. But him, his dad, they constantly just through him playing. Him, playing everywhere. Bring me, bring me clients. Bring me clients. And he'll always remind me, yo, whatever you did for him, this is the blueprint. That's one. Then I have another one. When he was ten, I said to him, I think your son is gonna be the best shooter in the city when he's a senior in high school, at ten years old, he just. He's senior now. He just finished his senior season. There was a real scout video, best shooter in the city in New York. So there, that's number two. And then I have another one who I consider my first division one client when he was a freshman. When I met him, he was at McClancy, got recruited to go to Luhi. His parents kind of left that decision up to me. What should he do?
[00:21:11] Speaker A: That's a lot of pressure.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And I said, luhi, worst case, if he doesn't play, he will get so much better playing against those kids.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Facts.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: He'll go to a prep school. Kill at the prep school. I promise. Your kid goes to vision one. He's at Merrimack.
So I'm kind of. I think I have an eye for it now. I have a. The next one up is a little nine year old. I got.
I'm throwing him in the fire. He's going through. He's playing against top twelve year olds, eleven year olds. But he's gonna be like my. The next, the next one up, like for my brand.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: Right, right. Getting. Getting better at. Yeah. And you know what's so cool, too, is that I can kind of like at this point, I can volleyball. What you can do.
And volleyball is interesting because it's such a shorter season than basketball. And I'm also coaching girl. So it's also a different dynamic in general. But I only have two months to get them to win. So it's just a different mentality of, like, them trying to get good and then they have the whole year to worry about their skill. I think basketball is just so interesting because it just this. It's just so much that goes into it. And I think that key component that you talked about before is the mental. Right. So that mental. And we talked about this with one of my boys who's, you know, he's an AAU coach. And that's great that the kids are working on their skills, but they can't translate that in the game because their mental ain't right. And that's the most important thing. And you know that. You just know that from your high school experience, from your college experience, and, like, what it took to be a pro. The difference is the switch now of your mental being finally up. Up to par with your physical abilities and the belief that you can do that.
But I am interested because we are still dealing with kids that are in high school, and we're kind of far removed now from high school. So it's hard to figure out what makes a kid's buttons push, right? Like, what, what. How can I get the most out of this kid and how can he perform at this high level? Because also, basketball is one of these things where it's like, oh, my God, some kid made some crazy dunk and you kind of lose confidence, but you're supposed to lose it momentarily if they're thinking the way me and you.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: That short term memory. How do you go about developing somebody's mental? Especially when you know that they're kind of on the fragile end of, like, the self belief part, the, you know, I'm not good enough, I'm not tall enough. Like, a whole bunch of things that don't matter when we're playing.
How do you deal with that?
[00:23:41] Speaker B: One of the things, like, one of the things I found as very, very effective is. And it's like the same conversation, too, especially when they're not even in high school yet. So, like, 8th grade and below, I'll say to them, I'll be like, yo, if you have 100 points today and you leave the gym, what happens? Does your life change? They'll be like, no. And then if you score zero points, does your life change? No. So then we go, we know no matter how we perform, our life's not gonna change. So we can remove that part. There's no consequences. Cause right now, there's no scholarships on the line. There's no money on the line. Everything is a practice. Your games are practice right now. So that is number one. Number two, how many. How many points you want to score? If they say, like 15, okay, how many shots do you need to score? 15. And this is usually for the nervous kids that will take, like, three shots and check out. I'm off. I'm not going to shoot anymore. So how many shots you need to shoot to score? 1510. Let's just say ten. Go take ten shots.
That's it. I don't care. If you go for ten, come back and tell me you took at least ten shots, and then usually that builds that progression. Cause they rarely will go for ten.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Yeah, they say they wanna score 100 points, but don't realize you gotta take 50 shots.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: You don't even take enough shots to do that. How are you gonna do that exactly?
