He came in quiet. Twelve years old, head down, the kind of quiet that tells you something happened. His dad had said he'd been off at practice — missing shots he usually makes, getting in his own head.

We didn't touch a ball for the first ten minutes. We just talked. I asked him what he said to himself when he missed. He thought about it. Then he said, "Sorry."

I told him: the best shooters in the world miss. Curry misses. Durant misses. They don't apologize — they reset. A missed shot isn't a failure. It's information. Your body is telling you something. Listen to it, adjust, and go again.

By the end of that session, he was laughing after misses. Not because it didn't matter — but because he understood that the miss was part of the process, not the end of it. That's the shift. That's what we're building here.

"Coach Dave was more than a basketball coach — he was a steady hand through one of the most turbulent times in my son's life. He didn't just get better at basketball. He got better at being a person."

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