Being a Warrior Again

By Adonal Foyle, with Chris Navalta

Mid-February 2004

It's been about a month since I've returned to the court and my minutes have been slowly climbing as I have hoped. I have to admit, though, that there are still some cobwebs.

Playing basketball in the NBA is hard. One thing is that when you're on top of your game, you have the fluidity of going into different games and being ready for anything. Usually, practice is the way to get the repetition and opportunity to do your own stuff so as to get into “the zone.” But it's difficult coming back from an injury in mid-season because you don't get a lot of real practice time since you're constantly traveling with the team and trying to get ready for games. I don't get chance to push myself the way I need to in order to reassure myself that my game is all right. Although I may do a lot of things during one game, because of the lack of practice, I won't know if I can do a lot of different things in other games. I basically feel that I'm in No Man's Land and almost in basketball purgatory, from which I have to get myself out of by sheer will or whatever else is necessary.

Traveling with the team has become something I've had to get used to again. And it took me a while to get used to that. Usually, it takes me about three months to get into a set routine when it comes to the road trips. The other day, I spent an hour trying to get ready for a two-day trip, whereas before I could get that done in ten minutes. But I was spending all that time, thinking: What do I need? What will the weather be like?' It just felt like a whole new thing I hadn't done before.

While I was out, I haven't had the chance to get to know the new guys on the team. For a while, I felt like I was the new guy. But the guys have been great. They talk to me, and they've been trying to help me out in building my confidence. We have a really good bunch of veterans. But it's difficult when you don't go through the pain of training camp with your team. That's how you get to know each other. And I didn't get the chance to do that with this year's team. I had to leave training camp early because of my knee. So, I think I lost a lot of ground in terms of really getting to know the guys and to bond with them. So, it's still a little bit of catch-up. I talk to Avery Johnson a lot. I talk to Evan Eschmeyer about politics all the time. We're always about politics. So, I'm kind of in their lives. It's just that we don't have the camaraderie of the pain of training camp. And I think that means a lot when you're with a team.

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