[00:25:16] Speaker A: It's crazy. That's so amazing that you do that. Go ahead.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: When you break it down like that.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:25:21] Speaker B: It makes things a lot more simple.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: And then now you want to go quarters, high schools, eight minute quarters. If you need ten shots to score 15, you can't take two to three shots a quarter.
Then it's like, oh, it's that easy, right? Yeah, it is that easy. And if you work on your game, it'll be even easier.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: So, in other words, you're saying that, for the most part, when kids don't have the maturity of understanding what they really want. So saying, I want to score 30 points. They don't break it up in chewable, like, palatable goals for them to say, like, this is how you do it. And I think for you to just have a stark reality of saying, like, okay, well, you definitely can't score 30 points if you only take three shots.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Because there's no such thing as a ten pointer. And when you say it like that, you're like, okay, so then volume. And then I think that experience of going, like, in the first quarter of saying, wow, I took eight shots, and four of them were quality, but I have eight points. So now I feel like, okay, maybe I see what you did.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: There's incremental stuff, all mind game.
[00:26:28] Speaker A: So I remember going to your house, and I remember seeing all these books, and it reminded me of just me of, like, just books around and self improvement.
What do you think is the book that I guess shaped you the most? And is there a current book that you're reading that's shaping you? And it doesn't have to. It doesn't have to be nonfiction, self help. It could be just like, you know, Harry Potter, something like that.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: There is one book in particular that I read it. So it is the sports, the holy grail.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: What's it called?
[00:27:00] Speaker B: Sports psychology. It's called the inner game of tennis.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Inner game of tennis.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: I've read this book so many times, whenever I was in a mental funk, I would go to that book, and it would. I would be like, oh, yeah, okay, I'm back.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: So, okay.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: I read it so much. I said, this is ridiculous. This is a 200 page book. I can't go back to reading it. I have a spark note that I made on my own, so you don't.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Have to read again.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: I just go straight to the points that I want. If I ever try to reiterate it to somebody, it's right here. I don't have to go search for the page, but a lot of my books now have been. Since I'm more on the business side, I'm still trying to be a better businessman. So I'm still learning a lot about that. Recently, I have a partner who, like, we help each other. His name's Sam. He has his own training.
He's been doing it for a little longer, but he was like, Evan, there's a time when you have to come out of thinking like a trainer and thinking like a businessman.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I wanted to get into that because I know you're a perfectionist, and I know that you already. The way you're building it is that nobody's gonna be able to recreate you. But at some point, it's a problem. You wanna own McDonald's. You don't wanna work at McDonald's, too. Now, I'm not saying you don't wanna be in the trenches. That's not what I'm saying. I just know you don't wanna work 25 hours a day. Cause you wanna enjoy the fruits of your labor. So what's gonna be the separation point when you start delegating and trusting people, entrusting people that they don't lose the consistency that you've already built up for yourself.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: So I'm actually going through that right now with one of my very, very good friends, Jeremy. Jeremy, Arthur. So never heard of him. Shout out to Jeremy, class of 2012, Kellenberg.
[00:28:50] Speaker A: All day. Go ahead.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: He was home for the summer. I was home for. From playing overseas. He.
And he was always in bed. He was always wondering, how am I doing? How am I doing? And when he's home, you know, he needs to make some extra money. So I was like, yo, for this can give you an opportunity for why you're playing. Because if you learn. Or I was having him intern, as, in a sense, if you develop your own clientele, we get this online.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: You can be training people from Mongolia or wherever you're at. So you are creating an avenue for your own at the same time. But for him to get on par, because not everybody has the same training, background, creative mindset that I have, I kind of have him going through it, through a little, like, a process of it. And right now, one of the main things is a book. I said, yo, if you really want to understand how the machine works, because I can give you 100 drills and you just repeat them. But that's not how it works. Because when I train, a lot of the things I do is right there on the fly. I've never done this drill before.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: They're hiring you for you.
