Welcome And Show Purpose

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Welcome back to the sweet spot with Dr. Derek's tweet, a board certified psychiatrist specializing in supporting and performance. In the sweet spot, we explore what it takes to stay steady and perform when the pressure is on and the moment matters. So stay tuned for making moves Monday.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Greetings and welcome and welcome back to the sweet spot, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us back here at the Sweet Spot. We're

Meeting Roger Hines And Why He Matters

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always delighted to have our guests join us. And this particular guest is someone that I'm extremely excited to share with you. I've held a secret from you all, sweet spotters. I've kept this man to myself for years and years and years. But now the time is right to share him with you and to introduce him. And before we begin, I want to just let you know that I don't ordinarily spend this much time on introducing folks and let them talk about themselves. But when you have someone of this status, you do have to pay respect and honor where honor is due. Roger Hines is a true veteran of NBA sports medicine. I don't think anyone would argue with that statement. He has a career that spans at least, in my view, three decades of NBA just knowledge and experience. He is currently, I believe, in his 21st season with the Knicks, the New York Knicks, the world champion New York Knicks, I should add, now serving as an emeritus sports medicine administrator with the team. I would let that sink in. I know, I mean, that's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

And I recall the time that we were first met. And I remember when my boss, I might mention her name too, Dr. Lisa Callahan, but she said, Hey, I want you to go have dinner with this couple. I said, Who? He said, Well, you might have something in common. He's a he's a Trinity, like yourself. And I said, Oh yeah. And she said, I'm thinking about bringing him in. This is the woman who had just amazing, she could see what was coming, right? Before the ND, what about mental performance and mental health? Absolutely. She wanted to be the first on board, and she wanted to bring you in to help us with that. So, you know, my wife will tell you when I go out to dinner with anybody, and she's with especially if she's with me or by myself, I don't say a whole lot. I'm just sitting there kind of listening to these people talk, and I don't talk much about myself. And I'm sitting there having dinner with you and Darcell, and I had to halfway through, I had to pump the brakes and I was like, wait a second. I'm doing all the talking here. What is going on? Because you and you particularly had such a way of asking the questions and making someone feel comfortable that I was just, it was just me. I'm supposed to be checking you guys out, and you turned the tables on me. I had I didn't even get to halfway through the dinner that this man is really good. I said, Doc, I went back to her. I said, I'm sold. Let's get him. And and here we are, you know, 15 some odd years later.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Yeah, I remember that moment, man. I was listen, I was just blown away. I couldn't believe that two amazing human beings from the New York Knicks were even speaking to me at that point. So I I think part of the quiet was just trying not to make any mistakes as I was speaking. It came off as quite psychological and psychiatric, but it in real talk, I might have been a little scared.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

There you go with that again. You were not scared. You were pulling, you were pushing all the right buttons on me to get me to talk when I was supposed to be doing that to you. I'm like, okay, these two trineys are banging, going at each other right now. Hey, and I was sold from day one.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

How did you even know that to go this path?

Growing Up Between Two Sports Worlds

SPEAKER_01 4:35

So, doc, you know, uh you have already mentioned you know some of it, but our family, and you know my family background, you know my father's background. You know, we were very, very sports-oriented background. My father, as you know, is a you know, is a Trinity legend in in football. We say football, okay, for you folks who don't, not talking about tackling people and with helmets and shoulder pads, we're talking about soccer.

SPEAKER_04 5:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Uh legend. He's a hall of famer with in the Trinidad's, you know, scope of things, and also at the Harvard University. He he attended an HBCU. His sip, you know, all my siblings, you know, we the six of us, we all were trying to somehow meet this man at some point. Like, how are we were we ever gonna get to that level, right? And then trying. We never could get to that level, not from time, not from not trying. I grew up in Brooklyn. Um, you know, most of the kids in the neighborhood were playing football and basketball and baseball. My father was pushing me to the soccer and the field hockey. You know, I played with the you know, German American League. I played as a kid, I played in the Italian American League as a kid, couldn't speak any language with these kids. I had nothing in common with these kids. When I go back to my neighborhood, I want to be hang out with those kids. I want to play those games. So that kind of, you know, like my father kind of got thrown off a little bit by that. But it was like, I I don't I don't grow up with Italians and Germans. I am a trinity and I'm living in a trinity community, uh West Indian community here in Crown Heights. So in high school, I started to the football, right? I started the I tried basketball, right? I went to the baseball, track and field, and it really there was it was no bueno. It wasn't happening for me to be to go on beyond uh high school to maybe pursue it in college. And I'll tell you a funny story about that. So my senior year at Brooklyn Preparatory High School, there in Brooklyn, we had our banquet, football banquet. And our guest of honor to speak at our banquet was Joe Paterno. And Joe Paterno went to my high school there in Brooklyn. And he said, Son, can you kick? I played safety and and uh safety and cornerback in high school. So at that point I knew, okay, I'm not gonna, this for college football ain't happening for me. This man thinks I'm a kicker. He ain't looking at me to play no real serious college football. So I had to decide, what am I gonna do?

