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The Playbook With David Meltzer

The Pressure Of Early Success

The Playbook With David Meltzer

David Meltzer, Entrepreneur.com

Business, Careers, Entrepreneurship

4.91.9K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2026

⏱️ 22 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In today’s episode, I sit down with former basketball prodigy Schea Cotton to talk about Manchild, the documentary built around his rise, setbacks, and everything he learned along the way. We get into how being labeled “the next big thing” can distort your mindset, why mentorship matters when praise gets loud, and how faith, family, and resilience shape long-term success. Schea opens up about mental health, including a moment that nearly ended everything, and how he now meets kids where they are by asking a simple question: where does it hurt? We also talk about purpose, discipline, and why the journey matters more than the outcome.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the Playbook. I'm David Meltzer here live at SoFi Stadium, the greatest stadium ever built. It's amazing what $5.5 billion will buy you.

0:09.0

And I have an extraordinary guest with me, the incredible Shea Cotton, professional basketball player, philanthropist, and also entrepreneur, a local superstar.

0:19.2

Welcome to the Playbook. Thanks for having you, thank you. We'll get started right

0:24.0

with the idea of Manchild. It's a documentary to me that has a message to everyone. There's no sure

0:30.9

thing in life. Absolutely. Right? I tell people all the time, this is your life story,

0:36.4

not a today's story, a week story, or a month story, and especially with young people.

0:40.9

And you really, as an advocate for mental health and advocate for our youth, are able to transcend your story to help enlighten people to have the right values and the right perspective when things may not work out

0:56.7

like you think they're supposed to, but maybe in the end you end up somewhere even better.

1:02.3

And I love that about your story.

1:03.8

Give me an idea about Manchild and the premise for you of wanting to create this documentary.

1:09.5

Starr studied, by the way, my boy B.D.'s in there,

1:12.1

Baron Davis, Stephen Jackson, a lot of my good friends. But what's the actual premise of man child?

1:18.0

The actual premise of man child was basically the moniker that was created from the writers,

1:22.5

the journalists, they said I was a man amongst boys growing up. Like a Stephen Jackson?

1:26.8

Yeah, 100%.

1:27.8

You know, that was doing things, I guess, before my time.

1:31.0

And the whole point of the documentary was to enlighten and inspire people that show them it's not where you start, it's where you end.

1:37.0

And even though I had some hardships along the way that weren't foreseen, I was blessed to be able to land on my feet after a lot of challenges that I've dealt with

1:44.5

whether it be suicide and depression and things like that along the way, which a lot of

1:49.6

athletes deal with in the post career. Yeah, it's interesting. Remember when you used to put your

1:55.2

senior quote in your yearbook? I went back and to recall what my senior quote was. It was it doesn't matter if you have the lead as long as you have the heart to come from behind.

2:07.6

That's right. I like that. Right? And I thought of you today as I looked at that. I'm like, here's a guy that had so much heart. Now, it's one thing to have the lead and then not have the lead and then have

...

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