[00:30:05] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: But you gotta somehow, like, figure that out.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm trying to figure out.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Cause it's gonna be. You're gonna be 50 and you're gonna be. Yeah, I know you don't.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: I don't wanna be on the court.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: I don't wanna do that.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm trying to teach him how the system works. So once you have the system, now it's you and how it worked and you translated it to yourself and you're a professional, people are gonna listen to you.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: You're an authority.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:35] Speaker B: You just now have. You're in a position to have a system of your own based on and how I think.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: In a sense.
[00:30:45] Speaker A: And. Yeah, you're gonna make him like, go to Mongolia back and he's not gonna come back.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, now he's learning how to train himself a lot better.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: It's hard, I mean, at the same time, it's really hard to keep yourself accountable. You know that.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: Oh my God.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: That's why jar hit you up.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Cause, like, I'm sure you could do.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: It, but it's better when you torture him and he can get through because it's. I'm sure it's like a self belief for him. Now, I got a hypothetical, which really isn't hypothetical. I got an eleven year old, right, love soccer and I want to teach him. But see, my thing is, like, I don't want him to be me and I don't want to.
I don't want to impose what I wish I could have done in basketball on him. Like, I want him to like come to the conclusion, like, I want to play basketball. Now, if you have somebody that's brand new, like that can dribble, like, how do you start that? How do you start with somebody that's just like brand new?
[00:31:41] Speaker B: I will. So the way I base my training is teaching you the physical qualities instead of we're gonna learn a crossover between behind the back. So they all share a similar similarity in terms of, like, what you're doing physically. So an example would be like, right.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: Like, so he's too small. So he like, goes from his, like, hip because he doesn't have the strength of, like, putting his elbow up to, like, his eye level, like, something like that.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: Or, like, for dribbling. For example, when you do an in and out. Right? An in and out, that is a cuff. Anytime you want to move the ball from the right side to your left side, like you're cuffing you, being able to cuff the ball, you can do a lot of move between the legs, behind the back, bring the ball to your front.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: It's the foundation of a lot of moves that you.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you can master the cuff in all the different varieties of ways, I'm gonna. Where I'm gonna throw at you. You just learned all those moves, and you don't even know it. Yeah, and then I'll show them, but I'll.
I don't like to give answers. If they ask me a question, I'll be like, I don't know, try it or, all right, we're gonna go to the other side, but I'm not gonna. Same drill, flip it. Not showing you how to do it. Go make a mistake first. I'll tell you if you're right or wrong.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: Interesting. I mean, you're basically teaching. You're giving kids the motivation to.
Giving them agency to fail. I think, like, it's. There's something to be said to, like, successful failures. So it's much different in basketball. I mean, in reffing. Like, reffing is one of the few things in life where, you know, you go to McDonald's, right, and you could tell this is this person's first day. She don't know what's going. She don't know how to mess with the register. You gonna be like, you know what? You good? I know it's your first day. Like, we'll figure it out. You get your manager, whatever. People don't care about reffing. Like, your first day, it's a game that you have at island going at 10:00 you don't care if they knew.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
I always say reffing, like basketball, you shoot 40%, 45% from three, you're great.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: As a ref.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: One mistake, you're done.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: If 99% is not enough, you missed 65 shots.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: Right? 100 shots, you missed 65. That's a good percentage. I mess up one time, I'm the worst ref there is. So the fact that they're able to normalize. Cause I think that's, like, the breaking point when it comes to basketball. Right? If you have to be bold enough to shoot ten times, and you gotta be all right. To miss six times in order for you to be okay for four times. And you can't be so married to missing all the time, you know, like, for me, a telltale sign of when I. When I'm reffing somebody is like, you know, I do a little. Oh, I could have got that. But they're still engaged. Those are the successful people. Because you can see when somebody carries it over, whatever mess up they did of two and a half plays, then they get mad at me. Like, you didn't see that? I'm like, you are worried about the wrong things. You are not locked in the whole time. And I'm telling you this. Cause I've seen hundreds and hundreds of hours of basketball that you're not locked in. You have to change. This ref is hating. So I just think that it's amazing that you are able to teach them on the ground level of that mental. Cause that's the most important thing now.
