Practice doesn’t always mean perfection

Practice doesn’t always mean perfection

My dad bought me a 99 cent basketball

from a bin at the grocery store when I

was eleven years old. I wore that ball out that summer

on the basketball court behind the public school

that I was to attend that fall after having spent

grades one through five at a Catholic school.

The ball wasn’t a real basketball;

I soon realized that plastic is not what

all the other kids were playing with.

Eventually, I got a real basketball and

got to play on a team of eleven and twelve

year old kids. We won the league championship

my first year on the team, and came in second

the next year. I was a starter on the runner up

team, the leading scorer. To get to that point

I had spent umpteen hours shooting a basketball

through a hoop. I even talked my dad into putting

up a hoop in our driveway, something that he later

said he came to regret because I used it so frequently

and the noise of the ball on the concrete and the noise

of the ball hitting the backboard ruined the tranquility

that he was seeking at that time in his life. I played

basketball through my senior year in high school.

I was too greedy of a player to really be of any value

to anyone by that time. I wanted the ball every time.

I wanted to score the most points. When I was on

the results were good, but when I was off it was ridiculous

how many shots I took and missed. Practice doesn’t

always mean perfection.