AFTER 190 games in the NBL between the Townsville Crocodiles, Sydney Spirit and Perth Wildcats, including the 2010 championship, Drew Williamson has committed himself to East Perth in the SBL.

He captained the Eagles to the 2014 championship and now he has sat down to share his journey in this week's SBL Player Column.

There is a bit of a different feeling at the club this year and it has been a bit of a learning curve because we have a lot of new faces on the team. Having a more athletic team than we have in the past has allowed us to reinvent the way East Perth plays and we're learning how to play with athletic bigs and wings. That might take a little while to get used to but by the time we gel we will be hard to beat.

To be honest, I again considered not playing on this year and I did think about that last year and the year before that as well. But what made me go around again was my wife Katie and she didn't want to have to put up with me on Saturday nights. But seriously, just knowing that when I hang up my boots from the SBL I will be done with basketball and I'm not ready to give up the game in that sense. I still have a lot of passion towards the sport and I have a lot of good friends at East Perth, but I know from previous experience once you stop playing you quickly lose touch with most of the guys. The camaraderie that we have and that I enjoy being part of is a big reason why I'm playing on.

Another big reason why I refuse to give up definitely is the way the last two years have gone. We had such a great season in 2014 obviously and ever since then we haven’t met our expectations. I don’t want to go out in a team near the bottom. I want to be part of a team again who can get back to contending for a title and I think this year Joe has done a very good job of recruiting and retaining, and getting us to play the way we needed to together to try and get us back to the top.

It will take a while for us to learn how to play with athletes to be honest. East Perth has been known probably as the most non-athletic team in the league, but suddenly with bringing in guys like Kevin Davis, Kevin Anthony, Ngor Manyang and Mason Bragg we have turned into maybe the most athletic team even though I bring that level down quite a lot. It is exciting to know what potential we have but it is a learning curve in how to play with guys who like to play above the hoop instead of the more structured game we've played in the past.

I originally started with East Perth when I was still at the Wildcats and Brett Nazzari was the chairman of East Perth and called me up to ask me to come down and play. I took up the offer and to be honest the reason I've kept going back is because of the community and family feel that East Perth not only promotes but follows through with. It's a great club to play for and everyone pulls their weight and I enjoy being part of it.

The stress level of playing in the SBL is nowhere near what the NBL was obviously, but it also no longer provides me with that pay cheque to pay the bills. When that stress is gone, it allows the passion to creep back in and the hobby that I've played for the last 25 years of my life has become enjoyable again. I don’t miss the NBL side of things at all but I know that if I stop playing at East Perth I would miss the club and basketball.

When I look back on my NBL career, I'm very proud of what I was able to accomplish even if I believe there were some things that were left unachieved. That could keep me up at night but I don’t let it. At the end of the day, not many people get to play close to the 200 games I played or win a championship and live in different parts of the world or Australia from playing sport. I'm extremely proud of what I did, the achievements I accomplished and the friends I made.

Life after professional basketball is different and I'm definitely less stressed these days than I was then. I have a lot of other distractions now as well. I got married last year, we have a baby girl on the way and to say my life is better or not, I would definitely say it is but overall it's just different for the most part.

The last 12 months has been a whirlwind in my personal life in a lot of ways but I wouldn’t change a thing. My wife and I were ready to have kids and we gave ourselves about two years before a baby, but after a couple of months we found out the good news. It has been the best 12 months of my life and our one-year anniversary is next week which we're excited for. It's also a great preview of what the next step in our lives are going to be like. We're both very excited about becoming parents.

A lot of my old Wildcats teammates are now fathers as well and It's great to see how Jesse and Steph Wagstaff's lives have changed with the addition of little Kenzie. It's exciting that we are having a little girl as well knowing that our families will become even closer for that fact.

Work life is going well also. I sell new homes so I'm working in residential construction and I love what I do, and I love helping people and interacting with people on the sales side of things. It's definitely very different to playing basketball in the fact that it's now a desk job with no sports tied in, but it's a change I was ready for and that I was excited about. I've pretty much been working at Smart Homes for Living for four and-a-half years now and have never looked back.