Nick Sullivan

Peyton Watson says Michael Malone once called him out in front of the entire team because he wasn't prepared, and says it changed his career trajectory “I was playing KD on the scout team. Coach Malone asked me in front of the team, ‘Okay, P, what’s the name of this play that we’ve been running that you just ran?’” “I remember just being like, ‘I don’t know.’ I really just don’t know. I didn’t know. His face turned red, bro, and he just started chewing me out. ‘You’re the youngest one in here. You should be paying attention. We give you a book with all the plays on it. You should know these things.’” “‘You’ve been playing KD for X amount of practices and you don’t know these things. That shows you haven’t been paying attention, and maybe you aren’t ready to play if I call your number.’” “You could hear a pin drop in the practice facility. I remember feeling embarrassed, pissed off. But at the same time, I felt embarrassed because I didn’t know. He asked me a question and I wasn’t prepared to answer it. Since then, I’ve always been hyper-focused on the game plan, the scout, I know everything now.” “I remember damn near tearing up. I’m like, ‘Bro, he’s chewing me out right now.’ I felt sick to my stomach. But I also took it like, he wouldn’t be saying nothing to me if I wasn’t an important piece of this team and he didn’t think I could be really good moving forward.” “He was holding me to a high standard. At the time I hated that shit, but in retrospect it was responsible for my attention to detail now.”