Jaylen Hands drove for what looked like an easy breakaway basket … until the degree of difficulty rose unexpectedly. Shifting the ball between his legs, he tried to go behind his head for a dunk.
He missed. And he heard about it moments later when his high school coach yanked him from the taut game.
“I told him, ‘Hey, man, I’m not here to watch your highlights, we’re here to win games,’ ” Zack Jones, Hands’ coach at Balboa City High in San Diego, said with a chuckle. “He just looked at me like, ‘But, I … I …’ ”
No excuses were necessary once Hands reentered the game.