How to grow from underdog to basketball and social media icon | The Professor | TEDxDenHelder

you don't like that [Applause] [Music] [Applause] yeah look at the hold on honey Oh yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] good afternoon my name is Grayson Boucher better known as the professor I've been blessed to play the game of basketball for 15 years professionally and still going I've had the opportunity to be hosted for events in over 40 countries worldwide though I'm an athlete technically my job title is social influencer for those of you guys who don't know what social influencer is its somebody who utilizes social media full-time for a living my main part of my business is my youtube channel professor live I have 3 million subscribers over 400 million views and it's host to the number one web series on all of YouTube called spider-man basketball now despite any of this when I walked to the stage a few seconds ago my guess is that none of you would have assumed that I'm a professional basketball player a short white guy I don't have any outstanding athletic features not all not big so when people hear that I'm a pro ball player they tend to ask two things first thing they ask is how how was it that you're professional ball player based on your size and stature the second thing they ask is why why are you not in the NBA because when people think about a long-standing basketball career they tend to think of the NBA so that's why I'm here today I want to take you guys through my journey and answer those couple of questions it all started off for me small suburb town of Keizer Oregon started playing basketball two years old my dad put the basketball my hands he had a passion for the game and it wore off on me almost instantly I started playing basketball every day started on a Larry Bird nerve hoop and then this is the driveway that I were practicing every day my goal was to be an MBA by about third grade I started working with a skills trainer this skills trainer taught me some vital fundamental ball handling drills they needed for the long run by sixth grade I had mastered a few moves for you ball players I mastered the in and out in and out crossover and then my favorite moved to Allen Iverson crossover Allen Iverson was my favorite NBA player at that time now my whole childhood I was very very small I was always a late bloomer all my peers were always way bigger than me so I was on the court I was always playing bigger competition and when I would do crossovers and moves like that against the defense the crowds would go crazy freshman year in high school was for 11 eighty-five pounds as you can see number ten much smaller than my teammates started on the Freshman team things were good 15 years old I got ahold of the n1 mixtapes these tapes had gritty Street ball and it was a flashy style of play with hip hop music over the top as of VHS tapes put out by the company and one it was a sneaker and apparel company that they used this to promote their brand so these things inspired me the next level the guys that were playing on him or my idols and it made me want to take my ball handling creativity to the next level junior year in high school I get cut from the varsity team this was a major bummer to me my whole identity was in basketball so for me not to be able to play with my peers on the varsity level and have to play junior varsity as a junior was kind of embarrassing I hated it and at this time the an one style of play had sort of started to influence my game I remember one time my coach pulled me aside and he said uh Grayson is everything okay and I was like yeah what's up he said oh well are you driveling for show or a dribbling for dough and I remember I said though but the truth is my play started to look like the sizzle reel that you saw earlier is a little bit flashy come senior year transferred to a small school Salem Academy Christian there's only like 300 kids in entire school I wanted to get more opportunity and to plan on a varsity team I got second team all-state I was one vote away from League MVP and I averaged 22 points and 7 assists so things were going pretty good after my senior year I was thinking I would get some college offers but it turned out I got no college offers I went to try out for three different colleges I got cut from all three every time the coach would tell my dad the same thing and say hey you know what this kid's got some skills offensively but he's a little bit small you know we don't think he could guard anybody at this level as you can see right here I was about 5 720 pounds so my dad's a small-business owner he owned a jewelry store still does today and they specialize in wedding sets and it just so happened that the one college that I hadn't tried out for was the local community college and the head coach just happened to buy his wedding ring from my dad and during this transaction my dad persuaded him to give me an opportunity he said hey I got a son he loves the game he's pretty skilled he's just not getting the opportunity so his coach was nice enough to let me come out try out for the team ended up making the team is the very last man so I got very little playing time I played about three minutes a game if the game was close wouldn't even get in so at that point through my freshman year in college I was I was basically a benchwarmer a scrub at the lowest level of college basketball my dream of making the NBA stuff like that was somewhere way off in the distance so I could have gave up but you know what basketball is my passion so I decided to dedicate myself that much more and I started doing three days I wake up at five in the morning before class I tried to make a thousand jump shots go to class afterwards we'd have open gym where we scrimmage five on five then I would go hit some weights and then after weights I'll come back to the gym and work on my game some more at night so I dedicated myself very hard and from about March my freshman year in college 2003 to June I had improved about 300% and when we do our open gyms I was one of the best players of the gym if not the best so the hard work and dedication had paid off that same summer in 2003 the company Antoine had roses so much popularity with the hanwen mixtapes that I love to watch that they landed a reality TV show on ESPN and it was documenting their first nationwide tour 30 cities around the United States so me and my brother were thrilled when we found out they were coming to Oregon Portland was the closest city to my hometown we drove our way we get up there I can't wait to watch my idols play for some of you ball players you might remember the names of hot sauce a Oh Escalade main event these guys were my idols so we get up there and it just so happened before the game they had tryouts for locals and apparently if you make it from his tryout you get to play in the game against the m1 players so I figured I'd give it a shot I had a flashy game I love this style of play so I hopped in there in the trial got a few moves off hit a couple shots next thing you know the crowd was really excited myself and another player got voted out of about four or five hundred players to go inside and play against the team and won that night so next I'm more than excited I find myself going head to head against the headliner Hamelin mixtape tour we're having this battle the crowd is loving it that night after the game they asked me to go on tour with them and then they told me that the ESPN