Basketball and Character
Huh…that’s an odd topic for me to write about.
The only basketball I care about is flat. I kick the squishy sphere around the yard and Henrietta straddles the orange rubber with black lines.
I can almost hear her, “Haha! Mine—You can’t have it!”
What she really wants is for me to “steal” the ball and kick it again. A game.
This morning I read a story about Virginia coach Tony Bennett who turned down a raise, requesting that the money instead be used for staff raises and program improvements. The university’s president said the coach’s decision tells you everything you need to know about him as a leader and as a human being.
The only reason I clicked over to the article from The Daily Skimm is that the name Bennett was familiar.
Ahhh—of course.
Tony’s father is Dick Bennett—a legendary basketball coach in Wisconsin. He played at Ripon, went on to coach a number of high school and college teams, and took UW-Madison to the Final Four.
My husband always talks about him with a tone of respect.
I never really cared about basketball, but the man’s character caught my attention and left an impression.
It appears Dick’s apple Tony fell close to the tree.
Are these the types of stories we should be discussing at our dinner tables?
Does character driven behavior lead to more of it?