Today's Reason To Laugh, Be Embarrassed

Michael Jordan: Great Man

Michael Jordan is universally revered as a great basketball player (even by Jazz fans), but he has, as of late, come under scrutiny for his non-basketball personality. He's said to be a nearly intolerably competitive guy (rumor has it after a teammate blew a game, Jordan snatched the man's plate away during a team dinner and said something to the effect of "Only good players get to eat"). This competitive behavior that drove Jordan to a place of Mellevillean obsession and psychosis was on full display during his hall of fame inductee speech. He jokingly, in jokes that weren't funny because they were barely veiled aggressive challenges, thanked those who had cut him from teams, underestimated him, or made the mistake of thinking they could guard him. After this speech everyone turned on their inner psychoanalyst abilities and declared that they had discovered the secret to Jordan's success. The cause of his obviously great talent was declared to be his competitiveness. It drove him to be great, but it also obviously made him an egotistical mess. A man who would never be happy. This was a great story because it had the full heft of a Shakespearean tragedy. It also had the unstated assumption that greatness might not be worth it. The rest of us didn't have to feel as bad that we weren't Jordan because, when you really saw what it was like to be the man, would you really want to?


This is all a pretty good analysis, as far as it goes, but it doesn't really capture the truth. Simply put, a lot of guys are really competitive pricks. And a lot of them have insane basketball talent. The best example of one of these is Kobe Bryant, who yesterday, called a ref a gay slur that refers to the pile of sticks used to burn gay people in the past. Kobe was visibly upset after getting a technical foul called on him. He stormed to the bench, nearly punched his teammate, threw a towel, and then yelled out to the ref. Basically he threw a nationally televised fit. Here's some video. Today he gave a milquetoast apology saying what he said wasn't meant to be taken literally (the guy isn't literally a pile of sticks, I guess) and that he didn't mean to offend anyone. Some (my good friend representing them) think this is just the kind of thing that Michael Jordan would do if he were around today. They argue that basketball players, or at least the hyper competitive kind, are small minded, quick to fly off the handle, and can get pretty offensive and pretty scary quite rapidly. If we have no examples from Jordan's actual career of incidents like this one it is because the media have advanced to such a point that everything is now covered. There is some truth in the idea that today's players face increased media scrutiny. Still, we have a love of heroes. LeBron was one up until the decision, where most of the criticism coming at him was pretty lame and was squashed by people in the media themselves. LeBron, up until the decision, had something else in common with Jordan too. Something that Kobe lacks: he was a deft handler of his image.

I think the forgotten piece in the Jordan puzzle (or a forgotten piece, as we'll never fully recreate the man) was his ability to handle his image; to make his own story into something that we would root for above and beyond the game. He has oft been mocked for saying that he wouldn't endorse a Democratic candidate because "Republicans buy shoes too," but this mockery totally misses the point of the man and his comment. All great men and women, from Catherine the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte to Teddy Roosevelt to Mahatma Gandhi knew how to spin their own legacy. They were, each one of them, shameless self promoters. They also knew, almost instinctively how to blend their stories into larger themes and how to rewrite their pasts so that they fit the day's narrative and appealed to a broad spectrum of people. A huge part of Napoleon's legacy comes from his memoirs, written when he was imprisoned, which reinterpret his rule through the prism of pro-republicanism and freedom loving grandness. I believe that all the great persons of history have either done this, or had it done for them by those who followed (which may be the case with Leonardo Da Vinci and William Shakespeare). How else could their trials and tribulations remain timeless, if they didn't change to speak to each time that considered them?

Michael Jordan did the same, albeit on a much smaller scale. In his youth he was the hotshot scorer. The dunker and leaper with unparalleled athletic ability.



Then he was the hero valiantly fighting a losing battle against superior teams from Detroit and Boston (it was a sole man vs. the hordes, the same concept as 300).



Then his story changed again, he became on top of the world, the best ever. He dunked less, but he was just as murderous for his passing and shooting abilities.