The Grades Wake Up Call

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Uh Brooklyn College came next. Um I was in the midst of still trying to pursue the athletic side, you know, so I'm trying out for the the no, my father, let me step back. My father was pushing me towards medicine. He had his idea of what he wanted each one of his kids to do. I was the oldest. He wanted me to be a doctor. Two years.

SPEAKER_04 7:25

Really? I didn't know that. Your dad wanted to be a doctor.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

I wanted me to be a doctor. And of course, you know, the baby girl of all of them, the baby girl of all the kids is now going to be a you know, Jade is gonna be a doctor.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Yeah, your daughter, right, Jade. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

But after two, two years, two two full years, almost two full years of failing grades, doctor. Failing grades, because my heart wasn't in this. I'm like, this is not, I don't, you know, this would be great, but this is not what I want to do. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but this was not it. Yeah. So I'm so I switched my, I said, you know, maybe I can try physical education, maybe I could teach pizzad or coach or something like that. I was trying out for the JV basketball team at Brooklyn College. And during the tryouts, my knee started getting sore. I'm like, why is score in my knee? I never had a knee injury before. Never had any real injuries before. So the coach said, Go downstairs, go downstairs in Roosevelt Hall, go

The Knee Injury That Opened A Door

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downstairs to the training room. I said, What? What just that? He said, just go down there and go see Doc Chisholm. I said, okay. Went into that room and there's people all over the place. So it wasn't a big facility like it is now, it's a much more upgraded facility now. But back then it was just a little small room in this old building, and there's this black man sitting at a desk, and there's students all over the place. I see athletes on tables getting worked on, and and I kind of was a little bit awkward. I'm like, why am I supposed to do this? And one of the one of the guys saw me, walks over to me, said, What you need? I said, uh, I was upstairs with the JV basketball trials that hurt my knee, they sent me down. He said, go go over there and talk to that man over there. He said, Yes, sir. Sat down and I met Dr. Bill Chisholm, who became my first mentor. And he has passed on, but he left. I remember he had a map, Doc. He had a map behind his desk. And on one day I got up the left nerve to ask him, I said, hey, doc, what's where are all those different pins you have on this map? You know, he said, he said, those are where my people have gone to school and where they're now working in places all over the country. I'm like, wow. I said, I want to be on that map. I want to be one of those pins. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Wow. The fact, and I think young people listening would be encouraged to know that look, you could be failing at something and not it not be going well. But if you have switching to whatever else might work. And that's true for all of us in life. If one thing, if that's what it sounded like you did, like you it didn't, you actually said, I was failing in these uh in this area, in the sciences or whatever, the medical part. And look at and look at where you end up. Like at the heck, you know, look at where you end up.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Yes, my I'm not ashamed to admit it, doc. My grade point after at the second semester, first after the second semester of Brooklyn College, my grade point was a 1.99. I was about to be put on probation. My mother, my mother, rest her soul, bless her soul. She was a toughest nails. You know, any woman that can raise six kids in Brooklyn, right? Absolutely. They keep us all out of jail, right? Five boys and a girl, my daughter, my sister. But my mom, the grades got there before I could get home. She saw, and she said, we gotta have a little chat. I said, Oh, I knew I was in trouble. Because I knew I knew where I was going because I I I saw the grades before they got home.

