When I was a younger boy, probably an early teenager, one of the things that I liked to do, and even probably before then, was to go play basketball.
My older brothers played basketball a little bit, at least around our house, not any real competition sports or anything. And I used to love to play basketball. My friends did too. We played it at church. We played at school. But at our house, we got a basketball hoop. We didn’t use to have a garage. And when the garage was built, my older brothers got a backboard and a hoop, and they mounted it up on the gable end of the garage there, facing the driveway. So we then had a basketball court.
Well, this is before the days of the internet. And we did have TV. I think we had three or four channels that we could choose from. Okay. Maybe five. But you had to watch the commercials and you couldn’t Netflix it through. The Internet was no … It was an idea in the science fiction book, at the time. So it was a good thing because it kept you physically active. Right? So out shooting hoops is a lot better than sitting on a couch watching TV or in front of a computer or something like that.
So I would go out and I would play. And as I would play, I would imagine myself being a lot better than I was. And I’d practice dribbling. And I would imagine myself being better than I was. I would imagine talent scouts driving by on the road behind us and stopping at the amazement of how good. That good. “That kid is good.” Well, that was all in my mind. Right? It help me practice.
I got to a point where I was trying out for the team. It was the precursor team. It was the junior high school team. It was the community team. It was kind of the feeder team that would have gone on to the high school basketball team. If you did well in there, you had much better chance of trying out for the high school team and getting on and so forth. So I went. There was a lot of boys. Basketball was pretty popular and I’m trying out just like everybody else. And they made some cuts and I was good. And then I remember at this one place where, the coach who was … Coaches often are fairly verbal. But he was running drills with those of us that were there that were trying out to make the team. And he would tell us what to do. “You come to the top of the key and shoot it.” And I happened to be standing next to him. He said, “Like this.” And he handed me the ball. He said, “Shoot it.”
And I took the ball and I shot it. I was so glad it went right through. I mean, it was a nothing but net shot, which is not that common. But it felt really good because all eyes are on me, the coach is on me, and so forth. And he made a comment under his breath, “Oh yeah. You knew how to do that.” It was just reinforcing to me. So it was really neat for me and I still remember it.
But after that, at the end of that practice, he said, “We’re still going to have to make some cuts because we’ve got more boys than we can have on the team.” So he was just trying to prepare us for that. And he and the other coaches were going to go talk and decide. And hopefully by virtue of the fact that I had made that shot in front of everybody and with him, the head coach, I had a good chance of still making it. But guess what I did. I went up to him after. He dismissed us all when we were gathering our stuff. And I just walked up to him after. And I said, “Why don’t you cut me?”
And he said, “Why? Are you sure about that?” And I said, “Yeah.” I think I used the excuse that it took money to be on a team. You actually had to pay to be on the team to buy a uniform and some other costs like that. I don’t know what it was. But I used that as an excuse, but that’s what it really was. It was an excuse. I really wasn’t confident enough to think that I could really handle it with what I perceived everyone else on that team would be better than me and I would slow them down. I just wasn’t confident enough to go forward.
Now, if I could rewind it, I wish I hadn’t done that. But if we look at our lives, how many times do we go up to the coach and say, “Cut me. Why don’t you cut me?” And give some kind of an excuse, some kind of a reason. It might be with your finances. It might be in your relationships. It might be with your abilities. It might be in your work. Because you don’t have the confidence that you feel like you can succeed in that. And so we don’t try. Well, at least try. Let someone else cut you. Don’t cut yourself. If that’s the message of this video, then that’s it. But let someone else cut you. Don’t cut yourself. And by the way, do the best you can so that you don’t get cut.