A peek into the mind of a superstar. And our inbox…
by Myles Brown / @mdotbrown
——
From: mdotbrown@gmail.com
To: famerjones@gmail.com
Subject: Who’s Your Daddy?
Ryan,
As you know, I’m pretty forgetful. I would blame it on ‘college’, but to be honest, college never really ended. Anyway, Boyz II Men were at the Minnesota State Fair last week and they reminded me that we don’t ever talk anymore. But I was hoping we could find something to argue about.
As we both know, Mitch Albom is an opportunistic hack. Sunday’s righteous indignation towards Antonio Cromartie was just the latest assurance of such. As I tweeted-cause apparently that’s my thing these days-after reading it, Albom has shown little concern for single mothers or fatherless children before this bile, so perhaps he should find another column to meet his deadline. I’m sure Morrie has some new revelations to share with him from Heaven. Or some other such fuckery. However, trite as it was, it did remind me that we never finished our previous conversation.
I finally read the new GQ last week. Good stuff. I found the author’s incredulity with ‘The Decision’ fallout baffling, but I didn’t look to him for any insight into the game, just LeBron. Some of the article’s finer points are things we’ve discussed ad nauseum, but I still found these passages particularly interesting.
As the only child of a single mother-Gloria, who gave birth at 16-James grew up poor, alone, never knowing his father. At first he and his mother lived with his grandmother in a big, roomy house, but when James was 3, his grandmother died. Heart attack. Christmas Day. (When I ask him later to pick the angriest he’s ever been, he picks that day.) With little education and scant work, Gloria couldn’t hang on to the house. She and James hit the streets, moving constantly, and when James was in the fourth grade he essentially stoped attending school. He also spent many nights by himself, praying for his mother to come home. Sometimes she disappeared for days. “I became afraid that one day I would wake up and she would be gone forever.”
….. The greatest players use anger as fuel. Michael Jordan played every night with something like road rage. Bryant resented Shaquille O’Neal, then resented the world for persecuting him about Colorado. The greats have chips on their shoulders, whereas James seems to have nothing on his but those football-sized delts. Maybe he doesn’t have enough anger? Maybe he’s too good at repressing his anger? “Are you a sports psychologist?” he asks. No. But he’s conceded in the past that he might not have the killer instinct of Kobe. That still true? “I hope not,” he says. “I don’t think so. I think I’ve gotten to a point now in my career where I do feel like I have a killer instinct.” Just a theory, I say. In his line of work, it seems like anger equals success. That’s an awesome theory,” he says. Some truth to it? “Maybe.”
…….. More than his elbow, people continue to question his will. Again, the playoffs. Why did he stand around? “I’ve never been standing around,” he says. “That’s not me. Even if I tried, I couldn’t do it. The fact that me and you are sitting here right now by ourselves is an uncomfortable feeling.” Standing around in the playoffs, sitting with me in a locker room-I don’t get the connection. And yet I still feel compelled to apologize. “No, it’s okay” he says, and now he’s the one sounding apologetic. He murmurs, “I like being around people.” I know, I say, taken aback by his downcast face. The fatherless boy who sat alone nights, listening to sirens and gunfire, wondering if his mother would come home, grows up to be a man who doesn’t like to be alone.
I’m human-even a sensible one at times-so I completely understood and empathized with the plight of Baby Bron. However, I’m also a fan and in some measures, a critic. As such, my initial reaction was, well…”Fuck that. He cheated the game, the fans and in many ways, himself.” But putting my own righteous indignation to the side for a moment, I decided to consider the bigger picture.
I thought about this for quite a while and as with any discussion of LeBron, quite naturally my thoughts turned to Kobe-specifically his childhood. Then Michael Jordan and his childhood. Both are the products of upper-middle class, two parent, stable and happy homes with plenty of siblings. A solid and supportive foundation for a child to grow and realize their potential, which is completely atypical of the hardscrabble backgrounds many NBA players escaped. Of course both are also the preeminent examples of tireless dedication and insuppresible will.
I kept thinking. While there are few similarities on the court, there isn’t another player in the league who could identify with LeBron’s upbringing more than Allen Iverson. Or is it LeBron who should identify with A.I.? Regardless, we should all know the story of Ann’s Son by now; teenage mother, absentee father, abject poverty, surrounded by raw sewage and an even more toxic environment outside the front door. Then there was the brawl, the conviction, the incarceration, the appeal and the release. The Waltons thought they had it bad.
These were two boys who were forced to grow before their time, more familiar with the harsh realities of life than any child should be. Two boys faced not only with the responsibilities of essentially raising themselves, but providing for their families. Honestly, these were two boys who by any statistical measure should probably be dead by now. So the minute they shook David Stern’s hand as a #1 overall pick, they were two men with far different definitions of success than the rest of us. This is to say nothing of their drive, talent or desire to win, but ultimately, they wouldn’t be defined by a ring, but the lives they left behind.