SPEAKER_04 11:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

She took me outside. I said, Where are we going? She said, let's step outside. It was getting dark. And down on the corner, Doc, where these dudes, these dudes used to, they used to hang out on the corner around a trash can. And they would be, they were known for just hanging out, right? They had nothing else to do but just hang out around this corner, around this trash can, know what they were doing with the trash can. And my, you know, at that time I was uh mom, you know, my mom depended on me a lot to keep things going for the other kids to look up to me because I was the oldest, you know, because my father had stepped out of the picture. And she said, You have to make a choice. I said, Yes, ma'am, what would that be? She said, You want to be with them? Or you want to live in this house? I said, say less. That was it. That was it. That turned my whole that that pivoted everything for me. I found, I knew I had to find a better way to do things in school. I still didn't know what I was gonna do. But then the blessing of the knee injury, if you call that a blessing, and going to meet those folks in that training room, Dr. Chisholm and Frank Walters and others, got me on the path, you know.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

So, so yeah, that's the other part about this, right? So you were failing in the courses, you uh your mom, God rest her, so uh strong as she is, she takes you outside and she gives you the choice. Do you want to, you know, path A or path B to figure it out? You go, this injury, which could be viewed as a setback. Was it a patella injury? I thought I read that.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Right, I said they're a patella tendinitis, which is very common, very common in basketball players. Right.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

So this injury sets you back, but then really what it looks like is almost like a divine um order, order to God is like moving you towards your career because you encounter Dr. Bill Chisholm in Brooklyn, you and you you get fascinated by this whole athletic training, healing uh journey, and then you start this journey.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

Wow. Out of something that doesn't work, something incredible happens for you.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

That's right, that's right. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

And you know, so many of us force the issue, Raj. I'm thinking about folks who are like pushing and trying to, because you were trying to please your dad, you were trying to do the right thing. I mean, this is all you were trying to do the right thing here. Um, and what if you had stayed and forced this, and forced this, and forced this? Who knows where you would have ended up? I mean, God had a huge plan for you.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

You just have to get moved into the right path.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

That's right. Amen. Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_02 13:44

That's amazing. So, look, this is the thing about our conversation today that I that's why I only have three or four questions because I knew that every question was going to really have a rich, deep answer. So now we know that the great, amazing Roger Hines wasn't just perfect, didn't come out of the womb just perfect, and that there was no struggle, there was no obstacle. You struggled and went through hardships and uh physical injuries, the mental torture of not doing well in school, having to pivot early to get to this place. And that's encouraging. So the question I have, the question I have now, which is gonna be a switch question, is a question about looking back at

Career Moments And The Championship High

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this career. We simply cannot uh go into every I know you have a thousand, a million memories, yeah, and I'm gonna challenge you to try to think of one as you look back at this great career that you have and tell us about one that sticks out. Is there anything as you look back over your career that sticks out to you as like, wow, man, that was a moment, that was a memory. I I cherish it, you know, something that you'll never forget as a part of what you've been through.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

This was probably the toughest question that you threw at me. I mean, this is probably the toughest one, because as you said, there's so many, right? You and I have just finished a crazy run to an NBA championship, you know, sitting there and looking at each other, you know, looking riding on that bus in the parade and looking like, wow, this actually happened, right? And we're starting with the other doctors and and uh and that comedian on the bus with us and just soaking it all in, it's like I can't believe we just did this, you know? Yeah and holding that trophy in my hand and getting a picture with it, that was even more incredible. But it I had to re to think about probably the most, one of the most amazing things that happened for me. If a a young trinity can come to a immigrant can come to this country, right, and get all the way to the point where he is looking out of this arena of these young stars who are all gonna bright, be bright, shining bright in their own entities for the future. But I went from that little island in the Caribbean to that spot over there on the floor, and I see all the heads turned because I was pointing to the corner where the benches, and to sit in the bench as an NBA athletic trainer. I said, for you guys, it's sky's the limit. And I that was the end of my speech. And then the mayor, Adams gets up behind me and says, How am I supposed to follow that? Joe

Earning A Veteran’s Trust

SPEAKER_01 16:27

wasn't a trainer. That was my second job. My main focus was to get these guys ready to play, get them in shape. And I remember one of the veteran players said to me, when he met me, he says, Hey, you know, I'm good. I've been doing this for whatever, forever. I'm happy you're on board, you're here with us. Congratulations, but I'm good. And I'm thinking, oh, this is gonna be if I can't get this guy going, I'm in trouble, right? Little over me.

SPEAKER_02 16:52

Oh, wow. Right. And you don't and you at the time, just to be clear, you did not feel as if you were like, you know, you had a bar to click.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Yeah, we we weren't we weren't really clicking because he kind of felt like he didn't need me because he knew how to get himself ready to play ball. He didn't need me. I'm good, man. You know, go work with them other guys, I'm good. But I knew I knew that I had to win over one of these vets in order to get everybody to follow because strength can get strength and conditioning was a new thing coming into the NBA now. There was no strength coaches to join the active roster. The head coach made a comment to me, and he made a comment to my boss and said, I've never seen this guy in better shape to play basketball since I've been working with this team.

