I am Max

I was born in Odessa, Ukraine and grew up around basketball thanks to my dad, who used to play pro. At the age of 14, I received a scholarship to a high school in California, but during the COVID-19 pandemic I transferred to Kansas, which eventually took me all across the US - to Michigan, Ohio, Texas and 25+ other states where I spend nearly six years chasing the game.

After graduating in 2023 I signed to play college basketball at Gogebic Community College in Michigan and interned at We Are D3, a professional basketball team competing in the $1 million TBT tournament.

I started there as an intern, helping with whatever tasks were assigned to me and learning about data driven decisions behind the scenes for strategy, scouting, performance which really made me curious about that side of field.

After the summer, I flew to Michigan, where I chose to study Computer Programming of Applied Business to delve deeper in this field alongside basketball.

That’s where I wrote my first lines of code and gained my first role in IT Support after finding this opportunity through the NFT community, but that's a whole other story.

In the summer of 2024, I rejoined the We Are D3 team and travelled with them to Dayton, Ohio, where I witnessed their first tournament win in six years.

→ Spoiler: Watch the first ever win reaction

That summer I spent most of my time in Connecticut and travelled around New England deciding what to do next since I was in transfer portal for a new basketball team.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a basketball opportunity again to play in college, so I had to leave basketball behind and focus on my academic journey.

So I moved to Aberdeen, Scotland, to study Data Science with Business Management at Robert Gordon University.

In my free time, I still play basketball and spend time with my family, but focusing more on my studies and learning how data can help people make more informed decisions not just in sport, but in life too.