The Day I Was Told I’d Never Make the NBA—and the Twist I Never Saw Coming
How following passion, not logic, led me somewhere I never expected
I was six years old the first time I held a basketball.
I still remember the feeling. The weight of it in my hands. The sound it made when it hit the floor. Something clicked inside me in that moment. I didn’t have the words for it back then, but looking back, I know exactly what it was. It was love.
From that day on, basketball became my world. I played all the time. Before school, after school, whenever I could sneak away. I stayed out there until it got dark and my parents had to call me inside. Every free minute belonged to the ball.
Like millions of kids around the world, I had a dream that felt impossibly big and completely natural at the same time. I wanted to play in the NBA.
And I worked for it. Hard. Relentlessly. Training, practice, competition. Basketball taught me discipline before life ever did. It taught me how to fail, how to lose, how to get back up and try again. For years, my entire identity revolved around that dream.
When I was 16, something happened that felt like destiny calling.
My parents gave me the opportunity to travel to the United States to attend a summer basketball camp at IMG Academy in Florida. One of the best basketball camps in the country. For me, it felt unreal. Like stepping into the life I had been dreaming about for as long as I could remember.
Every day at IMG felt like living inside a dream. I trained all day. I played all day. Basketball filled nearly every waking hour. I went to sleep exhausted and woke up excited, ready to do it all over again. I remember thinking, this is it. This is where my dream becomes real.
Then came the conversation that changed everything.
One of the activities at the camp was a talk with a college and NBA scout. He sat us down and explained the path. The process. The reality. This was around 2002, long before international players had the opportunities they have today. Back then, the NBA was a nearly closed door for foreign players.
He spoke calmly. Objectively. In numbers.
He talked about probabilities. Percentages. The actual odds of an international player making it to the NBA. I don’t remember the exact number, but I remember how it felt when I heard it. The room didn’t move, but something inside me collapsed.
The number was tiny. Almost nonexistent.
That moment destroyed me.
It broke something pure. Something innocent. It shattered the dream of the child I had been for years. For the first time, fear entered the picture. Not fear of failure, but fear of trying for something that felt almost impossible.
When I went back home, I wasn’t the same kid. I kept playing. I still loved the game. I finished high school playing basketball and even played during the first months of college. But the fire was different. Doubt had taken a seat in my mind and it didn’t leave.
Despite having the full support of my parents, I made a decision that felt logical at the time but heavy in my chest. I chose not to pursue basketball professionally. I told myself it didn’t make sense to chase something with such low odds. I told myself I was being realistic. I told myself a lot of things.What I was really doing was letting odds decide my future.
So I walked away from my childhood dream and turned toward another passion. Technology. I studied software engineering. Life moved forward. New goals. New paths. The basketball chapter of my life felt closed.
Years passed.
I started companies. I failed. I learned. I built again. Eventually, without really planning it that way, my brother and I ended up building a company together. We were creating mobile apps for all kinds of businesses across Latin America, from small restaurants to big brands. One day, almost casually, we had an idea. What if we built our own game?
That idea turned into a mobile game called Apensar, known as Wordie in English.
What happened next still feels unreal.
Long nights, mistakes, pivots, and relentless work, the game took off. One million downloads. Then five. Then ten. Then numbers that felt impossible to process. We reached more than 40 million downloads worldwide. Top 10 most downloaded games in over 110 countries. Awards. Recognition. Things I had never imagined.
And then one day, in the middle of all of that, my brother sent me an article.
The title was blunt and brutal: “Your chances of making a successful mobile app are almost nil.”
But one line stopped me cold.
“You have a better chance of making the NBA than making your app viral.”
I froze.
I read it again.
And again.
According to the article, the odds of a programmer building an app that goes viral were so low that statistically, you had a better chance of making an NBA roster than seeing your app succeed at that level
In that moment, everything came crashing back. The six-year-old kid. The basketball. IMG Academy. The scout. The number that destroyed my dream. The decision I made out of fear.
And suddenly, I understood something that took me decades to realize.
I had walked away from one impossible dream because of the odds. And years later, without realizing it, I had chased another dream with the same level of impossibility. The difference was simple.
This time, I didn’t know the odds.
This time, I didn’t ask for permission. I didn’t listen to statistics. I didn’t calculate probabilities.
I just kept going.
Life had brought me full circle.
I didn’t make it to the NBA. But I reached something statistically just as unlikely. Not because I was smarter. Not because I was more talented. But because this time, I didn’t stop when things looked impossible.
And that’s the lesson I want to leave you with.
Sometimes, ignorance is a blessing.
When you start a journey, especially an entrepreneurial one, knowing too much about the odds can paralyze you. Statistics can scare you. Opinions can crush you. Probabilities can kill dreams before they ever begin.
The game only ends when you quit.