Duke basketball, NBA, Olympics, and now author

Carlos Boozer is not only an Olympic gold medalist and a national champion and a two-time NBA All-Star, he is now an author. Every shot counts by Carlos Boozer, a memoir, which was more difficult to do. Oh my goodness, I would tell you the book probably took two and a half to three years to complete and finish, but obviously the competition I played against around the world was very challenging. It was very challenging as well. It would have been much more difficult to write the book had Shaq been there defending you while you were writing. Something like that, yeah.

I mean, it's just you and your thoughts, man. Did you ever have, I guess writer's block might not be the right word, but did you have trouble? What was the hardest part about doing it? I think some of it was just tapping into some of the childhood trauma, you know, dealing with that. I think also like reminiscing on some difficult moments and difficult, you know, all through life we have peaks and valleys.

So some of the valleys, it's like reliving the moment as you write it on paper. So some of those moments, but I think ultimately just wanted to get my voice out there through the book so that people can understand that if you have a dream fight for it, you know, I think a lot of times we, you know, people want to be a photographer or an artist or whatever the case may be. And they run into their first speed bump or maybe a third roadblock or what have you, and they stop and they pivot and decide to change their mind.

My message is to go through the roadblock. Like I had a seventh grade teacher, for example, you know, you go in and you say, hey, what do you want to do when you grow up? And I'm like, I want to be an NBA player. And she's like, you know, Carlos, you should lower your expectations, maybe work, you know, think about working at the local gas station or local grocery store. And I'm coming from a household where my parents allowed me to dream.

So when I, when I go back to my teacher, I said, you know what? I want to be in the NBA. And obviously, you know, you think about that from a kid who's going up in Juneau, Alaska, 12 years old. Hey, I want to go to the NBA. It's not like a stream path right to the league.

Right. But she discouraged me. And instead of me listening to my seventh grade teacher, I decided to go after my goal and go after my dream. So my message is, if you have a dream, don't get discouraged.

Use that as motivation and keep going. So you're in Juneau, Alaska, in seventh grade. So when you say, I want to play in the NBA, I can understand a seventh grade teacher going, well, Carlos, that's ridiculous. If you had said, I want to, you know, drive a sled in the Iditarod, she might have been okay with that.

For sure. Now, we were definitely known for the Iditarod race and a lot of hockey players go pro from Alaska. Basketball is not the hotbed that everybody might think it might be. But there is a good basketball culture up there.

You'd be shocked. Really good coaches. Shout out to George Houston, Hall of Fame coach that coached me in high school. Really good.

Really good. I say basketball lineage up there, but not necessarily star NBA players. Well, two things about basketball in Alaska. One, I'm sure there had to be some influence with Trajan Langdon. I know you guys didn't you're not from the same town, but, you know, it's rare that, you know, any school has kind of a pipeline, if you will, to Alaska basketball. But it worked in the case of Duke with Trajan Langdon first and then you. And when I was a kid, I'm much younger, much older than you.

And I went to the University of Maryland. One of my first experiences was watching the great Alaska shootout, which used to be as popular. And maybe it probably predates the Maui Invitational and the Rainbow Classic and all of those events in the, you know, early season, mid, you know, holiday time. But the great Alaska shootout used to be the thing.

Oh, my goodness. I mean, the great thing for us was we got to go to I went to it maybe like five or six years in a row. Got to see like Antoine Walker and Ron Mercer, Wayne Turner at Kentucky, go up there. I got to see Duke come through there. So for me, the Alaska shootout was like the biggest tournament I'd ever seen in my life when I was in middle school.

And the funny thing is, if I didn't leave after my junior year, we're going to go back for my senior year. Right. Oh, wow. How about that?

That would have been playing in front of friends and family and maybe your seventh grade teacher. Absolutely. Yeah.

It's funny. I actually actually got him tickets to a game in Seattle before they moved to OKC. He came to watch me play. Very nice.

All right. Your experience being recruited by Coach K, I'm sure. And your your experience with the whole, you know, youth basketball, whatever it was, had to be vastly different from your two boys, Cam and Kayden, right now. How do you impart some of the values that your parents instilled in you? And now they viewed that.

How do you deal with that with your kids? Yeah, the landscape is so different than 25 years ago when I was growing up. Right. So, you know, there was no social media back then.

I think at the time, really, you know, we had dial up. I think when I was one of the cool things being from Alaska is a you ball really helped a guy like me. Right.

Right. I can be I can be the best player nobody ever heard of. But I got a chance to go down to a couple of camps when I was like 14. One of them being the double pump camp ran by Ryan and David Palm down in California went there, got discovered by Darrin Montsaburra, who was my travel team coach.

And Mott's had a bunch of guys, myself, Deshaun Stevenson, the Lopez brothers who are still playing in the NBA. Yes. Coming out of the program called EBL. And so EBL, I got a chance to play in Vegas and California and New York and all over the place as a teenager. And so that's how I got discovered. You know, and then nowadays there's so many platforms. You got social media. Every time my kids play a game, they go viral. Yeah.

Viral was even a word when I was when I was growing up. Right. It was. But it meant something else.

It might have been different. So I'll tell you what, though, I think in this day and age, I take my hat off to my kids for the maturity that they show, because everywhere you move is a camera phone. Every time you do something, it goes right and instantaneously to the Web. And they've been able to handle themselves in a very mature fashion. So I take my hat off to my boys and it's cool. It's cool that some of the coaches that recruited me are now recruiting my kids. They've been coaching too long, Carlos.

