10 Days of Humiliation When the Person Should Have Stayed in Bed

Humiliation is one of the most powerful human emotions. We never forget it when it happens to us, and when channeled effectively, it can help us to become the best versions of ourselves. However, humiliation is an extremely uncomfortable experience; we don’t like it when it happens to us, and we certainly don’t like to see it happen to people we care about.

The look on a person’s face when they’re embarrassed is one that we all recognize well. What if you’re an elite golfer who completely misses a shot on national television? Or imagine one of the greatest basketball players of all time immortalizing you in the most unflattering way possible.

This list is all about humiliation: how we deal with it, and how we hopefully bounce back while learning from it. All of us have had moments so humbling that we wished we’d just stayed in bed that day. In this list, we’re going to learn how other people dealt with this uncomfortable emotion in real time.

Related: 10 Technology Shifts That Are Making People Uneasy

10 Joe “Iso Joe” Johnson Takes Basketball Hall-of-Famer Paul Pierce to School

In professional basketball, there is a term to describe one of the most disrespectful plays that one player can execute on another: breaking his or her ankles. In layman’s terms, this means that the offensive player changes direction so rapidly that the defensive player doesn’t have time to keep up. Usually, the defensive player slips or falls, adding to the comedic effect of the humiliating play. In 2012, the now-retired professional basketball player Joe “Iso Joe” Johnson executed such a vicious move on NBA legend Paul Pierce.

On Nov. 28, 2012, Joe Johnson successfully pulled off a play on Paul Pierce that had all of the ingredients of a great ankle-breaking session: incredibly rapid dribbling skills with the ball held very low to the ground, a rapid change of direction that caused Paul Pierce to fall down, and then a flawless execution of actually hitting the shot. After making the basket, Johnson simply smiled as he switched over to defensive mode, knowing that he had just embarrassed one of the greatest players to ever play the game of basketball professionally.

In 2019, Tracy McGrady, another retired NBA legend, lovingly took Paul Pierce down memory lane on their ESPN sports show. In a segment called “The Greatest Ankle Breakers of All Time,” Paul Pierce was forced to watch and relive a different 2012 encounter where he had his ankles broken by NBA player Jameer Nelson. To his credit, Pierce laughed, smiled, and took the loving ribbing by his friends in stride.^[1]

9 Whiplash Film’s Band Director Humiliates Out-of-Tune Musician

As a musician myself, this item on the list really resonated with me. No musician likes to have their musicianship, or lack thereof, called out publicly. The 2014 movie Whiplash has an incredibly emotional scene where a band director, played by actor J.K. Simmons, embarrasses a trombone player in the band in front of all of his colleagues. You’ll immediately recognize the band director actor as the same man who played J. Jonah Jameson in the three Sam Raimi Spider-Man films.

As the scene progresses, the band director first says that someone in the band is playing out of tune. He then asks the person to voluntarily identify themselves. When no one confesses, he slowly starts to narrow down who the offender is, until he pinpoints one person. He then proceeds to humiliate and dismiss the person in the most soul-crushing way.

I’m thankful that I’ve never experienced this in a musical setting in my life, but I could feel the pain as I watched the beautifully acted scene. The scene quite obviously resonated with a lot of people: the video has amassed millions of views on YouTube.^[2]

8 Chess Prodigy Shows Billionaire Businessman Who’s Boss

Magnus Carlsen is indubitably one of the greatest chess players of all time. He is a five-time World Chess Champion, and he has held the number 1 position in the International Chess Federation (FIDE) rankings since 2011. In a similar success story, Bill Gates is one of the richest and most successful businessmen of all time with a net worth of over $115 billion (USD) as of mid-2025.

The chess encounter between the two men was not truly a case of humiliation: it was just friendly banter and competition. Bill Gates surely had no expectation of competing in any meaningful way by playing chess against one of the greatest chess minds of all time. I give him credit for the willingness to try… publicly. The results were exactly as you would have expected.

When Magnus Carlsen goes up against a chess opponent, he goes straight for the jugular. He’s not only one of the greatest chess players of all time, but he’s also one of the greatest speed chess players of all time. This means that his strategic mind works very rapidly, and he can visualize many possibilities and plays in advance. This means that even though Bill Gates is an extremely intelligent man, he was way out of his depth in this competition.

Carlsen needed only about twelve seconds of his own clock time to soundly defeat Gates. In fact, the entire video, including greetings and post-game comments, only took one minute and twenty-eight seconds. Bill Gates learned firsthand that true chess genius is a real, tangible entity that can be both powerful and humbling when you come face-to-face with it.^[3]

7 Pro Golfer Completely Misses the Ball

Golf is a tough sport that requires a unique combination of grit, determination, skill, physical strength and fitness, willpower, and discipline. However, even world-class professional golfers have bad days. In 2018, professional golfer Beatriz Recari endured the rare and dreaded whiff: when a golfer completely misses the ball during their swing. The YouTube clip of her whiff has hundreds of thousands of views as of late 2025. The look on her face at the end of the video speaks a thousand words, ranging from embarrassment to frustration and disappointment.