That being said, I understand Bron’s desire to replicate his high school experience, just as I understand A.I.’s love of the nightlife. These are two men compensating for a lost childhood, no? But according to the cognoscenti these are two men who are also missing something. Focus, dedication, ruthlessness…..I don’t know, something. Which begs the question, could they have exhausted their will just to achieve what they already have only to have even more required/demanded of them? Did Michael and Kobe not only have the advantages of talent and timing, but of a relatively easy home life? Is there a correlation between childhood and ‘killer instinct’?
Granted, this is a small sample size, but there are more examples. The mere mention of Shaq’s name should be sufficient, so let’s move on.
Ironically enough, Bron and A.I.’s biggest detractor has been Charles Barkley, a player routinely criticized for his lack of commitment and conditioning. Charles was another son of a poor single mother and openly acknowledged the emotional turmoil he endured through early adulthood.
He speaks hardly at all of his father, Frank Barkley, who left Leeds when Charles was a baby. He tries to appear indifferent, but finally he admits, “I hurt to the extent that I wish he had been there and hurt that he wasn’t. I was very angry and very resentful all my life, until the last couple of years.”
It’s not a stretch to say that a man crippled by anger for much of his life simply didn’t have the desire to manufacture more anger in order to compete with a raging despot like Jordan. For all his bluster, couldn’t it be that Charles just wanted to be-or actually was-happy?
Conversely, Earvin Johnson is a clear cut case; two loving parents, nine smiling siblings and a trail of adoring fans and championships have followed him since high school. But just as God planned, there is no Magic without Larry, who happens to be our first outlier. A bio isn’t necessary, the man’s pain is visceral. Is it worse to never have had a father at all or to lose the one you’ve known and loved to the bottle and a bullet? It’s certainly not a contest I’d want to be in. You want hardship? Larry Joe Bird had it in spades. But he also has them rings n’ things we sing about. Whatever ‘it’ was MJ and Kobe had, Bird had it first.
Of course some mouth breathing bigot could explain this all away with a wave of the hand and a simple cliche: A hard working white man with talent and true grit can’t be stopped by anyone. But it’s not that simple. Was he a product of his time? Is it the money? I won’t pretend to know, but it’s worth exploring. That’s where you come in, being white and all. Ha. I kid. I think.
Anyway, this has gone on long enough. I trust you see what I’m getting at and won’t oversimplify this as “No daddy, No ring”. And yes, I’m well aware of the slippery slope that is pop psychology, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to play with anyway.
Holla,
Myles.
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I can`t say the same thing about lebron
Bird isn’t an outlier though. Remember, many of his teammates have noted that once he got into the league he wasn’t a gym rat, or a rat in the weight room. Even he’s sad that he wasn’t particularly dedicated to getting into shape during the off season. So, it seems he has more in common with Iverson than it seems on the surface.
I like your thesis.
I like the idea that when you’ve fought for so long, you define success differently. It sounds good at first glance.
But, I think the theory runs the risk of painting with too large a brush, with too little information, as Myles has admitted. T-MOney is right that we tend to view Jordan as the ultimate winner and therefore the blueprint for success, but that would never happen in real life. In real life we recognize that their are many different paths to the same destination, and your path is largely dependent on your own mental makeup.
Kobe and Mike were the best not just because of talent and anger, but because the arguably put in more work than any other similarly talent player. Nobody puts in work on the little things like Kobe, and Jordan built on his already substantial physical gifts by becoming a workout fiend. That’s the biggest advantage I can see for them, not their backgrounds.
Good discussion though.
I think so, definitely.
I think of killer instinct as that aggressiveness, that willingness to dominate and decide that nobody on the court has the right to breathe the same air as you. You try to kill everybody, and you never let up.
I’ve seen Bron do that on numerous occasions.
Clutchness is the ability to accept the big moment, and perform at, or above, your norm. You could be having a horrible game, but when it’s time to make a big play, all of sudden you become and instant threat. Your level of play increases when the pressure is at its greatest.
I put Lebron, Dirk and Iverson all in the same category as far as clutchness. All three have been clutch at different points in their career, but they’ve also failed to come through and made some questionable decisions. Now, I think Lebron and AI have no lack of killer instinct, while Dirk may have a little problem with that, but not too much.
None of them is as clutch as someone like Sam Cassell.
That’s my definition and examples.
I’ll agree with that. Robert Horry was no killer, but he was as clutch as they come. But it’s obvious that ones who are truly great have both in their DNA. No one ever raises those questions about Kobe or MJ and everyone can pretty much agree that they have both.
I don’t know if it’s a DNA thing or not. I think that some of it comes from training and working so much that you have almost don’t even consider failure.