SPEAKER_02 17:33

Wow. Yes. But what did you say to him? Like, you know, because I I think for those of us listening or trying to figure it out, like what is a what was the secret sauce there? Because at some point you and he had to be alone and talking. Were you direct with him? Were you did did how did you how did that work?

SPEAKER_01 17:50

I just found we found some common interests, right? Okay, whether it was sports, whether whatever it was, I don't remember exactly. We found some common interests about our in our backgrounds, and we were able to just grow from there. He said, you know what, let's I said, let's and I and I actually I was younger then, so I could actually continue to that level of a workout. I said, Hey, I'm gonna do these workouts with you. Because I was like 35 years old, so I still had relatively still.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

Oh, I see. So you worked out with him.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

I worked out with him.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

I see.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Let's go. Until we got to the more advanced stages where I can't keep up with this kind of workout. Yeah, he was ready then, he was ready to go on then.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

Well, I guess once somebody gets confidence in you, man, that's the way it is, you know. They trust you. The trust comes up.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

And they followed, and then other guys started looking and saying, like, what's going on with him over there? You know, what's going on there? And then they started to really buy in. They weren't just like, you know, pushing back. Look, let's go do this workout, let's go do this workout. Even the head coach at some point came to me and said, I want you to put me through some workouts after practice when you're done with the players. And I'm like, sure, let's do it.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

And well, so so from a from a challenge point of view, you had to overcome your self-doubt or or any, you had to overcome that moment of like anxiety that you get when you walk into a moment, you know, with these athletes and to can I prove it? Can I, can I, can I make a difference here? And especially if they don't even want you, they're like, listen, I can do this without you. Yeah you what you overcame all of that. It makes sense. Well, we're running out of time, but I have to get this in. There are three lessons that you have learned across your career. It could be two, but I I just, you know, I always go with three. If you had to put it in as succinctly, like, okay, what are the top three lessons that you learned that you carried with

Three Career Lessons That Last

SPEAKER_02 19:35

you?

SPEAKER_01 19:35

So, doc, I would say the top three, uh, and I was told this by my first boss, right? He said, be flexible and adapt to change. He said the the he said that he told me one thing. He said the the the the only constant in the NBA is change.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Whether you're changing players every season, coaches coming and going, management changes sometimes, ownership changes. He said, you have to be able to adapt to these things on the fly a lot of times in order to survive. I said, okay, I remember that. Flexible. He told me again, this is another thing from one of my mentors, just be yourself. This was this is this was honed into my head by from from Dr. Frank Walters. Be yourself, right? Because the guys you have to work with, they have you got to build trust with them. And you got these guys are really sharp. You know, don't don't think that they can't see through the phony baloney, the smoking mirrors. They can see through all that nonsense. And if you are trying to fake it till you make it, you ain't gonna make it. Because they're not gonna trust you. They'll just give you, you know, pet answers and yeah, whatever, and they're gonna not they're not having any confidence in you and what you're doing. So you have to to to to I pick that up early, just to be myself. And let the chips fall where they made. If this is not meant to be a long-lasting thing, well, thank God I got to this point. I enjoyed that part of it, and I'll move on to something else. But obviously, God had another, you know, he had other ideas in store for me. The and the one part that, and I said I uh uh this one was to stay on top of your game. So you have we have to go do we have to do continuum education uh just like you do in your medical field, we have to do that as well to keep up with the latest and greatest. And I always try to tell people, don't become complacent. Because that even caught me for a minute, too. That caught me for a minute when I got to my first position as a head athletic trainer when I left Atlanta. I'm I'm here at the top now, so you can't tell me nothing. I know it all. I got all the answers, but no, I didn't have all the answers. But I had to learn those lessons along the way, too. And so those three things is what I would say would be the top three for me.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

Wow, I record them in my mind as being flexible, being adaptable, being yourself, being authentic, and and and and and and handle your business, stay on your business. Game, you know, because those three things are what keeps you in the game. Because you've had a long career. I mean, we're talking three decades in the NBA, of you, and you are telling us that flexibility and authenticity and just being having integrity by staying in, you know, uh keeping up with your training and your education and all of that matters. And I think that's a that's a great message for anyone in any field to take in, to take in. Yeah. Yeah. So what advice would you give somebody?

Mentors Service And Family Sacrifice

SPEAKER_02 22:35

Let's say there's some young cats out there who want to enter into this field of what you've done here in sports medicine and in athletic training. What advice would you give them? What would you tell them? What would you like to tell them?

