"Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall."

— Confucius


Albert Einstein never spoke until he was 4 years old — and didn't read a word for another three years. One teacher pronounced him "mentally slow, unsociable and adrift in foolish dreams."

Walt Disney got canned from his newspaper gig by an editor who insisted "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas."

You can't help but root for guys like that who don't quit. Guys like Mark King.

School peers insisted the slight white guy on the wrong side of 6-foot-tall — who never even played high-school basketball — was nuts if he thought he would ever play in the National Basketball Association.

Unfortunately, the closest King has come to NBA hardwood are the floor seats he occasionally receives as freebies to an Orlando Magic game.

So far, that is.

See, the 34-year-old Orlando man hasn't mothballed his dream. Can't. Basketball drives him. Always has.

Growing up in Inkster, Mich., King idolized "Pistol" Pete Maravich and the Detroit Pistons' diminutive dynamo Isiah Thomas.

His dad couldn't afford a backboard but tacked a hoop on a garage wall. King shot relentlessly — even shoveling snow from the driveway to clear a path to the basket and his dream: following in his heroes' footsteps. A dream King wasn't shy about sharing.

Once in high school, a student, baiting him, invited King to share his dream with the class.

"I want to play in the NBA," he said, matter-of-factly.

The howling was deafening.

Getting cut five times from his junior- and senior-high basketball teams didn't help King's case.

He graduated in 1995 and moved to Kentucky. While playing a pickup game, he was encouraged to try out at Pikeville College.

By that time, King had thought about hanging up his high-tops. But those thoughts were crowded out one day when Psalm 37:4 randomly crossed his mind:

Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

To King, everything now made sense: God could use his passion for good. And what better place to resurrect his dream than in Kentucky, where college basketball is almost religion.