RChildress107
Well-known member
In sports, there are guys that take adversity and losing and use them as fuel to make them better.
Travis is not one of those guys.
He doesn't let getting boxed out by a guy with lesser talent motivate him to get 20 rebounds. He is the guy who will assign blame as to why he was boxed and how it was not his fault...and probably pout about it for a while...and while he may not be Bz's biggest fan, letting his personal feelings about his coach affect his game is selfish. Winners want to win, and it doesn't matter who they play for. Travis wears "Wake Forest" on his chest, not "Jeff [Redacted]". He plays basketball for Wake Forest. Bz is simply a coach (not the most desirable coach, but it is what it is and this is fact is not changing). He could have transferred if the latter bothered him to the point of underperforming.
I am not condemning the kid, because this is who he is, but you can't blame his drop in numbers entirely on his coach. At some point, Travis has to take ownership of his opportunity and make the best of his senior year.
I think you and others are failing to recognize the different levels of adversity and losing. Every "winner" at some point will succumb to adversity and give up mentally if the conditions are bad enough. It's a different threshold for every player. The mental fatigue of losing badly night in and night out, playing for a coach who has no clue what he's doing/doesn't interact well with people, seeing all of your friends transfer, all adds up. I think the overwhelming majority of players in Travis's situation would react the same way.
That doesn't make it an excuse, and doesn't put all of the blame on his coach, but IMO it makes it pretty tough to get down on Travis for that.