SPEAKER_01 22:52

You find mentors, people who are willing to help you. Don't forget about them when you as you're climbing. You can always go back to them. They have that experience. They've been there where you are trying to get to. They've been down those roads. They've had those challenges. They may not have shared them with you during your time with them, but I guarantee you go back to them, they'll say, Yeah, man, this is how I handle this. Right? You want to make the most money, doing whatever you want to do, you're in the wrong business, okay? You can't, it's not about the money. If you're if that's all you're thinking about, you're not gonna last long. Because you're gonna be you're gonna be very disappointed with the money, all right? You have to have a heart of service because you're gonna have to you're serving people. And a lot of athletic trainers, we're not even just taking care of the of the the players. We're taking care of the coaches. We got people coming to us. I mean, everybody comes to us because we have this little, this room in this building that's like a safe haven where people can actually come and they can either be deal with some issue, you know. They maybe just need somebody to talk to, right? And they may have enough confidence in being able to speak to you, and then you can tell them, well, look, you I need I know somebody who can help you even more. Just go talk to this guy, right? But yes, if it's about the money, yeah, everybody wants fair compensation, but if that's what you're more about, then don't think about this field. And the last thing is the sacrifice to work at this level, the sacrifices that you're gonna have to deal with. The biggest one that's gonna affect is the family. And if you are you're thinking about, or if you have a family and you have a wife and kids or a partner and children, whatever it is, everybody going into this has to understand that you are not always gonna be available. There's so much demand on what you have to do for the group that you're working for, whatever the team is, that it's gonna it's gonna put a lot of weight on you. And you have to have a good partner who understands that and has this, is strong enough to deal with that, and understand that there's gonna be times where you're not just gonna be there, you're not gonna be there. And I didn't plan on missing graduations and birthdays and holidays. You know, I worked, I can't remember, I could count on one hand how many Christmases I was home for. You know, and actually for Christmas because NBA plays games on Christmas, right? And one reason the teams I was with always played on Christmas Day for almost every season.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

I really love that, Raj. I really felt like that was just excellent because you really hit on some things that people ask about all the time and they don't really understand the value of mentorship. Like you just talked about that. You talked about mentorship stability and sacrifice, and I feel as if that mentorship piece is so critical because finding the right mentor is really a gold, a gold moment when you find that, and taking care of that mentor and that mentorship relationship, I think over time is also critical. So I really love that idea. So, anybody out there listening, you want to be like a Roger Hines, you want to get mentorship played a huge role in this man's success. And if you're listening and you want to climb, do you have a mentor? Is a question that we would be asking you, and and maybe it's time to begin finding a mentor. I mentor some young doctors as well, and it's amazing like how lit how hard it is to find good mentors.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

That's a blessing, you know. That's a blessing to go through all those ups and downs that that that carry on throughout that time. You know, it wasn't just uh from into the MBA, it was not just a straight shot trajectory right to the championship. There was a lot of peaks and valleys, you know, and and that you and I talked about just a couple of weeks ago when we had our little chat about how this is coming to a close for me and what am I gonna do next, right? And it's but what a way to end, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:44

It's it's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

It was my pleasure. I was I was

Closing Thanks And Share Subscribe

SPEAKER_01 26:47

the one honored. I'm sorry, I'm I'm honored. You know, I'm blessed to have a chance to to be you know be here with you and to and to just be part of this amazing program.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

You guys it's mutual, brother. It is absolutely mutual, and uh, I look forward to having you back on the sweet spot to talk about some more things. I know that we only touched the surface today, but that's what we had to do. We had to just get people to know that uh I wanted people to actually know Roger Hines. I mean, I people I told them that you were gonna be coming on the sweet spot. They're like, ah, come on, man. You're just gonna take clips from the YouTube and then you're gonna put your voice over it. This is what they told me. They said you're gonna take some clips from YouTube of Roger Hines talk, and then you're gonna try to make us give us a feeling that you were really with him. No, no, no, you are, you don't, you don't work like that. So that is no, no, I would never do that. Knowing these cats, yeah, they probably still won't believe me. But uh, but Max, thank you so much, my friend. Thank you, thank you, and uh look forward to having you back on here again and again. Yes, sir. All right, thank you, brother. All right, bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Thank you for listening to the sweet spot with Dr. Derek Sweet. If today's message was helpful, please feel free to share it and subscribe. There's no cost to subscribing, and it helps others to discover the show. We hope you'll join us again for another inspiring message from Dr. Sweet and the Sweet Spot team. For this onions, a little inslick to that today with the Sweet Spot.