Books that change the game
I share the books that influenced my life and the lessons athletes can apply to performance, transition and their future.
How I read
Basketball gave me my first library. Coaches handed me scouting reports. Teammates passed along books about faith and discipline. The family who welcomed me in the United States filled summer evenings with conversations about business and service. Somewhere along the way, reading became how I prepare for what comes next.
Every note on this page follows the same structure: why I picked up the book, three ideas I kept, how those ideas can serve an athlete or a young leader, one simple action to try this week, and who I would hand the book to. No summaries for the sake of summaries. Only what you can use.
Reading note 01: Designing Your Life
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. The book I leaned on when my Achilles tore and the phone went quiet.
Why I read it. In 2019 I ruptured my Achilles in the middle of a professional season. During rehab I understood that I had spent fifteen years training my body and very little time designing what would come after it. This book gave me a method instead of anxiety.
Three ideas I kept
- You do not find your future, you prototype it. Small tests, conversations and short experiences beat one big leap of faith.
- There is no single perfect life. The authors ask you to sketch three different versions of your next five years. All three can be good. That removes a lot of pressure.
- Some problems are gravity. You cannot fix them, you can only navigate them. An injury is gravity. Complaining about gravity is wasted energy.
How the lessons help athletes. A playing career always ends, usually earlier than planned. Prototyping lets you test a second life while you still play: an off-season internship, a course, twenty coffees with people whose work intrigues you.
One action to try. Write three five-year plans this week. One where your sport continues, one where it stops tomorrow, one where money is not a constraint. Notice what repeats across all three.
Who I recommend it to. Any athlete within three years of transition, and any student who believes there is only one right path.
Reading note 02: Living Forward
Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy. A game plan for the one career nobody scouts: your life.
Why I read it. Between the end of my playing career and business school, my weeks were full but my direction was fuzzy. This book calls that state drift, and it counts its cost.
Three ideas I kept
- Drift is the default. Without a written plan, someone else's agenda becomes yours: an agent's, a club's, an employer's.
- Begin at the end. The book asks how you want to be remembered by the people you love, then has you plan backward from that answer.
- A life plan is reviewed like game film. It only works if you revisit it weekly and quarterly, the way we watched film after every game.
How the lessons help athletes. The club plans the season. The agent plans the contracts. Nobody plans your life for you. This book puts the athlete back in the executive chair.
One action to try. Block thirty minutes and write what you would want three people to say about you at the end: someone from your family, a teammate, someone from your community.
Who I recommend it to. Mid-career professionals in any field, and anyone who feels busy but not intentional.
Reading note 03: StrengthsFinder 2.0
Tom Rath. The tool that helped me translate captain and rebounder into the language of a CV.
Why I read it. During my transition I took the Gallup CliftonStrengths assessment that comes with this book. The job market speaks a language athletes are never taught. This book gave me vocabulary.
Three ideas I kept
- Fixing weaknesses gets you to average. Investing in strengths gets you to excellence.
- Talent times investment equals strength. The same formula as sport: raw ability only becomes a weapon through deliberate work.
- Naming a strength makes it usable. In interviews, in teams, in reviews, the person who can name precisely what they bring has the advantage.
How the lessons help athletes. I led the French league in rebounding without being the tallest player on the floor. Rebounding is measurable persistence. Every playing identity contains professional strengths: the work is translating them.
One action to try. Take the assessment, share your top five strengths with one person who knows you well, and ask where they have seen them show up outside sport.
Who I recommend it to. Athletes writing their first CV, and anyone moving into a new industry.
Reading note 04: Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl. The book I hand to anyone living through a season they did not choose.
Why I read it. I read it during my rehabilitation, then again years later in a season of grief. Frankl survived the concentration camps and came back with a conviction that fits in one sentence: you do not always control what happens to you, you always control what you do with it.
Three ideas I kept
- Everything can be taken from a man except one thing. The last of the freedoms: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.