However, great athletes don’t let their moments of difficulty define them. Recari had a long and successful professional golf career that spanned sixteen years on the Ladies European Tour and the LPGA Tour (2006–2022).

In 2022, she announced that she had retired from professional golf to live a more relaxed life at her home in Miami, Florida. During her career, she overcame many struggles, including a battle with an eating disorder. At one point in 2007, she weighed less than 100 pounds. However, she was able to admit her disorder, and she battled back to regain her professional golf form. She won the Finnair Masters golf tournament in 2009, and she won the LPGA once in 2010 and twice in 2013.

She decided to end her career in 2022 after many hip and leg-related injuries reduced her ability to play at an elite level. Her successful career greatly overshadows her rare and embarrassing momentary whiff.^[4]

6 Knuckleball Master Tim Wakefield Strikes Out 4 Batters in One Inning

The knuckleball is one of the most difficult pitches for batters to hit, one of the most difficult for catchers to catch, and one of the most difficult for pitchers to master. There are only a handful of pitchers in Major League Baseball history who are considered masters of throwing the knuckleball: Phil and Joe Niekro, Hoyt Wilhelm, Tim Wakefield, R.A. Dickey, Charlie Hough, and Tom Candiotti. Of these men, only Dickey has won the coveted Cy Young Award, which he earned as a member of the 2012 New York Mets. To be a master of the knuckleball is to be a part of a very small and elite group.

The physics of what makes the knuckleball so difficult to hit, catch, and throw are very simple. A normal pitch, like a fastball or a curveball, spins rapidly as it travels through the air. This spin grips the air and allows the pitcher to carefully control its movement. However, the knuckleball is the exact opposite: it’s thrown with almost no spin at all, and learning how to throw with low spin takes years of dedicated practice. As the ball floats toward the plate, the air pushes on the seams unpredictably and erratically, causing it to flutter, dance, and rise or dive at the last second. The hitter, pitcher, or catcher can’t predict how a knuckleball will move due to its abnormal physics.

Hitters and pitchers in professional baseball have a lot of pride. To make it to the Major Leagues takes years of dedication, hard work, and beating out other excellent players for the relatively few coveted positions. One of the most dominant things a pitcher can do is to strike out all of the batters they face in an inning. It is even possible, though rare, for a pitcher to strike out four batters in one inning, which occurs if a catcher drops the third strike and the batter safely reaches first base. That pitcher was Tim Wakefield.

The late Tim Wakefield spent 17 years with the Boston Red Sox, and his mastery of the knuckleball gave him a great deal of career longevity. The knuckleball is thrown at a relatively low velocity, which means that it delivers much less wear and tear on the pitcher’s arm, allowing them to have a longer career. For example, master knuckleballer Charlie Hough enjoyed a 25-season career in professional baseball.

On Aug. 10, 1999, Tim Wakefield accomplished the unlikely feat of striking out four members of the Kansas City Royals in a single inning using his elusive pitch. The ball escaped the catcher during one of the strikeouts, allowing the runner to reach base. However, Wakefield’s knuckleball proved to be too much for three other batters. That inning cemented his place as one of the greatest knuckleballers of all time.^[5]

5 Amadeus: Mozart Humbles Salieri in Front of an Emperor

Among music-related box office hits, the 1984 American drama film Amadeus is one of the most well-known. The film made over $90 million (USD) at the box office on a budget of $18 million. It’s one of the most decorated films of all time: it was nominated for 53 awards and it received 40 of them, including eight Academy Awards. It received the 1984 Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director.

One of the key motifs of the movie was envy: how an elite composer can become jealous of another composer who is at a genius level. The film tells the story of the aged musical composer Antonio Salieri, who finds the precocious gift of a much younger composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, to be both divine and infuriating. The movie tells the story of how Salieri finds it impossible that such beautiful music emerges from the mind of such an immature and vulgar person.

In one of the movie’s most memorable scenes, Mozart plays one of Salieri’s compositions for the Emperor as though the composition were a simple tune written by a child. Then, Mozart proceeds to play it as it should have been composed if it were created by a true master. The look on Salieri’s face as Mozart embellishes his piece is priceless. I recently watched an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson on The Diary of a CEO where he advised that you should “expose yourself to something that humbles you every single day.”

However, when I watch the scene from Amadeus, I can imagine how crushing it would have felt to have one’s life’s work trivialized in front of the Emperor by a precocious man-child. The amazing scene combines humor, the sting of envy, and the amazing, undeniable power of raw, unfettered genius.^[6]

4 Elite Marathoner Destroys the Field

The leaders in a 26.2 marathon race typically finish in times that differ by seconds. However, the men’s winner in the 2025 Chicago Marathon absolutely destroyed the rest of the field. Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo finished the race in 2 hours, 2 minutes, and 23 seconds, about one and a half minutes before the second-place finisher.

