Not All Giants Are Tall

“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”

~ John Wooden

I wonder how often we stop short of following a path of happiness and success due to being… too short, too tall, not educated in a thing, or not having experience in another. How often do we disqualify ourselves because we don’t meet some conventional set of requirements? I mean, what if we started looking at life through the hopeful lens of what we can do instead of the prohibitive narrative of what we cannot? I wonder how different our lives would be.

In 1987, standing at an astonishing 7’ 7” tall (yikes!), Manute Bol was the tallest man to ever play in the National Basketball League. That year, his Washington Bullets picked up Tyrone Curtis “Muggsy” Bogues, a point guard out of Wake Forest University, with the 12th overall pick in the draft. The 12th pick! Muggsy went on to have a 14-year career, playing nine of those years with the Charlotte Hornets. He stands today as the Hornets’ career leader in minutes played (19,768), assists (5,557), steals (1,067), and turnovers (1,118). 14 record-setting years in the NBA is an accomplishment few others can boast. But what makes this accomplishment truly unique is that Mr. Bogues was just 5’ 3” tall (double yikes!), making him the shortest man to ever play in the NBA.

Muggsy once said, “I always tell people, I think my mom had me when I was 5-feet, 3-inches. I don’t remember ever growing.” He grew up in the projects of Baltimore playing pick-up games on makeshift basketball courts created by him and his friends using bottomless milk crates secured to fence posts. What’s more, his mother raised him alone while his father served time in prison. In other words, Muggsy had plenty of exit ramps on the highway of choosing a good life that he could have taken but didn’t.

Playing at 5’ 3” and 140 lbs., it was Muggsy’s speed and quickness that towered over his lack of size as a professional basketball player (Shaquille O’Neal was nearly two feet taller and nearly two hundred pounders heavier, by contrast). Kenny Anderson of the Nets once said, “He’s so quick to steal the ball that I don’t dribble with him around me. When Muggsy’s on me, I pass the ball.” Additionally, he was extraordinarily cool under pressure, had a natural instinct for where the ball was and where to pass it, and was a very accurate shooter (he shot 90% from the free throw line his last full season). Ty, as his mother called him, just never let what he couldn’t do (be taller) interfere with what he could do (succeed in the NBA).

You know, sometimes life happens for a reason. Perhaps the lesson is in turning “life happening” into something purposeful while discovering the reason. Perhaps you and I have the same chance to do something meaningful that Muggsy had at playing professional basketball, regardless of our apparent handicap. Muggsy Bogues was a giant among men twice his size in the NBA. He honed very specific skills to slay very real Goliaths for nearly a decade and a half. He proved that what he could do was actually greater than what he could not.

It’s in that spirit that I say today is a good day for the too short, too tall, too fat, too skinny, yet-to-be-developed, longing-to-learn-how-to, and not-quite-whatever-enough people – you know, all of us – to blow raspberries at all the reasons we can’t paint (like, because we’re color blind), become business moguls (though we’ve yet to successfully balance a checkbook), graduate college (while we’re poor as dirt), run a half marathon, (when we currently feel the need to set up base camp half way up the stairs while carrying laundry), or any number of other hopes and dreams because we’re too something and not enough of another.

Today is a good day to prove that what we can do is greater than what we cannot. Get started. Keep going. Dream big. Work hard.

Why? Because not all giants are tall.