When Chandler Parsons‘ NBA profession got here to a sudden halt, he wasn’t actually certain what to do with himself rapidly.
Even now, 4 years into retirement from a nine-year NBA profession that noticed him play for 4 groups, he nonetheless misses the league.
“I miss the sport, I miss hooping, I miss being wholesome,” Parsons advised GOLF Subpar co-hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz. “Like I miss my knee not f****** me up and me going out and having 25 and feeling nice. And like I miss that feeling of profitable and competing and, you already know, it was superior. My dream as a child was to make the NBA.”
Parsons sustained career-ending accidents, together with a traumatic mind damage, a disc herniation, and a torn labrum, in a January 2020 automobile crash the place a drunk driver hit him. He introduced his retirement just some days after that after which his life began altering quickly, he mentioned.
The COVID-19 Pandemic rapidly set in and had he stayed along with his crew on the time, the Atlanta Hawks, he wouldn’t have even made the NBA bubble.
He known as it a “bizarre” solution to finish his profession.
Ex-NBA participant reveals ‘most embarrassing’ story from LPGA pro-am
Lower than a yr after his accident, he was engaged to his now-wife Haylee Harrison and one other yr after that, the couple their first youngster in November 2021.
“So, like, all of it type of occurred so quick,” Parsons mentioned. “And I began moving into TV and doing totally different stuff. So like, I all the time was so scared to retire as a result of basketball was all I had… Like I by no means had a job rising up. [TV] was my first job. So like, I used to be scared like, “F***, what am I going to do with out, like, a schedule on a regiment?”
Then, like so many former athletes, Parsons discovered golf. He realized rapidly it might fill the void left behind from his enjoying days.
“The nation membership and that type of dangle of the playing, the s*** discuss just like the locker room, that’s the closest factor an ex-athlete has to that,” Parsons mentioned. “Like from the locker room to love the locker room attendant who picks up after you and has all of the merchandise there and the showers. It’s the identical really feel as an NBA locker room.
“And then you definately go on the market and you continue to have that drive. Like, I’m an athlete. I used to be actually good at basketball. I’m not that good at golf, however like, I nonetheless have that edge. I need to gamble and you’ll all the time handicap it with odds since you possibly can all the time make it even and honest and enjoyable. In order a man that loves the competitors, golf actually made my retirement so easy.”
For extra from Parsons, together with an embarrassing story from an LPGA Professional-Am, watch to the total episode beneath.
