Shu and Nero, first time in China at our boot camp

Previously, I wrote about the challenges posed by boot camp on our lean startup operations. In this post, I’d like to talk about how our players took to boot camp.

In short, it, too, was a challenge. But probably not in the way that you think.

For sure, our players and staff had to deal with the expected difficulties of coming together as a new team, learning to communicate with and trust each other, and the grind of intense training.

But beyond that, our players faced some unique challenges. The one that I’d like to focus on is this: they had to overcome the challenge of eating Chinese food.

I know that might sound strange, but consider the fact that we have a unique international roster of Chinese, Korean, American and British players. And for the majority of our roster, attending our two-week boot camp in Guangzhou was their first time in China.

Esports insiders might think that this is a problem of Korean players being picky eaters (because— for the the uninitiated — non-Korean esports teams with Korean players have had to deal with how to keep their Korean players happy and fed). But from our boot camp, I can tell you that’s not accurate. Because, umm, our American and British players had about as much trouble with two weeks of Chinese food as our Korean players. Oy vey.

This is in no way a slight to the cooking crew at our basketball training facility headed by a chef with 18 years of experience, who on a daily basis feed up to two dozen very tall men, including ex-NBA players. I think it was more an issue of a lack of variety over a two week stretch, exacerbated by a bit of home sickness.

The average age of our roster is among the youngest in the league. And for some of our guys, boot camp was probably the longest period they’ve ever spent away from the creature comforts that they’re used to, including food. This applies to most of our non-Chinese players, not just our Korean players. In fact, I think this food home-sickness would apply to just about any teenager from anywhere who spends two weeks in a foreign country, for the first time.

And if that weren’t enough, ordering food delivery for the quintessential esports midnight meal also presented some difficulties for our overseas players.

One of the fundamental changes to daily life in China in recent years (resulting from the mobile Internet revolution) is that today, China is largely a cashless society when it comes to consumer purchases. Most people use mobile payment via Wechat or Alipay to pay for just about everything, from retail to taxi’s to food delivery.

But setting up mobile payment requires a local bank account. So when some of our non-Chinese players didn’t eat much during the day from the team commissary and waited until their midnight meal to order in, even if they found a place that had what they wanted and figured out how to order, they couldn’t pay for it.

In the end, we as an organization had to adapt.

Our basketball facility had house rules where food delivery wasn’t allowed when team meals were provided (for better nutrition control and for the sake of procurement efficiency), but we made exceptions for our esports boot camp to introduce more variety of food on alternate days. Our players adapted as best they could, and provided feedback to our cooks about what suited their palettes. And a few of our Chinese players and staff who could do mobile payment became the go-to guys for the late night burger call.

This food issue was just one example of of the challenges that many of our players had to overcome, where they had to persevere over what I call the First Time In China experience.

China is different. For the fist time visitor, it’s not just a matter of a different language and culture, which pose unique challenges in and of themselves. But beyond that macro level, there’s a micro level where daily tasks that you usually take for granted are done differently. While any one thing might be somewhat trivial to adjust to, when stacked together, they can take a toll.

Having seen our players power through these challenges (for food and more) when it wasn’t always comfortable for them, we came away with some actionable insights.

First, we decided to change course on food in L.A. When building our team, our GM tried to make sure that prospective players understand that while we were building a mixed team, we were still a Chinese organization. We had planned to send one of our Chinese basketball chefs to L.A. to cook for our team, and he would take boot camp learnings and adapt. But that didn’t work well during boot camp, so we’re now trying to offer more variety and flexibility as the team settles in L.A.

You might think food is a small matter and wonder why I spend so much time on this topic, but from what we gathered, food was a consistent issue for mixed roster teams in Season 1. We want to meet our players half way and find a good compromise.

Second, with more time to plan out our training facility and player support for the time when our operations moves from L.A. to Guangzhou, we will address food and other friction points so that our overseas players can adapt more comfortably and take care of basic routine tasks independently.

But we expect our players to adapt and meet us half way. Which brings me to the last insight: we saw signs of grit from our players when faced with some of those First Time In China experiences. And we’re going to look closer for those characteristics for future hires, especially when our base operations is based in Guangzhou down the road as the league transitions to home-away.

I tip my hat to our overseas players who had options to join teams that were probably more comfortable for them as far as language, location, and yes, food, but instead took a leap of faith to join our team.

Frankly, if I were 18 years old and had those options, I may choose differently. And thus I’m awed and truly humbled by the young men who chose us.

A few days ago, we announced that we are fielding an academy team in 2019 to compete in China. This team will likely be based out of the same basketball facility where we held boot camp. We welcome overseas players, but will over-index on those who can thrive in an environment that will likely be very different from what they’re used to.

And we especially welcome those who have that grit that we saw from our guys during boot camp.

Thanks for reading.