I remember vividly Michael Jordan’s six 3-pointer half against the Blazers in the NBA finals back in 1992.
And I remember it because of religion and a contradiction.
I was a little kid at the time, and it was early summer, so I was playing baseball.
Up until then, I’d never been a Michael Jordan fan, because I believed as I was told:
– he’s selfish (bad…even though I was taught to carry the team if I had to, and lauded if my play won the game for us)
– he’s not a team player (bad…even though I often heard disparaging remarks about my bad teammates, and comments about how I should be pitching so we’d win)
– he thinks he’s god (blasphemy! Even though someone else – Larry Bird – said that about MJ, Jordan obviously never said anything like that)
At the same time I was hearing those things about the guy, though, I was being pushed to excel in sports, specifically at that moment baseball.
I didn’t want to go take grounders off a bumpy lumpy field with my brother whipping them at me as hard as he could, but I was not so gently drug to the field to do it anyway.
After all, if I was going to do something, I had darn well better do it with everything I had, to the best of my ability, and get as good as I could at it.
And, I was told, I was the best player on my team, I was awesome, I was a natural, so I should keep improving and really, I should be playing every position on the field because then we’d probably win. Stupid coaches.
Living in Portland, I was naturally a Blazer fan. I think people become fans of their local teams just because it’s often too socially painful to go against what everybody else thinks. And I was a little kid, susceptible to the opinions of family and friends and teammates.
Anyway, I remember being at that baseball game – I don’t remember how I played, if we won, I just remember it being after the game, surrounded by nylon-webbed lawn chairs and the cyclone fencing of the back of the dugout, still in my red-white-and blue jersey, glove on my hand…and the adults talking about Michael Jordan hitting six 3-pointers. My dad made some snide comments about it. He, of course, was a Clyde Drexler fan.
Why I remember it so vividly was for the thought that somehow made it into my mind. Mercifully.
“Wait a second – he’s a good player. He’s doing something incredible. Isn’t that a good thing? He’s doing what you guys always tell me to go after – being awesome, winning – and you don’t like him. I don’t understand, that doesn’t make any sense. Who cares about the Blazers if this guy is like, totally rad!”
I’d always been pushed to be the best. Anything less than winning was frowned upon. And yet, here’s this guy just destroying everyone he plays, being the best, winning…and for some fantom reason I’m supposed to dislike him?
I couldn’t.
I read every article in Sports Illustrated, I knew this guy was something incredible. And so by the next season, I was a Michael Jordan fan. Maybe a closeted one, but I had to respect and like the guy.
He was the embodiment of everything I was supposed to try and be.
And his greatness trumped the negative criticism I heard around me. Even a child can see through contradictions.
Innately, humans are wired to respect, love, and honor the heroic. The creative, the productive, things that take humanity higher.
Whatever the negativity, put-downs, and destruction around you – as is so prevalent in western culture, even the basis of most comedy – rise above it. Fly.
It’s a choice.
