This was a mission. See, I didn’t want to just get the guys to like me; I needed them to respect me. Respect in the game is more important than being liked. If they respect me, then they’ll play hard for me. Sure, part of this had to do with ego. I needed the guys to think of me as a different kind of animal who looked at pain differently. But this was also an opportunity to set the tone of who I was and what I was about. It was a sign of my character—evidence, however small, that I was willing to go to the nth degree to get uncomfortable for something greater.