[00:35:06] Speaker B: That kind of made me realize something about myself.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: Go ahead. What?
[00:35:09] Speaker B: Because I was always raised where my upbringing was perfection. If I got 100 on a test, why don't you get 102? So it's like that carries over to the court.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: Yeah, but at the same time, I also think you had to unlearn that.
[00:35:28] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And I think that me saying, learn on your own, fail on your own, is the way of me not letting that happen.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:35:37] Speaker B: In a sense, I think it's.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: I mean, obviously, we know that failure is, like, a necessary part of success. Like, it's just.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: No, you need it.
[00:35:44] Speaker A: It's no way around it.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: You need it.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: There's no way around it.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:47] Speaker A: At all. So, MVP performance.
Tell me what a typical week is for you or in a typical day. So, like, let's start from Monday through Sunday. What. What is. What is your week looking like?
[00:35:59] Speaker B: So, usually I'll wake up in the first thing. I always. When I wake up, I like to take care of myself. Cause it's really the only time in the mornings where I. Where I can. So I'll get my.
[00:36:09] Speaker A: It's five in the morning.
[00:36:10] Speaker B: Oh, no, no.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: That's over with.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: I like my sleep now.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:36:15] Speaker B: I've learned. I'm trying to get back to getting you in your thirties now. Yeah.
All right.
[00:36:21] Speaker A: I'm 43 now, so, yeah, man.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: I could say it seems far, but it's really.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: Oh, no, it's not far.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: It's not.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: It's not far.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: It's not far at all.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: Nope.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: But you don't look 43 at all.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: Thank you, man.
[00:36:31] Speaker B: I would have thought 35.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: Thanks, man. Thanks.
[00:36:34] Speaker B: That's genuine.
[00:36:35] Speaker A: All right, cool. I'm Filipino, but, you know, black don't crack, and neither do Filipino. So I imagine if you black and Filipino, like Jeremy, you ain't never gonna crack.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: But, yeah. So I have the gym in my basement now. So when I wake up, depending on the focus of the day, I'll either go lift first or hit the court first, which, if I hit the court, it'll usually be with Jeremy. We'll go through our skills training, workouts, whatever it is, go home, rest up, plan out what's up for the day, whether I have clients, the academy. I have an academy, which is like a larger group on certain days now, I'm running. Island Garden has their lightning. Curry academy, which I run now as well.
[00:37:28] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: So there's always something basketball related throughout the day from till about eight. Then after eight, if I have a men's league game, whatever energy left I have in the men's league game, I'll go and try to go the men's league game.
[00:37:43] Speaker A: Okay. And so every day is kind of different depending on what you got going on.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: Yeah, some days I have off, but you like that.
[00:37:52] Speaker A: And that's what I like about reffing is a new experience every day.
[00:37:55] Speaker B: I'm still learning what's the best routine. For me. It's still. I'm realistically three months in of my own business.
[00:38:02] Speaker A: I'm happy that I'm near the ground floor, man. And we gonna talk about some things, get it popping offline of us continuously working together. But sure, you know, I did want to ask, how could people get more information of, like, how could they could get down with the MVP performance? Cause, you know, the proof speaks for itself. I just know that if I wanted to play, I always thought to myself, if I try to get back to play now, I know all the moves.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I have mad adult clients.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: I know all the moves.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: I have a lot of adult clients.
[00:38:31] Speaker A: I watch it all the time. It's just that my firmware is still at Windows XP. I wish I had all these sidesteps and it's crazy rip throughs.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: The game is so crazy.
[00:38:41] Speaker A: None of that, man.
[00:38:42] Speaker B: I had none of that. I'm crazy now.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: I didn't know I could be short and just move to the side. Why did I never think of that?