I watched the video of Kiplimo crossing the finish line, and what’s so amazing is that you can’t even see any of the other runners yet. Once in a while, an elite athlete emerges who is so far ahead of the competition that the battle almost no longer seems fair. Usually, that person is internally driven by some experience that pushes them far harder than everyone else. For example, Michael Jordan’s father favored his older brother over him, and that drove him to prove to his father that he, too, was worthy of his attention.

I’m not sure what drove Jacob Kiplimo to such a remarkable finish. Even at the elite levels of accomplishment, some outliers exist on a level all on their own.^[7]

3 MLB Pitcher Makes His Opponent Look Foolish With Cartoonish Eephus Pitch

I’m a huge baseball fan, so this list contained two baseball-related items. Like the knuckleball, the eephus pitch is notoriously difficult, but for a completely different reason. The knuckleball’s lack of rotation results in unpredictable movements, while the eephus pitch has a different secret: its exceptionally slow speed and its extremely high arc. The eephus pitch is typically thrown at a speed of between 35 and 55 miles per hour (about 56 to 89 km/h). This is far slower than the fastball, which can be thrown in excess of 100 miles per hour (about 161 km/h).

The extremely slow speed and high arc of the eephus pitch is incredibly difficult for professional baseball players to hit because it is so much slower and so much different than the pitches that they’re used to. This makes the eephus pitch somewhat of a novelty that is rarely thrown in real games. Since its effectiveness depends on it not being expected, throwing it too much would probably lead to disaster: it being hit 400-plus feet (about 122 meters) into the stands.

One of the most famous eephus pitch strikeouts in the history of professional baseball occurred on Sept. 9, 1981. The New York Yankees were playing against the Milwaukee Brewers. It was the 6th inning of the game, and Yankees pitcher Dave LaRoche was facing Brewers hitter Gorman Thomas. In a sense, throwing an eephus pitch can be seen as a little bit disrespectful because the pitch is not taken 100% seriously: it’s kind of a funny novelty. So when LaRoche struck out Gorman Thomas with the high-arcing, cartoonish pitch, the crowd roared in approval. I’m sure that anytime LaRoche and Gorman met after that 1981 day, that pitch was a funny topic of conversation.^[8]

2 Carl Lewis Butchers the National Anthem in Front of Air Jordan and Others

Carl Lewis is one of the greatest sprinters and Olympians of all time, but there are times when a person has to learn how to stay in their lane. Sometimes, a high level of accomplishment in one area makes a person far too confident in areas in which they have no business treading. Lewis learned this lesson the hard way.

When you fail so badly that the YouTube video of your failure racks up millions of views, that’s a strong sign that you should have just remained in bed that day. Carl Lewis was invited to sing the National Anthem before a Nets–Bulls game at the Meadowlands on Jan. 21, 1993. This was at the height of the Bulls’ first rise to prominence. Before Michael Jordan’s first retirement from basketball, he was in the arena the night that this happened.

Lewis proceeded to perform a cringeworthy, off-key rendition of the National Anthem that is so bad that, as a lifelong Chicagoan, I had a very difficult time getting through the whole thing. I had to mute the volume as I watched the looks of disbelief on the faces of the players.

As I watched the video, I was reminded of a bit of wisdom by the late great Phil Woods (the saxophonist who played the solo on Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are”). “I never perform a piece in public that I haven’t thoroughly practiced in private.”^[9]

1 Air Jordan Showers His Opponents in Shards of Broken Glass

Michael Jordan was one of the fiercest competitors in the history of professional sports. I watched an interview with his son, Marcus, where he said that his dad didn’t know how to turn it off. Even if he was competing against his sons at home, he would go at them just as hard as he did his professional opponents.

In August of 1985, Air Jordan attended a Nike-sponsored basketball event in Trieste, Italy, and all hell broke loose. One of the most memorable events in the history of organized basketball happened at that event: I’ll get to that in a bit. First, we need to go over some history.

Darryl Dawkins was known as “Chocolate Thunder,” and he singlehandedly changed the game of professional basketball forever. In fact, he completely changed how the basketball rim is designed. In 1979, Darryl Dawkins shattered the glass of an NBA backboard not once, but twice. After the second event, he was called into the NBA commissioner’s office for a one-way conversation. The commissioner basically said, “Please don’t do it again.” To minimize the likelihood of players shattering NBA backboards ever again, the rim was redesigned to break away when the force applied to it by the player exceeded a certain threshold.

Now, back to Mr. Jordan. What made Jordan’s dunk so remarkable was this: His dunk and his shattering of the backboard were perfectly timed. Virtually none of the falling glass touched him, while the three opposing players were completely showered in falling glass. As I was compiling this list, not only did I know beforehand that this was going to be the ultimate item, but it was watching this video many years ago that inspired me to compile this list.

As of late 2025, the glass shower has accumulated more than six million views on YouTube. Thank you so much for reading this list. I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it!^[10]

fact checked by
Darci Heikkinen