reality TV series is actually all about the locals trying out at each tour stop going through this whole summer long series of elimination to narrow it down to one contestant winner to win a contract with Team Antoine so I was in this contest and I don't even care at that point because I was just excited to play with my idols I was on top of the world as far as a hoop dream could go this was it for me so end up playing out of my mind that summer I was pulling off moves and hitting shots that I never could duplicate find myself at the very last city New York City at Madison Square Garden I end up hitting a game-winning three-point shot from about ten feet behind the three-point line and we beat team an one for the first time and I ended up winning the contract to sign with that one and be the winner of the ESPN reality TV show at 18 years old so that's what my pro career started and during my run with Antoine I had an incredible time but it was very ironic because months before I was playing junior college at the lowest level not really getting an opportunity so hard work and dedication had paid off with that one we were on ESPN for six seasons had an incredible run I got to play in over 30 countries I got to make a bunch of friends I met all my favorite athletes and entertainers and aside from playing with Antoine I also during this time was still trying to make the NBA playing in conventional leagues and minor leagues and different things like that but at a certain point in about 2007 I realized the opportunity and politics just warm on my side making the NBA was gonna be very very tough so I decided to stick with street ball cuz I already built a legacy in this genre and I said go full force with that I figured it was my calling life by the end of 2008 me and my teammates were thinking we were gonna renew our contracts for a seventh season on ESPN but it just so happened that we got no call to renew her contracts and one was under different ownership and they decided not to use their street ball tours to promote their brand anymore so to us this was devastating we we didn't really know what to think you know I hadn't prepared for the next phase of life so I find myself in 2009 with less than $200 in my bank account I didn't know what to do to make ends meet it just so happened that in my closet I found this box that I had kept 75 of my Antoine game jerseys and I knew that these held a lot of value because worldwide even though we weren't reopen for the next year and one Street ball was still very very popular so I sold all my jerseys on eBay anonymously and of making like 30 grand and I lived off that for about six months and so that's how I could get off my feet other than that I was doing a few clinics here and there do some training stuff and I would do like one-off games globally so I'd be like a Africa game do a game at Brazil Russia but the games didn't come every month you know we might have a couple games one month in three months no games so it's really hard to make ends meet 2011 end up meeting a guy in Los Angeles who said that he wanted to start another street ball company he wanted to pick up where Anwen left off he said he have a TV show for our tour on Fox Sports so me and my teammates naturally were excited you know this is a second chance most people have their wave of famer or being on top and you don't get a second chance so what he was saying was incredible he was gonna start this tour up we were getting ready to sign contracts were in Los Angeles 2011 I'm with my good friend right here Troy Jackson better known as Escalade exhale by his size he was about six nine off between four to five hundred pounds but he's incredible talent I mean this guy was an amazing athlete he dribbled like a guard even though he was about the size of a sinner so we're hanging out in Los Angeles getting ready promote this tour things are looking real good I wake up that Sunday morning to find out that my best friend here died of a heart attack so I was immediately just distraught I couldn't even think about basketball the most down time in my entire life this moment right here calls me to ask the bigger questions of life for the first time you know what am I supposed to be doing what is my purpose what's gonna happen when I die so I end up going to his funeral three weeks later Brooklyn New York his brother was actually running the funeral service his name is Mark Jackson he's actually a famous ex-nba player famous NBA analyst but he's also a pastor and during the service it was really hard to sit through a very tough funeral for me especially you know I talked to Escalade every day towards six to eight months out of the year but at the end of the funeral service he did altar call he said hey you know what if you want to be where my brother is in heaven right now feel free to come to the altar give your life to Jesus Christ and I felt really compelled to do so so I did just that and it became Christian at that moment it was a major turning point in my life fast forward to 2013 working on my youtube channel trying to come up ways to expand viewership I had videos that had 50,000 views 150,000 views I did pretty well but I was trying to figure out how quick how we go mainstream with the viewership how can I get millions of views and have a much wider platform so a friend of mine we sat down and put our heads together to come up with an idea he was into basketball but he was also familiar with cosplay and we came up with a concept where we put basketball and cosplay together and what it was was I took to the court dressed as a superhero to play people 101 as a prank and naturally we use the character spider-man because it covered every part of the body so we end up going to shoot this video of dress a spider-man took about 25 minutes at the park I feel like it was just meant to because every move I was doing was working I don't think I missed one shot I go home that night I end up editing the video myself a couple hours I uploaded on YouTube they said it was gonna take like five or six hours so I was tired at night I went to sleep woke up the next morning video had three million views to my surprise about to blink my eyes and look like is that right end of the week it had seven million views my youtube channel had went from sixty thousand subscribers all the way to half a million in just a week and that's how I became a social influencer fast forward to today being a social influencer has been great I've got to see even more of the world now 40 different countries been doing this for 15 years I got to do incredible campaigns with some of the biggest companies in the world I have a clothing line I started a month ago called Global Hooper things have gone really really well and ultimately basketball has allowed me to live the dream that I never knew I had you know when I was little I was trying to aim to be an NBA player but instead I became a global basketball entertainer and I realized that's actually my colleague and it was so much of a better fit for me so I hope today you guys could draw some encouragement inspiration for my story but I want to send you away with three things I learned number one you have to prove yourself every day number two hearing know isn't the end of the road and number three I would encourage everybody to try to seek their passion because I think often that's where you can find your purpose thank you guys for your time [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 788,240

