A View from a Pew: They Told Us to Learn the Game. What We Actually Learned Was Physics.

I’ve stood in more school cafeterias and auditoriums than I can count—career days at elementary schools, middle schools, high schools. The question is always the same: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And almost without fail, the answer from Black boys rises like a chorus: A professional basketball player. A football player.

Now parents, let’s be honest with ourselves and our children for a moment. There are 30 NBA teams. Fifteen players per team. That’s 450 jobs in the whole world. Each year, only 60 new names get called. Yes, it’s possible—but possibility and probability are not the same thing.

But here’s where the conversation usually stops. And that’s a mistake. Because while we’ve been telling our children to “learn the game,” what they’ve actually been learning—long before a textbook is opened or a formula is written on a chalkboard—is science. Real science. Living science. Physics in motion.

Every hour on the court is a classroom. Every shot is a calculation. Every pass is geometry and timing wrapped in instinct. And most of the time, we don’t even recognize how brilliant that is.

When a player rises and releases the ball with just the right touch, they are solving a physics problem in real time—gravity, velocity, angle, and spin all meeting in one smooth decision. No equations. No lectures. Just knowing.

That high, soft arc on a jump shot? That’s projectile motion—creating a parabola so the ball can fall gently through the rim. Players learn, without ever naming it, that a higher entry angle makes the basket more forgiving. They don’t call it optimization. They call it touch.

That seamless adjustment from a layup to a deep three? That’s force modulation. That’s kinematics. The brain instantly calculates distance and commands the legs, core, elbow, and wrist to deliver exactly the right amount of power. Miss it short? The body corrects. Too long? It recalibrates. Thousands of repetitions create a living database in the mind.

That soft backspin that makes the ball die on the rim instead of bouncing away? That’s energy transfer and rotational stability—learned through feel, not formulas.

And it doesn’t stop with the shot.

On a 94-by-50-foot court, players develop elite spatial intelligence. They understand spacing without measuring it. They read angles off the glass. They thread passes through traffic using peripheral vision many people never fully develop. They move through space with an awareness that borders on artistry.

This is proprioception—the body knowing where it is, how it’s moving, and how to adjust in midair. Jumping. Landing. Pivoting. Shooting. All of it strengthens the brain’s ability to connect vision, balance, and motion into split-second decisions.

What the world often calls “instinct,” What critics dismiss as “just athletic,” Is actually high-level intelligence in motion.

Black basketball players are engineers of movement. They are mathematicians of space. They are physicists of feel.

And the real tragedy isn’t that they aren’t smart. The tragedy is that they’ve been taught not to recognize how smart they already are. Because every time a young brother steps on the court and makes the game look effortless, he is testifying to a deeper truth:

Black excellence doesn’t always show up with a diploma. Sometimes it shows up with a basketball—and rewrites the laws of motion.

So maybe the conversation needs to shift. Maybe when we see that child who understands angles, timing, balance, force, and space—without ever being taught the language—we should see what God is really revealing.

It appears to me that careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are not a stretch at all. They are a natural progression.

They’ve already proven the intelligence is there. The court just happened to be the first classroom.