It doesn’t serve any purpose to name him, but here’s what happened. His team was playing another team from the East Coast Conference and with only a few second left on the clock, his team was ahead by three points.  When the other team was about to put the ball into play, instead of  calling time-out and instructing his players to immediately foul the player the ball is thrown to, he allowed the opposing team to bring the ball down the court and take a 3-point desperation shot with only 1.6 seconds remaining. The shooter was completely off balance but somehow, the ball managed to go in sending the game into overtime and his team eventually lost. “We had our chances” the coach commented after the game and proceeded to make a few flimsy excuses.

What he should have said was, “You know what? I messed up and allowed the other team to take that shot instead of having one of our players foul them. It was my fault and I apologize.” But he didn’t. Which tells you a lot about the coach. It’s possible he is keeping some feelings and emotions bottled-up, resulting in his having a low sense of self-worth (self-esteem) and one of the characteristics of someone who does not feel good about themselves is: they fear the consequences of their honesty.  It takes a confident coach to admit he or she made a mistake.  People are very forgiving if you admit you made an error, but he didn’t do it. Or couldn’t do it. Of course, if he wasn’t even aware that he made an error in judgment, that’s even worse.