Allen Iverson once gave a press conference where he was questioned about skipping/missing practice. His response to the reporter was: (yeah I know its a long quote but bear with me here...its been a long morning)
"If Coach tells you that I missed practice, then that's that. I may have missed one practice this year but if somebody says he missed one practice of all the practices this year, then that's enough to get a whole lot started. I told Coach Brown that you don't have to give the people of Philadelphia a reason to think about trading me or anything like that. If you trade somebody, you trade them to make the team better...simple as that. I'm cool with that. I'm all about that. The people in Philadelphia deserve to have a winner. It's simple as that. It goes further than that ... If I can't practice, I can't practice. It is as simple as that. It ain't about that at all. It's easy to sum it up if you're just talking about practice. 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. Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it's my last but we're talking about practice man. How silly is that? ... Now I know that I'm supposed to lead by example and all that but I'm not shoving that aside like it don't mean anything. I know it's important, I honestly do but we're talking about practice. We're talking about practice man. We're talking about practice. We're talking about practice. We're not talking about the game. We're talking about practice. When you come to the arena, and you see me play, you've seen me play right, you've seen me give everything I've got, but we're talking about practice right now. ... Hey I hear you, it's funny to me too, hey it's strange to me too but we're talking about practice man, we're not even talking about the game, when it actually matters, we're talking about practice ... How the hell can I make my teammates better by practicing?"
I went to bed last night around 930pm...I was tired, at least I thought I was while sitting in front of the tv dozing off. I woke up at 209am hungry as could be and was unable to fall back asleep. Usually during a sleepless night (which is not often) I can go out to the oversized comfy couch, turn the tv on low and fall back asleep. Last night, well...no so much. I caught up on the DVR, watched the news, and watched Sportscenter. Being awake for 4 hours before the wife got up I had time to daydream and think about random things. I thought to myself, self...is this what life will be like with a newborn? Of course it is! So instead of complaining about being tired or whining about lack of sleep I am treating this like practice. Prep work for a child. I actually perform pretty well on 6 hours of sleep, heck in college I got through most nights on 3 or 4 for six straight years!
I have heard horror stories from friends about how the basically didn't sleep for 2 years straight with their first child. But I have also seen firsthand the glory stories of newborns that slept through the night very very early in their lives. (ie. my nephew Nicolas) Nicolas is the model child, he sleeps through ANYTHING, he listens, he behaves, and he is a really fun kid! Sure part of that is parenting and my brother and sister in law seem to have that down to a science these days with their second child Emerson. I hope that part of that is also genetic and that my child will inherit these highly desirable behaviors! But if he or she doesn't I promise to be there for them sacrificing my sleep so that they can get theirs.
I have a nice long 11 hour day ahead of me and my prescription for survival will be diet mt. dew and probably more coffee than the 2 cups I have already had this morning!
Wish me luck!
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