Sept. 15, 2004

by Sean May

On the way to tryouts for the Junior National team, I sat next to Bracey Wright on the plane. The whole way, all we could talk about was the chance that we might get cut. It was to the point that we were saying we should just stay home to avoid getting cut. I've been blessed to not have to worry much about things like getting cut from my high school team, but I knew with the competition that would be at these tryouts, it was a real possibility. That was a little scary.

But once practice started, I just played my game. I had been at Nike Camp the week before, and that helped me as far as being in playing shape as soon as the tryouts started. I think the coaches saw me as a positive because I tried to be a good teammate--when I made a mistake, I owned up to it, and I tried to help other people through their mistakes. Training camp was pretty intense. Sometimes we went twice a day, two hours each practice. We only got one day off, and we went to a Yankees game that day. We played Team Canada on the way up to Halifax, and then we played three games in Halifax.

There were a lot of guys on our team I'd played against before: Charlie Villanueva, Chris Paul, Justin Gray, P.J. Tucker. Right around the time of tryouts, ESPN came out with some rankings on the internet that listed Wake Forest as their preseason number-one team. I told Justin and Chris that was crazy, that we should be number-one. We argued back and forth about it, but it was all fun. When you develop those good relationships like that, it helps so much when you're playing against them later during the real season. If we go to Wake Forest and beat them, I know Justin and Chris won't talk to me for a couple months, whereas now we talk pretty much every week.

I know the competition wasn't the same as Coach Williams saw at the Olympics, but we did play against some of the same players. Puerto Rico had a 7-foot-3 guy who was on their Olympic team, and Brazil had a 6-foot-11 16-year-old. We were told that Argentina had three or four players on their team who will be first round NBA draft picks. International play is totally different from American ball. I was just happy to be on the team. I'd go out of the game and sit on the bench and be amazed at watching some of those guys--both on our team and the other team--play.