You might be wondering what that has to do with basketball practice. Here is the connection. Our perimeter kids are on the short side and not great three point shooters. When we play, they are very reluctant to shoot from behind the arc. They don't perceive it to be worth the risk with a low payoff. So when we played today, I changed the rules. Every successful shot from behind the three point line would count as five points. You can guess what happened- the shots were flying! The kids shot a good number of threes and at close to a fifty % clip! (To give our post players an incentive as well, we counted each offensive rebound as a point!) But there was an unexpected development to our rule change. With the three pointers being worth five, the defensive players overplayed the potential shooters, leaving lanes to both cut back door and shot fake/drive. The risk versus reward sword cut both ways! As you can guess from my writing tonight, we had a good practice this AM and a good morning practice makes me a happy classroom teacher for the rest of the day!
You know, we'll have to go back to the traditional scoring system- it would be unrealistic to the kids' development if we didn't. But I had to do something to get them in the mindset that it's permissible to shoot the longer shot. I think they were surprised at what opened up when they at least tried. I can understand in an non-basketball sense. I'm an introvert and definitely not a risk taker. This characteristic infiltrates most segments of my life. Let me give you an example from my time as a kid. My mother, rest her soul, told me I always liked girls who already had boyfriends because I had a built-in excuse not to ask them out. Mom always know more than we give her credit for! She was very accurate in her assessment. There's another area of my existence in which I was no risk taker. I've always been a homebody. If you told me twenty years ago today, April 6, 1998, that I would begin traveling all over the world, I would never have believed you. But late in that spring of '98, I got a call from Steve Davidson with TORCH Missions in Nashville, informing me that someone had paid for me to go with his group to Honduras that July! (I still have no idea who the donor was.) The thought of leaving the US to talk about Jesus had never crossed my mind. That first trip to Honduras with Steve and Company led to ten more to Honduras and then to Haiti, China, and now Vietnam. And like the girls on my team had unexpected discoveries when they shot threes, I learned there would be a ripple effect for me to deal with. I learned there was a great big world to see and how little I knew about life outside our borders. I met face to face so many people whose language was strange to me and vice versa, people who both loved God and needed God, just like me. But first, I had to take the risk. More accurately, I had to be shoved out of the safe parameters of my world because I would not have taken what I perceived to be a risk without a push. Sometimes, you need that nudge to get over whatever is holding you back. This week, I gave our players five little nudges to get them out of their cozy basketball nest- and I think it's working. Time and accuracy will tell. I'll keep you posted!
Applicable quote of the day:
“I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot...and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why... I succeed.”
Michael Jordan
God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
www.hawleybooks.com
E-mail me at steve@hawleybooks.com
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