Untapped Potential and The Tragedy of Wasted Talent

It's the 4th quarter of the NBA championship and your team is down by 1. Your coach calls a timeout and draws up a play, and he wants you to take the last shot. As your face drips with sweat, your hands are damp and you get butterflies in your stomach. You've been living for this moment since you were drafted so many years ago. No, you've been living for this moment ever since you could dribble, ever since you started to play pick up in the park. The coach breaks the huddle, you look at the clock, and there are seconds left, but you know you’re ready, your teammates know you’re ready. You receive an inbound pass, and become locked in that this is your moment. You dribble down the lane, look to pass, then cross over the defender for the game winning shot. As the clock begins to wind down, the ball swishes through the net and your world champions! Confetti rains and you look to the sky to thank God for this opportunity. As a sideline reporter asks how you feel, you begin to start to talk, but suddenly you hear rattling. At first it is faint, but the noise begins to pick up in sound, it's deafening. Over the noise of celebration you hear, "Time to wake up!" repeated for all to hear. You open your eyes and wake up, realizing its another dream and the correctional officer has woken you up once again, rattling the bars of your cell with his baton.

You rub the crust out of your eyes, and sit in your cold cell knowing the day that awaits you. It's circa 2003, and you're in a California state correctional facility. Your name is Demetrius, Demetrius Mitchell. Some know you as Waliy Abdur Rahim from your studies in Islam while confined away, but most know you as "Hook". Some may not believe you, but that dream that you had woken up from could have been very real. You were just as good as the NBA players of your day. Not because you said so, but because they said so. While they went to the league, your dream slowly slipped away and somehow you ended up in prison, never to live out the dream you were capable of actually achieving.

While many are obsessed with the Michael Jordans, Mike Tysons, Babe Ruths, etc., I'm always gravitated towards the cases of potential that never made it. The ones whose ability had no ceiling. It’s a foregone conclusion that the best athletes are the ones you see on a daily basis on ESPN. The best minds are the ones whose achievements have etched their name in history, where your obligated to recognize their ability. In my opinion, it’s hard to say the best has been seen because for every Lebron James or Elon Musk, there are probably hundreds that never lived up to their full potential whether they wanted to or not.

For Hook Mitchell, being an NBA superstar was not just a pipedream, but a very real possibility. Many of his peers, including former superstars Gary Payton and Jason Kidd, raved about Hook’s ability on the basketball court and how good he was. Incredible ball handling, great shooting and a vertical leap that was almost inhuman. Jumping over cars, three sixty dunks over motorcycles, touching the top of the backboard, the stories presented about his athletic ability seemed like mythology, but for those who were there it was the truth. At only 5'9, his ability to leap through the air stunned me and originally drew me to research him a little more when I was only in middle school. I wanted to dunk like any other kid and his feats of greatness shocked me as something that I wanted to do. As I watched his documentary, Hooked: The Legend of Demetrius 'Hook' Mitchell, it wasn't the wonders of his jumping or dunking that I took away, but instead the tragedy of wasted talent.

Despite being head and shoulders above his peers, Hook was plagued by personal issues that prevented him from being as truly great as he was. As a kid from West Oakland in the 70's and 80's, being raised by his grandmother along with his siblings and other cousins, Hook was not given an ideal starting point. His grandmother was very busy working to provide for Hook and other members of his family, so while she was out, Hook roamed the streets and became exposed to the nature of his surroundings. At a very early age, he began experimenting with drugs and eventually worked his way up to crack and heroine. He hung out with the wrong crowd and the need for drugs became extreme. When his peers had long established careers in the NBA, Hook was still on the streets and eventually ended up in prison for robbing a local BlockBuster. The whole time watching this documentary, you're frustrated at the fact that Hook never became what he truly was set to do. He had all the talent in the world, but was succumbed by an implosive self-destructive path. As much as this is a story of socioeconomic circumstances and the bad luck of not being in the right place, at the right time, with the right resources, I look at how you or I can look to this story about never taking whatever talent we have for granted.

We go day to day thinking that we do not have any special ability or talent, but I argue that this is on a never-ending spectrum where we are relatively more or less talented than the next person. This could be in anything and sometimes we are not aware of the true potential we possess. We put on the brakes and fail to nurture the seed of ability that we have. Like Hook, we are often passed by our peers who may not have been talented, but were more consistent in the process. We have to be grateful in some way for what we have, and be humble in wanting to improve. Be your biggest critic even when others praise you. Ground yourself and understand that with the ability that you have, someone else could've made something out of it. Think of talent as food that you don't want to go to waste. There's someone starving to have what you have, so don't take it for granted.

The next time you watch TV or read a book, think about this a little deeper. The actor that you're in awe of their abilities is not the best actor. The all star running back you see hurdling into the end zone for a touchdown is not the best running back. The best minds that you can't even comprehend are not even the greatest thinkers. Somewhere there is someone smarter, someone faster, someone better. Someone who did not get their shot because their talent was wasted, whether it was by their own accord or not. There was someone who will not get the chance the be in the position that you are in and can't because they do not have your ability. Rest on this next time you want to ease up in something because you think 'good' is enough. Because you think "I can get away with it so I won't work hard". I'm sure others thought the same, but eventually they were lapped and passed because they couldn't see their greatness for what it truly could have been, they thought that their "good enough work" could fix everything. In many ways this is the tragedy of wasted talent. To imagine what could have been done is to daydream of a fairytale ending that we want and imagine it to have been real, but similar to the illustration I painted at the beginning, all anyone can hope for past their peak is to dream, but eventually you have to wake up.