Then he was too good for basketball even. Then he returned, world weary, like the man going in for just one last heist. He was still on top of the world, but he dominated through sheer will power instead of talent. He relied more on teammates and played defense to win.



Of course each of these transitions was punctuated with the appropriate spin and commercials. Jordan launched Space Jam at the height of his (nearly) final career stage (then he came back for the Wizards, spinning himself both as the returned hero and now wise master).

The thing is, none of these stages of Jordan are really discrete. He could dunk against the Jazz and he could shoot, pass, and play D back in his North Carolina days. He chose to emphasize different aspects of his game and hinted to the media what needed emphasis so as to fit his personal narrative into what was big at the time. The media shaped a lot of this on its own, but Jordan was smart enough to take their cues and play along. His ability to appeal to so many different people in so many different ways made him a wonderful basketball player, but also a great man. I'm still in awe that I lived during his time and got to witness his legend unfold first hand.

Every great person has the talent and skills that inflame our imaginations, that lead us to speculate about them and even worship them. What separates the great from the merely talented is the ability to shift their personal stories into the realm of the mythic. Michael Jordan would have never thrown a fit like Kobe, not because he wasn't as big of an asshole, but because that would have marred the Michael Jordan legend. He craved not only Ws but a legacy as well; his ambition was big enough that it contained his name in the history books, not merely a list of the number of rings he won. He is still working on it, still trying to prove himself great, this time as the builder and runner of a basketball team. The kind of largeness that Jordan sought is so big that Kobe has no clue it exists. He stands next to it in all his petty smallness, not knowing the chill he feels is from a colossus' shadow blocking out the sun. As he enters into the playoffs, obsessed with tying Jordan's ring record and putting his name in the conversation for best basketball player ever to live, he is completely unaware that he has already lost.

The Face of Evil

See that grainy, America's Most Wanted style picture? Good, now memorize it. If you ever see this man punch him in the gut. Spit in his face. He is all that is wrong with sports journalism. A shameless provacateur, a mock-outrage anger junkie. A man who writes highly opinionated, less than brilliant takedowns of the disgusting news media's fawning over LeBron and intersperses them with fawning bullshit coverage. This man is the enemy and I hate him with everything I'm worth. Either that or it's the most boring part of the year for followers of the NBA, post free agency excitement, post draft, pre warm up camps, and pre International Basketball contest that will determine which country has the best role players (all the stars are too busy to play at the FIBA 2010 World Championship, including the stars from other countries). In the absence of actual coverage, I propose we turn on each other. Why not? We've already turned on LeBron.

But some of us, Wojnarowski included, turned on LeBron way back when the season was still happening, well before the Decision, a remarkably stupid and respect burning event (in all eyes, but Miami's) in which LeBron announced his decision to leave Cleveland for tax free South Florida. While the decision was stupid and dropped the real LBJ's credibility (but not to a point he can't recover from), it does make sense if we follow the twisted path of one story line. This path was pursued by many fans, including self-proclaimed, "Hey I'm a fucking FAN, OK?" Bill Simmons. The story is that LeBron James doesn't care about winning (and he's probably un-American). Followers of this storyline insist that Jordan, Bird, and Magic all cared so much about winning, which is what makes them great, and that all LeBron cares about is dunks, which makes him less than great. It would seem beyond obvious that the aforementioned dudes played on teams that featured ridiculous talent and that LeBron didn't. Nonetheless, as these pricks have taken to the airwaves to proclaim that they would never, ever, do what LeBron did, I guess it needs to be pointed out. So here goes: Michael Jordan played with Scottie Pippin. Remember him? He took the Bulls to 50 plus wins and a barn-burning second round of the playoffs on his own. Jordan also had one of the best coaches, if not the best coach (but you should all know my opinion on the matter: he's not) in Phil Jackson. It wasn't Jordan who taught Rodman how to rebound. Indeed, Rodman had already logged 3 of the top 5 rebounding seasons of all time when he joined the Bulls. Not to mention the countless other All-Stars, 3 Point Contest Winners, all NBA defensive players, and all NBA team players who played with Jordan. I'm pretty sure Magic and Bird had similar, if not quite as many, gifts on their respective teams (Jabar, Riley, McHale, and Parish), but I wasn't paying very close attention to Basketball in the years before I was born. None of these guys were made good by Magic, Bird, or Jordan. They were already good. They may have been given the chance to shine on a bigger stage, maybe they were even made slightly better, but without the fad three, those teams were all very good.

