Pastner Proves How Easy it Is to Be a Prodigy

Jason King at Y! Sports has a profile of Memphis’ new, 31-year-old coach which basically lays out all the ways in which Josh Pastner is more impressive than you.
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↵He made his first recruiting trip for his AAU team, Houston Hoops, when he was 14 -- he successfully convinced high school freshman Stephen Jackson’s mother to allow her son to join the team. By age 16 he was completely in charge of Houston Hoops as a player, head coach and recruiter, among other responsibilities. (At 16, I was publishing a ska music magazine by myself, so yeah, birds of a feather, Pastner and I are.) Once in college at Arizona, he graduated in two and a half years without taking one summer course -- he completed 33 credits in his final semester. (I graduated in seven years with several summers worth of courses, so this is where we start to differ.)↵↵The list of overachievements go on, not the least of which is taking over for John Calipari at the winningest college basketball program over the past four years before his 32nd birthday. (Once accepting the job, he worked for 72 hours straight without sleeping.) So, how has he done it? It’s simple, and it has nothing to do with being some sort of gifted prodigy who is just naturally smarter than any of us. No, the answer is simply this:↵

↵↵⇥To this day Pastner has never taken one sip of alcohol, a puff of a cigarette or a hit of an illegal drug. He swears he’s never even had caffeine. ↵⇥↵⇥“I don’t even know what carbonation tastes like,” says Pastner, who also doesn’t curse. ↵⇥

↵↵See, the amount of hours he’s spent working instead of out partying like us adds up to a Non-Sinner Estimated Age of 54. Yeah, not so impressive any more, now is it? (Note: Yes, it is still quite impressive, actually.)↵