Egos, Bricks, and Push-Ups
I was shooting baskets outside our house Sunday afternoon when a kid who was maybe 12 came up and asked if he could join me. I said sure, and he started shooting around with me.
Well it wasn’t long and I could tell he was more than a bit cocky. He kept saying, “Brick!” every time I shot a basket - trying to make me miss. If you don’t know me, there’s nothing that grates on me more than an ego with nothing to back it up. (Probably because I have an ego and can’t back it up, but that’s a topic for another day!)
The kid was starting to irritate me, so I asked him if he thought he could make 10 shots in a row from right in front of the basket. Of course he was sure he could do it. So I asked him, “If you miss, will you do 10 push-ups? I’ll do them if I miss.”
“Oh yeah. I do push-ups for football all the time.”
He missed the first shot.
I said, “Alright, you get one miss,” and handed him the ball to try again. He made two in a row, then missed again. To my surprise, he dropped and started doing his push-ups. I had expected him to try to negotiate his way out of them, but he pumped out 10 push-ups.
I took the ball and promptly sank my 10 shots. We continued the drill from a couple of other spots until I could tell he couldn’t do any more push-ups. I had to do a couple of push-ups at one point as I missed from a corner spot, and I think that probably made him feel better.
In the end, I could see that even though the kid was a bit cocky, he at least wasn’t afraid of a challenge, or unwilling to work hard. That impressed me, and left me a little less irked by his original attitude. I’m not sure I’d have the guts to go up to a college kid when I was 12 and ask, “Can I shoot hoops with you?”