- He who has a why can bear almost any how. Meaning does not erase pain, it makes it crossable.
- Meaning is not found once and for all. It is answered daily: in work, in love, and in the stance you take toward suffering you cannot avoid.
How the lessons help athletes. An injury, a roster cut, an expiring contract: that is suffering without a scoreboard. Frankl taught me to turn rehab into a project, and hardship into a chapter rather than a conclusion.
One action to try. Write one sentence that begins with "This matters because..." and post it where you train.
Who I recommend it to. Anyone in rehab, in grief, or in a transition they did not choose.
Reading note 05: A Place for Us
Fatima Farheen Mirza. A novel about family, faith and the distance that grows between the people who love each other most.
Why I read it. I left home at seventeen. Every year spent far away adds a layer of translation between you and the people you come from. This novel, the story of a family gathered for a wedding and of a son who drifted away, gives that quiet ache a language.
Three ideas I kept
- Silence earns compound interest. What families do not say to each other becomes, with time, what they no longer can say.
- You can belong to two worlds and feel like a guest in both. That is not failure; it is the inheritance of everyone who ever left.
- Forgiveness almost always arrives late. The final section of the book says everything that should have been said sooner. Say it sooner.
How the lessons help athletes. A career puts oceans between you and your people. Success can turn into distance without you noticing. This book is a reminder: the return game with your family does not play itself.
One action to try. Ask a parent or sibling one question you have never asked. Write down the answer.
Who I recommend it to. Anyone who built a life far from where it began.
Reading note 06: The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro. A quiet warning about giving your entire life to a role.
Why I read it. Stevens, an English butler, served with perfect dignity for decades. At the end of his life he looks up and takes the measure of what that devotion cost him. I read this novel as a man who was a jersey long before he was a person.
Three ideas I kept
- Excellence in a role can become a hiding place. You can be flawless in your function and absent from your own life.
- Loyalty is worth what its object is worth. Stevens never audited his employer, or his own choices. Serving does not excuse you from thinking.
- Regret does not announce itself. It accumulates in the small postponed evenings, until one day it fits entirely on a bench facing the sea.
How the lessons help athletes. The game deserves your discipline, not the entirety of your identity. The club, like Stevens's great house, will go on existing without you. Your life has no substitute on the bench.
One action to try. List three things you keep postponing "until after the career". Do one of them this month.
Who I recommend it to. High performers who answer "who are you?" with their job description.
Reading note 07: Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro. The most tender book I know about a brutal system, and about passing time.
Why I read it. Students grow up in an idyllic boarding school, raised for a fate decided by others. Nobody truly rebels. They love, they remember, and time slips by. This novel reminded me of how elite sport treats young bodies: with affection, and with a schedule.
Three ideas I kept
- A system can be gentle in tone and ruthless in design. See yours clearly. You can love it and protect yourself at the same time.
- There are no deferrals. The characters cling to a rumor that time can be earned. The rumor exists only to keep them docile. Nobody is coming to extend your career.
- What remains is what you kept. Memories, friendships, the small proofs of a life. Collect them on purpose.
How the lessons help athletes. Your club loves you and depreciates you like an asset. Both are true at once. Your career has an end date nobody will announce in advance. Living and preparing are not opposites: they are the same gesture.
One action to try. Write down what you would start today if your career ended in two years. The first line of that list is a signal.
Who I recommend it to. Athletes inside big machines, and anyone waiting for permission to live.
What I am writing
Two book projects are on my desk.
The first is personal: a series of letters to my children about grit, inheritance and rebuilding, drawn from Natitingou, Villanova, nine professional seasons and the quiet work of starting over.
The second is practical: a playbook to help athletes run their career, their money and their life the way a CEO runs a company.
The first pages will be shared here and on the blog. If you would like to be an early reader, write to me through the contact page.
Suggest a book
If a book changed the way you play, lead or rebuild, I want to hear about it.
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