[00:38:47] Speaker B: In 10th grade, somebody told me they were like, yo, if your game was ahead of its time, your game was made for now, not for.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: That's crazy, yo. I know that if I did any of those moves back in, like, 97, they call the war. It's over. Like, it wouldn't even work. It wouldn't even work.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: To this day, I swear, my senior year, I got benched because I tried to split a double team.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: I'm sure you did. They weren't ready for that.
[00:39:08] Speaker B: They said, I. Coach said, what are you doing? I was like, yo, it worked. I just lost the ball.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: After you said that. Benz didn't come out yet.
We don't got that software update. But how could somebody get more information if they wanted to get right?
[00:39:23] Speaker B: They can always hit me on my Instagram, Eal MVP, or my website, mVp performance.com. Emvpformance.com.
Yeah, DM sends a DM number.
[00:39:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. We'll put all that information up on the. On referee ramp. But, yo, I just want to say thank you. I know you have a client, so I'm just trying to leave this, you know, leave some more meat on the bones for when we talk, when there's a part three. But, you know, I'm really proud and just super honored that you're able to just, you know, spend some time with me and. And see the progression that you've had. And, you know, I just wanna thank you for your contributions because I know it's coming from a place of, like, obviously it's helping you, but there's nothing better than helping kids out and seeing them reach out.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: It's such a satisfying, like, I just see when.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: When you. When you post those screenshots of, like, the text messages, like, I just know how much, like, I feel like you should print those out.
[00:40:20] Speaker B: Oh, I genuinely. I genuinely love those.
[00:40:22] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: Cause I don't ever expect them.
[00:40:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Listen, I know what it's like to just perform at the high school level and how amp you are of just, like, being that. Just being great. Just performing great at that. At that time period in life. Cause, like, it's. There's no better euphoric feeling, you know? I know I never did that. Cause there would always be, like, some girl that I liked in the stands or. And I just. I didn't play enough. I always played at the park, so I always have two quick fouls and I'm like, I don't understand these refs. Like, they. I never was able to figure it out. So for somebody like you to guide, you know, a young athlete through your experience, you know, your successes, your failures, and able to verbalize it, and not only that, show it to them, that's huge.
[00:41:10] Speaker B: Verbalizing it, how you. How you deliver the message. Cause not everyone responds the same.
[00:41:15] Speaker A: No.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: And a lot of coaches don't understand that. No.
[00:41:18] Speaker A: No. And I think that's something that I pride myself as a coach 2000, you know, again, I'm coaching, girl, you could talk to them a certain way. In 2024, parents will say verbatim, they will hear verbatim of what you said to them without the context.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, there's a funny bill burskit on that, but, uh, I'm sure there is.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: Coach Ralph said that I'm not getting there faster. What he's saying. You slow.
[00:41:43] Speaker B: Didn't say it in that tone. Yeah, I didn't say that.
[00:41:45] Speaker A: I just meant you're going slow in the drill. I didn't say it, but then it just opens up a can of worms. So, like, for you to able to navigate that, man. Continued success, man. Any final things you want to say before we part ways?
[00:41:57] Speaker B: Nah. Just everybody remember, MVP performance is the one. Could is the one stop shop where you get your skills training, strength and conditioning, mental training. And then I just partnered with. I have a not an nil deal, but a sponsorship partnership with a cryo and cryotherapy place. My, one of my very good friends owns cryo Energy in new High park.
[00:42:23] Speaker A: I've been there.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it's my man's.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Yo, one time I popped my calf refin and I'm like, what are you gonna do? He's like, yo, just. Just do some cryo. I'm like, what's cryo?
[00:42:30] Speaker B: They take great care of you. That's crazy. All my clients feels insane. That's part of the deal we got going on. So every. Everything you need as a basketball player is here.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: All right, cool, man. We'll keep the conversation going. Evan Mohammed is Ralph the breath. This is the rant. We out. Peace.
