Playing for Club vs Country – With Flinder Boyd – Ep. 33

Former Great Britain guard and 10-year pro Flinder Boyd joins us for Episode 33 of the Hoopsfix Podcast to focus on how he’s found the transition to retirement and his time with the Great Britain programme.

Boyd, now a writer for the likes of Bleacher Report, spoke openly and candidly about his basketball career and time with GB – where he recorded over 30 caps during some of the peak years of the programme, competing at EuroBasket in 2009.

Graduating from Dartmouth College in 2002, Flinder Boyd had stints in France, Spain, the UK, Slovakia and Greece during his professional career, before hanging up the boots in 2012 just prior to the Olympics.

In this hour-long episode, hear from Flinder Boyd on:

• What he’s up to now and how he’s carved himself out a career as a sports journalist
• How he found the transition from playing into retirement
• Dealing with losing the identity of being an athlete and professional basketball player
• His blog I Wish I Was a Little Bit Taller that he wrote on the side whilst playing
• His (lack of) expectations of having a pro career after college
• How the call up to play for Great Britain first came about
• The ‘plastic Brits’ debate on how he felt about being American raised with a British passport
• The importance of the BBL saving spots for British developed players
• The excitement in the run up to London 2012
• Being the underdogs with GB and whether or not it helped them
• How his club side wouldn’t let him play for GB for the first summer because his coach didn’t believe it was a legitimate thing
• The camaraderie of the Great Britain squad during the early years
• How playing for GB was some of the best years of his career with some of his favourite memories
• The balance between playing for your club and country
• The realities of being a professional basketball player in Europe and the lack of job security
• The difficulties some American players face with the cultural transition to playing and living in Europe
• The EuroBasket 2009 qualifying campaign
• Playing for former GB Head Coach Chris Finch and their relationship
• The British fan base and lack of basketball culture in the UK
• The challenges of marketing basketball in the UK and lack of media coverage
• ‘That’ game against Spain where GB almost produced one of the biggest upsets in basketball history at EuroBasket 2009
• The injuries that slowed him down towards the end of his career
• Facing up to the reality he wasn’t going to make the London 2012 squad
• His hopes for the future and potentially moving towards sport documentaries
• And much, much more!

As always, I’d love to get your feedback, come back after you’ve listened and lets get some discussion going in the comments.

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