Mr. Plush

Competing in the weight room 💪🏻 huge shoutout to Coach Menn ⁦@PRINCIPAL_WMS⁩

MICHAEL JORDAN WORK ETHIC “Every day in practice was like that to me. It was a competition. So, when the game comes, there’s nothing that I haven’t already practiced. It’s a routine. Whatever happens in the game now, okay I’ve done that before.”

Stephen Curry called it, “The most frustrating summer for me.” Stephen Curry will be remembered as one of the greatest shooters in NBA history. But that might not have happened if he hadn’t made a drastic change at age 16. When he was growing up, his shot wasn’t the pure-looking beauty it is today. And at 16, his father made him change his shot. Stephen Curry’s shot change would define his legacy: During Curry’s sophomore year, he shot the ball from his hip which made it too easy to block and wouldn’t be sustainable as he played against bigger, stronger players. So after his sophomore year, his father Dell Curry forced his son to make the risky change of changing his jump shot. Steph would now shoot his jumper by bringing the ball over his head. Steph Curry called it, “The most frustrating summer for me.” He said, “I really couldn’t shoot outside the paint for the first three weeks.” He would show up to camps and games during the summer and his most valuable skill had been taken away from him. His brother Seth Curry said that he would see Steph crying because it was so difficult. His father Dell Curry said, “He took hundreds of shots every day on the court outside...he missed so often that he began to hate shooting. It was a brutal summer that made him miserable. He almost quit basketball altogether.” It took him about 90 days, but he finally started to get the hang of his new shot. His muscles started to form in his arms and he finally pushed through. Now he is one of the best shooters of all-time, shooting a 42.8 3-pt percentage in his career and a 47.5 FG percentage. Takeaway 1: You don’t see the work that someone goes through to get where they are, you just see the end result. We see Stephen Curry making shots today, but we didn’t see the pain that he had to go through in the driveway. We didn’t see his pain of not being able to shoot outside 3 feet. Success is often created out of doing the work when no one is watching. It reminds me of Bo Jackson who became the first baseball player to play with an artificial hip. Once he had his hip replacement surgery, he went through tough training to get back to baseball. For most people in the early 1990s, they would be glad to just walk, but Bo worked in the training room for months to get back to playing baseball. Takeaway 2: As one of the best shooters of his age, Curry could have refused to change his shot and played the way he was playing. Instead, Curry adapted and adopted a new shot that he had to get used to. Nick Saban has talked about how he had to change his offensive philosophy to the spread to keep up with where NCAA football was headed. In 2012, he was complaining about it saying, “I just think there’s got to be some sense of fairness in terms of asking is this what we want football to be?” After making the change to his offense, Saban was quoted saying, “We were struggling with pace of play, we were struggling with RPOs, we were struggling with sort of this new age of football. That’s when we started to figure out, hey, if you can’t beat them, you got to join them.” To get where you want to go, you have to be self-aware and understand what it takes to get there. - - - "A lot of people notice when you succeed, but they don't see what it takes to get there." — Dawn Staley Follow @coachajkings for more content like this!

Congratulations Seniors on your special night! Class of 2023 South Rebels