And at Sky, NBA stars squeeze in their final workouts with basketball’s offseason MVP: Brickley, a man whose roller-coaster, almost Forrest Gumpian journey is inked onto his skin.Īccording to the Trail Blazers’ C.J. These guys look at me as someone who can help them on a day-to-day, help them with basketball, help them with. I don’t feel like I have competition because I don’t think I’m a trainer. “There’s a million trainers that have NBA guys,” he said. But according to him, he’s not a basketball trainer, he’s a basketball influencer.

And, yes, Brickley works sometimes in this way with some of the most talented household names in America. Throughout the summer, these athletes learned together and competed against each other, often with more intensity than in an actual NBA All-Star Game - and they went viral in the process.Ī trainer is a person who runs athletes through drills. It’s one of the newest and most chic addresses in midtown.īrickley’s workplace is in Sky’s gym, Life Time Athletic, a facility he placed on the basketball map this summer via Instagram clips that feature a nauseating number of NBA players, including some of the league’s brightest names: Carmelo Anthony, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant, James Harden, Chris Paul and LeBron James. Lamborghinis, Bentleys and Mercedes-Benzes populate its kiss-and-ride entrance. Home is quite literally in the Sky: a 71-story luxury apartment complex pretty much at the corner of West 42nd Street and the Hudson River in Manhattan. on a September Tuesday, and Chris Brickley is coming home - to go to work.

Struggle session brick by brick