Denver Nuggets Mason Plumlee says he grew up going to church and Sunday school as a kid but it wasn’t until his senior year of college at Duke that he began to take it more seriously.
“I was seeking on my own. It had a profound impact,” Plumlee told Bryce Johnson on the Unpackin’ it podcast. “I ended up having my best season at Duke. But really, I felt more at peace in decisions at school and my personal life.”
Plumlee, 27, is in his fifth NBA season. He was selected 22nd overall in the first round of the 2013 NBA Draft by the Brooklyn Nets, where he played two seasons before being traded to Portland in June of 2015.
In February of 2017, he was again traded to the Denver Nuggets, his current team. In September, Mason signed a new three-year contract worth $41 million with Denver. This season, he’s averaging 7.5 points and 5.8 rebounds for a Denver team that currently sits in the eighth spot of the Western Conference playoffs.
The uncertainty of the NBA lifestyle is something Plumlee recognizes, but says knowing who is in control is what keeps him from being worried about the future.
“The verse that jumps out is ‘Lean not on your own understanding’ (Proverbs 3:5). As players, we’re assets. We’re tied to a contract,” Plumlee told Johnson. “We’re like chess pieces, we can be moved. I don’t know if I’ll be in Denver until the end of my career or not. You just don’t know but there’s a lot of scripture that I’ve taken with me throughout this career. I know now that whenever I get out of sorts, or are unsure of something, or if you have doubt or uncertainty, now I know what I lean on.”
Plumlee was featured in the the October 2013 edition of Sports Spectrum Magazine, where he talked about letting go of trying to figure out the future because he knows that by working hard and trusting God, the rest will fall into place.
“There are things out of our hands,” Mason told us in 2013. “It’s a relationship (with God). We have to take care of our end. But if I have a good attitude, and I do my work, God will put me in the position He wants me to be in. You can’t micromanage everything. You want to have control, but no matter how bad you want to be in control, no matter how hard you try, there are still things that are out of your hands.”
For more on Plumlee, click below to read the full article from our October 2013 edition of Sports Spectrum.
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