Now, take the case of the Cavs. LeBron played with Mo Williams and Big Z. Very arguably, these two guys owe their status as having been All-Stars to his play. Similarly, fired coach Mike Brown, who won Coach of the year in 2009, almost certainly owed that to LeBron. And... that's pretty much it. The Cavs for the last two years were a 60 plus win team. If you want to measure LeBron against Michael Jordan you can measure how much each man's presence swung their team's abilities. When his airness returned, the Bulls gained 17 wins over the year he had been totally absent, and set the NBA record for the best season ever at 72-10. If the Cavs drop by less than this from their 66 ('08-'09), 61 ('09-'10, a season LeBron sat out the last half dozen games of) win heights, then we will have decisively proved Jordan better than LeBron. If they don't, however, I'm sure there will be some new excuse for the King's inferiority.

The point of this isn't that LeBron didn't break a lot of hearts and disgust a lot of people (me included) when he announced that he was going to Miami. The point is that if you were breathing down LeBron's neck in May for not wanting to win enough, for not being enough of a competitive asshole, then you should have cheered this new Miami team on. If, on the other hand, you hated him then and you hate him even more now (I'm looking at you Simmons, Wojnarowski), then I suspect that you were just looking for an excuse to tear him down. And that makes you a Michael Jordan level asshole, but with no chance of winning the NBA Finals.

This Month's Media Gems

It's that time again to review the most recent developments in the realm of arguably NBA-related media. In a new twist, this month will begin the first of a set of themed Media Gems installment. This month focuses on the category of just plain strange. So without further ado, here are this month's awards:





1) Strangest Casting Decision:
According to various reports last month, the world should brace itself for a new basketball movie that cross-breeds the likes of Queen Latifah, rapper Common, NJ Nets President Rod Thorn, and a handful of unspecified Nets players. The film is reportedly a romantic comedy, to be called "Just Wright", about the love story between an athletic trainer and the basketball player she is rehabilitating from injury...













Aside from the obvious, this award was given primarily according to my emphatic agreement with Ball Don't Lie that the film severely miscast its focal NBA team. If the Houston Rockets can't even land a movie role about debilitating sports injuries, I don't know what this world is coming to.

2) Strangest Disguise
When Steve Nash wanted to play some pick-up basketball in Beijing this month, he tried to blend into the local culture by wearing a disguise. Nash attributed the photographs and stares to the ineffective nature of his disguise, stating "As soon as I walked on they recognized me. It didn't really work," but perhaps there was another explanation. Maybe it had more to do with the fact that he looked like some sort of Horace Grant, a British school girl, and an Indie Pirate. Who wouldn't bust out their camera? I think the pictures speak for themselves, you decide.

3) Strangest and Most Humiliating Roster Decision

After playing for the national champion Lakers last season, Vujacic was cut from his native Slovenian National Team this month. Maybe there was some underlying injury or commitment issue, but let's just say that Pao Gasol, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobli have all had injuries hold them out of recent Olympic play and you can bet that they weren't cut. Poor machine.

4) From the Vault: Strangest Match-up
This classic Jordan clip sees the NBA great, along with a variety of other stars including Dominique Wilkins and Larry Bird, facing off against Kenny Rogers at his 1988 Classic Weekend. Country music, roasted chicken, and basketball. Who knew it could be such a winning combo? The commentary by Lakers' Chick Hearn is priceless.