We Talkin' Bout...Practice!

"Practice Makes Perfect"

Everyone can remember Allen Iverson's infamous rant; "We're sitting here, and I'm supposed to be the franchise player, and we're talking about practice. I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, but we're talking about practice".  What Iverson and so many others like him never realize is that practice is more important than the game itself.

The game's outcome is only a bi-product of what is accomplished during practice. Whatever we spend most of our time doing, we become experts at it. I went to see Les Brown, the motivational speaker, some years ago and he said something that I'll never forget. He said, "Where ever you end up twenty years from now, you've made an appointment to be there twenty years ago".  So practice is of paramount importance. The question is, what are you practicing? I'm often disappointed when I hear of our young people practicing bad behavior because it's practice for the penitentiary.

 Ohio State football recruit Chris Carter was arrested Tuesday on a sexual imposition allegation after a complaint that he fondled a girl while pretending to measure her for an ROTC uniform. Police are investigating whether he might have fondled as many as eight girls. Carter's attorney refutes the charges and said his client is innocent. Carter, a 6-foot-4, 325-pound offensive senior lineman at John F. Kennedy High School in Cleveland, was expected to sign with the Buckeyes on Wednesday, the first day recruits were able to sign Division I letters of intent to play football. Instead, he spent Tuesday night in jail. There are several examples of young folks practicing the wrong types of behavior, however,  I chose Chris because he was the most recent and visible.

Remember, "We're sitting here talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, but we're talking about practice". There are so many people that never make it to the game because of what they are practicing.

How many times do you see our young men walking up and down the streets with their pants half way to the ground looking and acting like thugs? How often do you see children getting tattoos in places that aren't hidden, like on their hands and necks that will inhibit their ability to get a job? How often do we see little girls half dressed well beyond their years and we just turn our heads? When we see this behavior, we're talking about practice! Aristotle once said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit". So the question is, "What will we repeatedly do"? If we repeatedly act like idiots, we will soon become full fledged idiots!

Jay Graves
 Twitter: @jaygravesreport
Information from the Associated Press was used in this article.