{"id":520402,"date":"2026-03-07T12:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T12:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/520402\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T12:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T12:44:08","slug":"i-played-only-one-game-in-the-nba-this-is-my-one-regret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/520402\/","title":{"rendered":"I played only one game in the NBA. This is my one regret"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story is part of Peak,\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak\u2019s newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ryan Robertson played one game in the NBA for the 1999-2000 Sacramento Kings. He is now an executive with the financial firm Future Standard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll start with the down-the-middle story.<\/p>\n

I was not expected to get drafted in 1999. On draft night, I sat there with my parents, my brother and my fianc\u00e9 at the time (now my wife). I knew I wasn\u2019t going in the first round. In the second round, I thought there were only one, maybe two teams that would draft me.<\/p>\n

The draft broadcast went to commercial break around the 44th pick. When they came back, my picture was on the screen at No. 45. That\u2019s how I found out I was going to the Sacramento Kings.<\/p>\n

I was obviously very, very excited, but there was a level of anxiety right from the beginning. This is now real. I\u2019m going to an NBA roster and I\u2019m going to have to perform. I had all these thoughts. Am I going to be good enough? Am I going to be able to perform?<\/p>\n

At the time, teams could only dress 12 players, but they could have 15 guys on the team. Sacramento opted to only have 14 that year, so Bill Wennington and I were the 13th and 14th players on the roster. And it seemed like we went that entire season without a major injury, so I never played.<\/p>\n

I had the best seat for 81 games. I sat on the bench and watched, front row to it all. Hard practices. Road trips. Private flights. Nice hotels. Fights. It was all basketball for somebody who just loved basketball.<\/p>\n

In the final game of the season, we were playing in Utah. Rick Adelman, our coach, came up to me and said, \u201cWe\u2019re activating you tonight. You\u2019re going to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

That entire season I had tried to be a professional, tried to be ready, so that if I ever got a chance, I wouldn\u2019t embarrass myself. More than anything, when Adelman told me that and I went back to my hotel room, I was relieved. All the work and preparation and hoping \u2014 I was actually going to see if that preparation paid off.<\/p>\n

It was an experience I\u2019ll never forget. I guarded Hall of Famer John Stockton. I was on the court with Hall of Famer Karl Malone. I made a jumper in the second half and then took it to the basket, got fouled and made an and-one.<\/p>\n

On paper, it went fine: 25 minutes, 6 shots, 5 points.<\/p>\n

But I took that opportunity and just tried not to make a mistake. I played safe and conservative. My mindset was: Don\u2019t lose. I wasn\u2019t thinking about trying to go out there and win, and that\u2019s probably the reason I\u2019m in financial services today and not retired with a bunch of money from the NBA.<\/p>\n

Now that I\u2019m 49 and looking back, I wish I had used that opportunity to try to go for 50. In the NBA, sometimes you only get one opportunity. One chance. If I could do it over again, I would let it fly and say to myself: Every single time you touch the ball, you should try to score.<\/p>\n

The upside would have been unbelievably high, and the downside would have been what happened to me. I went back to Sacramento the second year, got cut in training camp and went to Europe.<\/p>\n

When I finished playing in Europe and moved into the financial world, I actually had a completely different mindset than I did with basketball.<\/p>\n

My whole life until that point was about basketball. From the time I was 6 years old, I was always one of the better players. I was a McDonald\u2019s All-American. I was a top recruit as a point guard and went to Kansas. I had a lot of expectations.<\/p>\n

In the financial world, I had no expectations. I didn\u2019t know what I was doing or what I was capable of. I had to figure out a way to be successful in this new world so I could put food on the table for me, my wife, and my young kids. I was super aggressive and would do anything it took to be successful.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a big believer in the saying \u201cSometimes your biggest strengths are your biggest weaknesses, and your biggest weaknesses are your biggest strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of my weaknesses is that I do care a lot about what other people think. That then drives me to be as good as I can. But in the NBA, it also drove me to want to play relatively safely because I didn\u2019t want to disappoint people. I didn\u2019t want people to go: Oh, man, he failed. He did a poor job. At the same time, that pressure is what has driven me to succeed outside of basketball.<\/p>\n

My mindset in the NBA: Am I going to fail?<\/p>\n

My mindset in the financial world: Am I going to succeed?<\/p>\n

In the NBA, I felt like I was running uphill. And in the business world, I felt like I was running downhill.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m really proud of the way both worlds worked out. I tried to make the NBA work. I became a better player in Europe than I was in the NBA. And since transitioning to this world, I\u2019ve gone from a small-firm sales guy to Goldman Sachs to now Future Standard, where I\u2019m running distribution in a global sense.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m proud of all of that. I gave it my shot in the NBA, but knowing what I know now, I wish I had tried to go for 50 in that one game. I wish I had been super aggressive.<\/p>\n

Sometimes you only get one chance.<\/p>\n

\u2014 As told to Jayson Jenks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is part of Peak,\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,543,120958,1212,459,15885,10679,82],"class_list":["post-520402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-college-sports","tag-kansas-jayhawks","tag-mens-college-basketball","tag-nba","tag-peak","tag-sacramento-kings","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}