Daron Bowles

Josh Okogie says after he got traded mid season he had to learn the entire Hornets playbook in one night and says he had 12 hours to grab his belongings before getting on a flight to meet the team “Those last two weeks before the deadline is when most of the bulk of the trading in the NBA happens. So when he texted me, he just said, ‘You just got traded to Charlotte.’ I just got up and left the meeting. I just stood up and left. And the way I left, everybody kind of already knew what happened. I just had to breathe. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.” “And not even because of Charlotte. I loved my time in Charlotte. It was more so like, bro, my dog is at home. All my stuff is at home. My house is at home. So I’ll tell you exactly how my timeline went. I had a game in D.C. the next day at 7:00 p.m. After I got traded, the owner called me, the GM called me from Phoenix just to say, ‘Hey, we appreciate you. If you ever need anything…’ There was no bad blood. At the end of the day, it’s a business.” “I went upstairs, my agent’s calling me. I ain’t going to lie, I was in my feelings. I’d never been traded before. This was year seven for me. I’m like, I don’t even know what to do. I don’t even know what to do with myself. I’m just walking around my room back and forth. Then the people from Charlotte are calling me. Everybody’s calling me. I’m trying to figure it out. They say, ‘Okay, a car is going to be ready for you at 7:00 in the morning.’” “So I wake up at like 6:30, pack my stuff. At 7:00, a car comes, takes me to the hospital. I had to do my physical. I did my physical in D.C., and after that I caught a flight straight to Chicago because the team had just got done playing Utah and they were going to Chicago next. So I just met the team in Chicago that night. They took me to the gym, taught me the whole playbook offensively and defensively in the gym, and you just have to learn it like that. You’re in the middle of the season.” “They were like, ‘This is generally what we do on defense. This is generally what we do on offense. This is our verbiage.’ So I’m trying to learn everything I can. I’m trying to learn names. Everybody knows your name because you’re one person, but you’ve got to learn everybody’s name, the coach’s name, the owner’s name, your teammates, the facility people. I had to learn everybody’s name. And mind you, I still feel so displaced.” “The day of the game comes, coach says, ‘Hey, look, we’re not going to play you today because I know you’re still trying to learn. I just want you to see how we do things. Next game, we’re going to try to ease you in.’ Then after we won, the team went back to Charlotte. I stayed the night and went to Phoenix the next morning. I landed in Phoenix around 10:00 or 11:00 a.m., and I had a flight out of Phoenix at 11:59 p.m.” “So I literally had 12 or 13 hours to grab as much stuff as I could, get on a flight, and take it to Charlotte. I went to Charlotte with a handful of my stuff. They put me in a temporary apartment because they didn’t want me in a hotel. I was there for a couple weeks, then moved into a townhouse for like three months until the season was over.” “And I just had to be there. It was so crazy because I’d just been doing the same thing for two and a half years with the same people, and then all of a sudden everything changes.”

Josh Okogie says having an entourage in the NBA is needed and thinks people misunderstand why so many NBA players have their friends live with them because they can be on the road for weeks at a time, their schedules are public, so people can literally know their house is empty and when to rob them “I had my homies living with me. They had the dogs, they packed the house up, and they were people I had there that helped me out with that type of stuff. You need that, though.” “There are so many things. In the NFL, it’s easier to have a normal life because you don’t leave the house that often. Whatever city you’re in, you live there. If I was on the Atlanta Falcons, I’m only leaving the house maybe Wednesday for a Thursday night game, Sunday for a Monday night game, or Saturday for a Sunday game. Then after the game, I’m flying back home. If I have two home games in a row, I’m probably home for three weeks without leaving.” “But in the NBA, we’ll leave for two weeks, come back, leave again. And just from a safety perspective, the thing people don’t understand is our schedules are public. People know when you’re not home. People can rob your house and see, ‘Oh, I don’t know when he comes back home. I see him on TV.’ They’ll rob your house while they’re watching you on TV.” “So people don’t understand that you need that support. Like I said, I have dogs. You still need the dogs walked, and you don’t want to give your dogs to boarding companies because you don’t know what they’re doing with your dogs.” “And if I’m doing something at my house but I’m not home, they can help me out and facilitate everything. Also, after a long game, because we play a lot of games, sometimes you just need somebody to talk to. You need to go grab some wine. Your homies are right there the whole season.” “Some of them will fly home and come through. Parents will fly in. If you’re playing on a championship team, you’re in your market from September to June. That’s nine months. So you need somebody to be able to chop it up with through the ups and downs of every season and kind of help you navigate the season as well.”