Magic Shoes

• James Egan, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2016

The year is 2020, and after being picked as the number 1 draft pick in the 2016 NBA Draft, Ben Simmons has just gone on to win the NBA MVP while playing for Philadelphia and gold for Australia at the Olympics in Tokyo. But there is a lot more to Ben than meets the eye, he has a big secret that only one other person in the world knows about. He hopes it will never come out. This story is about that secret.
We now go back to 2016 and Ben Simmons is back home in Australia and out shopping with his friends at Doncaster. Also out shopping that day is an 11-year-old boy named Zach and his mum. It hasn’t been a very good day for Zach as he was just cut at tryouts for basketball. He is down in the dumps so his Mum had taken him out to cheer him up.
Zach and his Mum walk into Footlocker and his Mum says to Zach, “is that Ben Simmons?”. Zach says “yeah right Mum” thinking she was just joking around, but then he looks over and it really is Ben Simmons. Suddenly Ben comes across and says “are you okay, you look a bit sad?” Zach says “Hi Ben, I just got cut at tryouts for rep basketball, I’m not sure I’ll ever play again”. Ben says “don’t be sad, I was cut from a team once but I will tell you how I got my confidence back and continued to play. When I was twelve, I also didn’t get picked in a team but was then given these magical shoes that whenever I wore I would play great. I was going to donate these shoes to Footlocker today but you can have them instead.”
Zach accepts the shoes. Ben says “make sure you don’t tell anyone that they are magical, as that could ruin my career”.
Two weeks later, Zach wears Ben’s magical shoes and gets into the in the grand final for his domestic team, scoring 30 points and getting 10 assists. He then tries-out for his school team and gets in and did so well in the first few games that the year 12 team ask him to play in their team. After winning the national championships with the year 12 team, Zach gets scouted by the NBA and gets picked by Philadelphia, Ben Simmons team. The shoes were so much better than he ever thought!
Zach flies to the US and meets with Ben at the airport before their first game. He says to Ben “those magical shoes were awesome”. Ben says to Zach “I need to tell you something Zach, the shoes were not magical at all, I just wanted you to believe that you can do anything”.
Ben and Zach then became a dynamic duo in the NBA and Zach also was a member of the team that won gold for Australia at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.