I’m fairly new to sports fandom. I didn’t really start following statistics and standings until I was around 17 years old. When I was younger, the majority of my close friends were only interested in the kind of exercise that involved percussive, improvised button hits on Super Nintendo controllers. It didn’t help either that I was a chubby adolescent who could care less about physical exertion.
I had a few friends who did care about athletics though. And I saw that a lot of people really enjoyed professional sports. So in an effort to become a relevant 9 year old, I decided to do some research and shape my alliance.
While I consider Marysville, MI my adoptive hometown since I’ve lived there most of my life, I was actually born in Phoenix, AZ. So using that as a derivative, I added to the equation a sport that I felt like I sucked at the least. Basketball. It was easier to me than the others, and I didn’t have to cross an entire field or anything. When you put those two criteria together in a search engine circa 1994, you will see that the most qualified player during that time period was Phoenix Suns forward, and freshly minted league MVP Charles Barkley.
Charles was real to me. He was more tangible than Spider-man, Donatello the Ninja Turtle, or Billy the Blue Ranger. He was a real person who was really good at what he did. And he played where I was born. We obviously had a lot in common.
I didn’t follow him much after that. Our relationship spread apart further with his departure for the Houston Rockets. The separation point was when he tossed a man through a plate-glass window in 1997. (Hey Orlando friends, the fight was at Phineas Phogg’s on Church Street)
I was crushed when I got the news of his bar fight. I didn’t know what it was about. I didn’t know that the man had instigated the situation. Couldn’t Charles have stifled the fight by giving the man a lesson in proper dribbling or rebounding technique? Couldn’t he have produced a copy of NBA Jam for SNES as a peace offering? All I knew was that the man on my pedestal had an angry side. In fact, latter on I found out he didn’t want to be my role model anyways. As Barkley once controversially said,
“I think the media demands that athletes be role models because there’s some jealousy involved. It’s as if they say, this is a young black kid playing a game for a living and making all this money, so we’re going to make it tough on him. And what they’re really doing is telling kids to look up to someone they can’t become, because not many people can be like we are. Kids can’t be like Michael Jordan.”
Ah yes, Michael Jordan. I knew most of the world thought of him as the greatest athlete alive. I knew he was good. The main reason he resonated with me was because of his career-launching move to star along side Bugs Bunny in the 1996 summer blockbuster “Space Jam”.
And watching someone as much as you can from a spectator to celebrity position, he was a humble, charming human being. He was someone I could feel good about looking up to.
Looking back at my monochrome judgment of Barkley and my subsequent pull towards the Michael Jordan magnet, my decision was effortless. I didn’t need to think anything through. There was someone else ready to stand in the place of my old larger than life role model.
I agree with Sir Charles. Parents and guardians need to be the true role models. Being able to look intimately into the workings of a life lived much longer than yours is very formational and important for a child. You don’t get that from a distant celebrity. But some don’t have that luxury. And I can’t let those in the spotlight, famous or not, off the hook. We look up to those whom we want to emulate. Those with God given talents are responsible for their image. So technically, that’s all of us.
An older generation has the responsibility, whether they like it or not, of showing a younger generation how to live. The older will always be looked to and watched by the younger. That’s what learning is. You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to have everything figured out. You too are learning from an older generation of how to live where you are right now. Michael Jordan was not perfect. I’m sure he has a closet full rotting skeleton bones. But he was composed off the court. I don’t know the mans heart. It could have been motivated by a fat pay check. But I do believe he knew the weight he carried. And he knew a younger generation was watching.
LeBron James just won his first MVP award. He is 24 years old, and the youngest to do just about everything you can tally in a record book. He is becoming the best at what he does. He held the press conference for his award ceremony in his old high school gymnasium. He honored his teammates of past and present, his coaches and teachers, and his family.
He is not perfect. He is a man who gets paid millions to throw a ball in an arching fashion through an ugly net that frankly couldn’t catch anything considering the way it was engineered. But he is also seen by millions, and loved by millions who don’t know who the right person to look to is, or want to be just like him. Just like he wanted to be like Michael Jordan. He holds himself up with a gracious and humble manor that is worthy of being respected. He seems to understand that someone is watching.
Filed under: Life, Sports , Basketball, Charles Barkley, Childhood, children, Chubby Kid, Donatello, Fat, Generations, LeBron James, MVP, NBA, Represent, Responsibility, Role Models, SNES, Spider-man, Sports, Super Nintendo, The Blue Ranger
