Neocon Blues

Rick Reilly’s commentary on Michael Jordan’s HOF speech is maddening and astonishing. As a sports journalist, he should know better than most the psyche of great athletes.

Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame talk was the Exxon Valdez of speeches. It was, by turns, rude, vindictive and flammable. And that was just when he was trying to be funny. It was tactless, egotistical and unbecoming. When it was done, nobody wanted to be like Mike.

And yet we couldn’t stop watching. Because this was an inside look into the mindset of an icon who’d never let anybody inside before. From what I saw, I’d never want to go back. Here is a man who’s won just about everything there is to win — six NBA titles, five MVPs and two Olympics golds. And yet he sounded like a guy who’s been screwed out of every trophy ever minted. He’s the world’s first sore winner.

Perhaps Rick Reilly doesn’t understand, or refuses to understand, because he will never know greatness. Because when you’re a Caesar or Alexander, an Ali or Pele, you’ve conquered the world. Afterwards, you wonder: what’s next? Where do I go from here? It’s an enviable dilemma to have, but it is surely the most painful one faced by great men. No wonder MJ would not be happy about his induction.

Moreover, Reilly fails to grasp Jordan’s main point. A commenter has to point it out to him:

A lot of people are overreacting to just how bad this was. And what some of you people are basically saying is that you want to be lied to. You want Jordan to get up there and be a phony, trot out a bunch of gracious cliches and give the same kind of speech we’ve all heard a million times at events like this, even though that’s not who he is. You’d rather be graciously lied to than be told the truth, that this guy is psychotically competitive, and that’s what made him great.

Jordan’s motivation was the series of slights against him, real or perceived. Failure gave him strength; pain was his motivation. His speech was the unvarnished truth - it revealed to us the quintessential Jordan. It was real.

Some of us can’t handle that raw honesty. We want to think of athletes as picture perfect, cookie cutter heroes. We get incensed that 24 year old Michael Phelps would want to indulge in a little marijuana, or that Josh Howard would have his own thoughts on American history. We get pissed off when Usain Bolt celebrates his gold medal with a little reggae.

Under the stewardship of David Stern, the NBA has been a prime example of this deception. White audiences get a little antsy about the “hip-hop” personna of basketball, and David Stern issues a dress code (nevermind that in Hockey, a predominantly white sport, fighting is the norm, or that in baseball, chewing tobacco is condoned). Referees fix games, but David Stern dismisses them as isolated incidents. Rasheed Wallace criticizes certain policies, and he is fined 25k.

The truth is that athletes are just human beings. Rather than mask that fact, we should embrace it. What could be more beautiful than the struggle of everday human beings for greatness and glory? What could be more real than the foibles and personalities of great men? We should not lie to ourselves about Michael Jordan, or sports in general.