Rating: 4.9618063 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Entertainment, Entrepreneurship, Motivation, Personal growth, Social Media, Sports, Struggle

Id: 1n4qyX1w-CU

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 05 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/dingofarmer2004]

Ok so guys. You are gonna hate this.

The professor is obviously not the nba calibur type of person. But he is a super talented dude who has an incredible love for the game.

He has donated to charities. He has a platform for good. He has gone all across the globe to spread the word. His tag is Globalhooper!

He entertained us. He continues to. It is a completely different art than watching the NBA, and he would be the first to admit that.

The two can coexist. The Professor is a good dude.

[u/ddottay]

Does AND1 still exist?

[u/jayeljefe]

Where has the time gone where I now live in a generation where people know The Professor as "the spiderman baller on youtube."

[u/jcw4455]

Loved the professor, but that game just doesn't translate well into the league.

Jwill, Magic, and Pistol were probably the closest we'll ever see in the league.

[u/this-ray]

Fun fact, former And1 legend Escalade was Mark Jackson's brother. I met him once at a six flags in NJ when I was a kid

[u/MooseBadda]

Non American here. Can someone please explain these terms for me with regards to college sports. Varsity. Junior varsity. Reclassification.

Thanks in advance.

[u/j_cruise]

I think the D Wade vid from yesterday proved that flashy moves don't mean shit in the NBA

[u/Meeks999]

Dude never had a chance at the NBA lol