Also, both Kobe and Mike have failed in big moments, at times because of their own shortcomings. I”m thinking about times early in Mike’s career, and when he first came back from retirement in 1995.
Kobe has seemed to tighten up at times, Game 7 this year for example, but not often.
I meant basketball DNA which is born out of training and workin hard. Sure those guys have failed on numerous occasions, but they’re also not afraid to and when the game is on the line you’re not going to hesitate putting the ball in their hands. And that’s not to say you wouldn’t also put the ball in Bron’s hands either.
We’re talking about degrees here, not a total lack. Dirk, Bron and Iverson have all come up clutch at different times. Very, very clutch. But, they aren’t, in my opinion, on the same level as someone like Jordan, Kobe or even, Wade.
According to Iverson’s authorized biography written by Larry Platt, he rarely worked out in the off season. During his time in Philly he regularly hid when it was time to lift weights, and I remember reading a story about him sneaking off and coming back with a bag of tacos from Taco Bell.
During his infamous “practice” rant, he basically said he didn’t understand how him lifting weights or practicing all the time would impact his team.
Iverson did not put in the same kind of work Kobe or Jordan put in. It’s obvious when looking at his game and body. I’m the biggest Iverson fan on the site, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to reality.
On Lebron, both he and Wade expressed amazement when they played with Kobe in the Olympics at the level of working out he did, and admitted that he was on a different level than they were. But, all it takes is looking at the games of Kobe and Jordan, and comparing them to many other players to see the level of improvement and the refinement of their fundamentals. Kobe, right now, is the creme de la creme as far as workouts and preparation. Nobody else is really on his level from a fundamental standpoint.
Honestly, if you need to actually practice READING what people write instead of inserting your own spin on what you think they mean. You’ve been on the site a very short amount of time so you have no idea what I’ve written in the past and what my thoughts and feelings are on most subjects. Your assumptions about what I mean, or what I think are usually horribly wrong and your belligerent attitude is comical on the internet. Seriously, calm down, read more closely, and learn how to express a coherent thought without numerous references to homosexuality or some other form of idiocy.
I enjoy everything you write.
I think that the way people perceive the inner lives of athletes is just that: perception. We may occasionally get a glimpse at their emotional state, but even then, we can only really interpret what we see. For example, is Kevin Garnett merely passionate or borderline psychotic? I believe what we ultimately conclude tells more about the observer than the athlete himself.
To me, LeBron James is unreadable. He could dream about a ring every night. He might be consumed by the pursuit of that championship to a point I can’t fathom. Or he may think that winning a ring would be kinda nice.
Please forgive me if I’ve been rambling, but I guess that what I’m trying to say is that we, as humans, desire simplicity, but reality is much more complex. Yeah, something like that.
but I think LeBron’s excuse of “wanting to play with friends” is BS. What, he could only make friends with other All-NBA-Level players?
What about the Cavs guys he spend night in night out ballin with – they weren’t friends?
Almost all you here have really insightful comments and I must admit being just an observer helps a lot in learning who are the loudmouths trying to sound off intelligent and those who really breath basketball and do it with class and a whole lotta sense.
Lebron is unmotivated and has ingrained it in his system because yes mYles had a point about his unfavorable childhood experience which strongly zapped out his energy. Lebron is just happy that he survived the nightmare of being alone each night not knowing if his mom would ever come back. You dont know that kind of effect on a childs formative years.He’s happy and contented now bcoz all he wanted was already given to him at an early age which Peter was right on. Right now, deep down I would bet that the only thing motivating lebron to win a chip is becoz he has to. Just even on.e MJ didn’t have any motivation left after his 1st 3 peat. that’s why he retired.(I wont bring the subject about his dad) When he came back he was challenged again.Plus he put in hardwork and his competitive character which he built when he was cut off form his junior team was the beginning. He didnt have the difficult upbringing that he had to deal with emotionally and psychologically like what Leborn and AI experienced so he still have that extra mental energy to devote and channel his anger meh on the first thing that challenged him. AI had that competitiveness but didn’t have the discpline to further improve himself, thus would have inspired his team mates and other greats to play with him. Thats were luck and circumstances come into play to.After shaq left. Know one I think would want to play with KObe if only for guys willing to take a back seat to him. Would VC,Ray-ray,Nash,KG play with him? they would give it 2nd thought. Lebron right now,didn’t want to wait bcoz he doesn’t want to tire himself chasing a ring he’s not guaranteed to get with the current LA state of things running for a decade who knows.He doesnt want to be alone no more.he doesnt want to be left out with other great without a chip.Now with Miami is the beginning of the final testing ground before we see his legacy unfold. Now having a better(best?) chance to beat the only guy likened to the GOAT before he fizzles out.NOW i Get him. and then again.All this has always been about him.Miami will win a chip. And ill be there to watch starting November. FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS!!! Thanks SLAM.
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