Hummaness of a Childhood Hero: Assholism

by B.J. Delas Armas on 6/22/2008 05:34:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

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"Dreams be the ashes burn thrashing in the wind flying from the burning bush flung from her fingers and it hung in the air in this moment of truth then it crashed into flames like the end of our youth." - Geo/Pro Brown, Blue Scholars

Michael Jeffrey Jordan.

The man when I was a kid.

Still the man for lots of other kids and men, but now he's just far and away the best player on the team that I like(d).

MJ was the equivalent of a greek god to me. The positive light to the endless tunnels of grade school. I imagined that he lived in a fantasy land where he could just almost magically make any and all things happen.

Then high school started, white kids and even some of the Filipino kids were brutal, MJ retired and un-retired, and I didn't have this hero to hang myself onto.

"...Crash into flames like the end of our youth."


Like a bad drug, 10 years after the second retirement, I find myself still addicted to the Chicago Bulls.

Along the way, I've been coming across the negative MJ files, mostly from sportswriters and fans who were adult when MJ was doing his thing. They knew what an ass MJ was, but I had no idea.

I knew he had gambling problems back then, but that wasn't hurting anyone but himself. He was a rich guy anyway.

His affairs with other women were the first thing to bring this humanness in MJ. As a player for the Wiz, he had already been slipping, but he still was a basketball legend.

The man is still overwhelmingly a positive force, but he's just proof that even positive forces have gigantic holes in their game. What am I talking about? What holes could MJ possibly have in his game?

The part about making players better. I can't believe how ultimately selfish and hubristic he ultimately was behind closed doors...or curtains. Sure, it got him 6 championships and 6 MVPs, and the title of "greatest player in the world", but it seems to breathe a lot of life into the American meme that you have to be an asshole to get results.

Maybe you are bound to a few asshole things in a highly time-pressured environment, but I can't believe that assholism correlates to success.

Informative Post on MJ's quotes about teammates over the years

"You ever hear of a guy, six-eleven maybe and two hundred sixty pounds, a guy big and fat like that and he can't get but two rebounds, if that many, running all over the damn court and he gets two rebounds? Big guy like that and he gets one rebound. Can't even stick his **** into people and get more than that...Big, fat, fat guy. One rebound in three games. Power forward. Maybe they should call it powerless forward." - Michael ripping Stacey King a new one

"It's a hell of a lot easier to make Earl Monroe look good than it is Brad Sellers."

"You're an idiot. You've screwed up every play we ever ran. You're too stupid to even remember the plays. We ought to get rid of you." - Michael to Horace Grant

"If you [pass the ball to Bill Cartwright], you'll never get the ball from me."

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