I think that's what that I think that's what that says. They have been coaching way too long. Carlos Boozer is joining us here on the Adam Gold show in the whole process.

I know that there are a lot of people out there that believe. Well, we all know where Cam and Caden are going to go because because of your stardom at Duke. But you have said throughout this entire process that the decision is entirely theirs. Are you rooting, though, for a particular school? Oh, my goodness.

I'll be honest with you. Like, I think it would be an incredible story if they went to Duke. But that was the right choice for me 20 years ago, playing for Coach K at Duke was the right move for Carlos Boozer. But for, you know, for Cameron and Caden, they have to decide what's the right choice for them. They're running their first visit to Kentucky. They have like 10 more visits to go on throughout the rest of the year. And as they build relationships with these coaches and coaching staff and get a chance to watch how they coach their teams, they'll get a vibe for what fits them.

And it's a different it's a different landscape. I think Duke has a great shot at winning a championship this year. They got one of the best teams back this year with four out of the five starters. Kentucky has loaded roster. Kansas has loaded roster.

I think it's going to be a number one in the country this season. There's a ton of schools that are making great noise. Missouri has a great recruiting class coming in in a couple of years. So there's a ton of schools that are in the mix for my boys. And they're building those relationships that I got to build with Coach K 25 years ago. And it was the right choice for me.

But I'll tell you, whatever, whatever school that they decide, I'll be the first dad through the door with that hat on. By the way, is Cameron for Cameron? Yeah, it was. I mean, obviously, obviously we didn't know he was going to be in the area that he is today. But yeah, that was that was the motivation behind him and Cameron. Because I would, you know, we don't want him to have to change his name to like Rupp or Fogg or anything, anything like that. Carlos Boozer is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. And I had totally forgotten to mention the fact that you're also with an analyst with ACC Network. So give me a critique on John Shire's first year at Duke. We're going to talk to him next week.

Shire's done a great job. I mean, you think about you think about what he's been able to do, leaving Coach K, leaving that huge shadow comes in his first year, goes undefeated at home. And Cameron in our stadium, which is unprecedented, and then goes out and wins the ACC tournament. And then obviously they get knocked out by a veteran team in the second round. But great, great season.

I think they went 26 and seven, something like that. A lot of coaches would love that to be their first season. And then he brings back four out of five starters, only losing lively to the Dallas Mavericks in the lottery and has a stud lineup, you know. And they got diaper dandies coming in like Jerry McCain and Sean Stewart to go along with Tyrese Proctor and Kyle Filipowski, who I think was like the surprise of college basketball last year.

Everybody was talking about everybody else. And this guy ends up being ACC Rookie of the Year, ACC MVP, ACC tournament MVP, that is. They still got Jeremy Rhodes, a four year player who's been through all the wars and everything. And to have that veteran leadership is going to help dramatically. And they got the Army Swiss knife and Mark Mark Mitchell to do a little bit everything.

Defend rebound. I think they're loaded. And I think that those four guys played a lot of minutes last year. Got a lot of experience last year. They're going to be even better this year. I think Tyrese Proctor may end up being one of the best guards in college basketball period this season.

So I'm excited to see how they play. I'm excited to see how Coach Shire coaches. I think he's got a great pulse on this new generation as he's not that far removed from them. Does a great job of interacting with the guys during practice and getting them prepared and still having that traditional Duke culture that Coach K built 40 years ago. So he's a great mix of old and new. And they are loaded this year.

At this rate, John Shire, who is like 15, is going to recruit Cam and Kaden's kids, which will be completely ridiculous. All right. Final thing for Carlos Boozer, the author of the book Every Shot Counts. So you talk you go through a lot of different things about your career and all of that. I want to ask you this more pressure playing for Coach K or playing with LeBron James. Oh, probably said plenty for Coach K. You know, the funny thing is when you level up by going from high school to college or going from college to the NBA, it requires a whole new version of you, right? You've got to be that much better to compete at the high level. Like I was going from dominating Alaska basketball in summer leagues to going and playing against some of the best players in the country and playing for one of the best coaches on the planet and having to compete to try to win championships.

And I also just established myself as a good player. That was pressure. You know, I think playing with LeBron, he made the game so easy for us that he loved to pass the ball. We had to like his rookie year. We had to force him to shoot the ball because he could score whenever he wanted to.

But he loved to pass the ball. So that wasn't it wasn't as much pressure. Now, there's a lot more eyeballs. I would say that his rookie year than my rookie year. And we got him.

It was like, oh, my God, we got everybody watching. But pressure wise, I'm just playing for Coach K and leveling up to that competition level. Yeah, I think right now it might it might be flipped. Right.

It might be flipped right now because it doesn't. LeBron is basically he's he's got a computer inside of his head. I love the way he thinks the game. He is definitely a basketball players, basketball player, Carlos Boozer. I appreciate your time. You wear many hats.

And I use that term because I've seen you wear many hats on TV and the ACC network. We'll talk hoops next time exclusively. But good luck with the book.

Every shot counts. Carlos Boozer here on the Adam Gold show. Take care. I'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. That was fun. Carlos was fun. I love his laugh. Do it again. Yeah, it's good. It was good to have a good time with Carlos Boozer.