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- Frequent travel can be challenging for NBA players, especially when they have families back home.
- To help players, the Boston Celtics organization offers mental-health resources, Al Horford told BI.
- A mental-health specialist travels with the team, providing wellness support on the road.
- This article is part of "Business Travel Playbook," a series about making the most of work travel.
On a chilly November morning in Boston, Al Horford sits in his car, waiting to pick his kids up from school.
It's an endearing, stark contrast to the competitive milieu the public is used to seeing him in. Two days prior, the 37-year-old Celtics center was in Memphis, Tennessee, taking on the Grizzlies. In 24 hours, his team will be back on their home court at TD Garden before flying to Orlando for another game.
But for now, Horford has swapped his green and white jersey for a casual orange hoodie and brown beanie as he awaits his kids' arrival.
"When I'm at home, I want to be as present as I can and as involved as I can," he told Business Insider.
Horford said having a travel-heavy work schedule while caring for his family is challenging. He leans on his wife, Amelia Vega, to help him navigate everything as they raise their five children: Ean, 8, Alía, 7, Ava, 5, Nova, 2, and Mila, 1.
"She does a really amazing job holding our family together," he said.
On top of that, Horford feels a responsibility to his parents — the retired NBA player Tito Horford and the sports journalist Arelis Reynoso — to ensure that they're cared for.
FaceTiming his family or even using an app to check in on everyone through a home-security system gives him some sense of ease, said Horford, who has partnered with the home-security company SimpliSafe.
"With my life and the way that I travel, it's something that is constantly on my mind — making sure that they're taken care of, that they're doing well, that they're in a good place," he added.
How the Celtics organization supports players' mental health
This is a complicated, shared experience among frequent business travelers. But organizations can do their part to alleviate the mental toll of being away from loved ones.
To help players, coaches, and other staff members manage their concerns about constant travel — among other stressors that come with their jobs — the Celtics organization hired Candice Williams in 2022 as its director of mind health and wellness. Williams, who earned a doctorate in philosophy for counselor education and supervision, according to her LinkedIn, travels with the team to help everyone stay well.
Williams told BI that her role as an on-site mental-health specialist is similar to that of a physical-strength coach, except she's "helping train the body from the neck up," rather than the neck down.
"I'm the person that they can reach out to and talk to about various topics that may be impacting their performance," she said, "or things that help them be better human beings outside of their sport — better fathers, better businessmen — and help them cultivate identities separate from being professional athletes."
Her strategies include guided meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, breathing techniques, tactics for controlling performance anxiety, and visualization exercises, which help focus the mind on desired outcomes. She's also brought in mental-health consultants to teach staff self-care skills to achieve work-life balance.
Williams sometimes asks the Celtics staff whether the extensive traveling gets any easier. The common answer, she said, is that it continues to be a challenge, especially when they have a family.
She's implemented a simple but effective coping activity for players and staff: sending loved ones postcards — with handwritten notes — from different cities during every team road trip.
"It may seem like a very small thing to do, but there's meaning behind it," Williams said. "We have a group of players as well as coaches and staff that really look forward to that, saying, 'Oh, I have to get my postcards, and I have to write my note for the people in my family.'"
During a particularly long trip away from Boston last season, Williams had the family members of players and staff send postcards to the team.
"Those reminders anchor them outside the busyness of traveling from city to city," she said.
While Williams has been with the Celtics for just over a year, her impact is appreciable, Horford told BI.
"She's unbelievable," he said. "She's doing a good job keeping up with us and giving us any tips or anything that we need at any given moment."
He added that the league had been taking more intentional steps within the past few years to foster better mental health for players and staff — a much-needed initiative for life on the road.
The NBA's increased focus on mental health
Kensa Gunter, the NBA's director of mind health since 2020, is helping lead this charge across the NBA's 30 teams.
Gunter, a licensed clinical psychologist, told BI she's the point person for each team's designated mental-health professionals. Not every team has a full-time mental-health specialist like the Celtics do, but all must have available to players one to two mental-wellness experts who are licensed in their fields and based in the teams' home cities, Gunter said.
Kensa Gunter
The certified mental-performance consultant said she has served as a lead for the NBA's Mind Health program and its wellness initiatives to "ensure that we're providing guidance to teams, creating educational and clinical resources that are helpful, and helping promote culture change."
Gunter said that in 2015, the NBA's efforts to provide mental-health support focused on crisis assistance and referrals to mental-health-related services and information.
Those efforts evolved into the Mind Health program, which launched in 2018 and became an even more crucial resource in 2020, when the pandemic hit and social unrest swelled, Gunter added.
Four years later, she continues to help team organizations prioritize mental wellness.
"How do you help someone maintain their mental health while they're doing so much traveling and are away from their families?" she said. "If your mental-health resource is with you on the road, then you have a really excellent, in-the-moment resource available should someone need it."
Strategies for supporting mental wellness during business travel
Companies that want to bolster mental-health services for frequent business travelers can take a page out of the NBA's book and hire an itinerant wellness specialist. For the most effective influence, organizational investment and purpose are key, Gunter said.
"The things that are really helpful are how the organization invests in these resources and then how they position this person to truly be an active resource in this space," she said.
The three guiding principles driving the NBA's Mind Health program, Gunter said, call for humanizing mental health to focus on people holistically rather than addressing only signs and symptoms, elevating performance to help players and staff achieve personal and professional goals, and honoring their lived experiences by acknowledging the diversity within the NBA community and tailoring mental-health support to their unique needs.
Williams added that a mental-health consultant at an organization should also be able to build trust with employees, especially if they travel with them.
"For me, that could mean eating with them, connecting with them, having regular conversations, and, when necessary and appropriate, providing them with some nuggets about how to continue connecting with their families while they're on the road," she said.
Helping employees who travel regularly "adopt a mindset of growth" is also beneficial, Williams added.
"When travel is excessive, it is difficult, but it's not necessarily impossible when it comes to creating a self-care routine and managing your mental health," she said. "Being where your feet are in the moment and having a sense of awareness is important — those are just principles that we currently operate in that I think have been helpful not only to our players but to our staff."