This is a short and special edition of the blog. My need to write is generated by a news story I read on ESPN.com. It involves my favorite basketball player, Steph Curry.
On a podcast recently, Curry doubted if the 1969 moon landing was real and not staged. Others, like long-time player Vince Carter and ESPN commentator Jalen Rose concurred with Curry’s assessment.
I was dumbfounded. I could not believe the garbage coming from Curry. NASA certainly didn’t, as they immediately offered Curry a tour of their facility in Houston, full of moon rocks and the Apollo 13 mission control room.
Coupled with Kyrie Irving’s pronouncement that he questioned if the Earth was really round, Curry’s statements made me think of a number of things.
First, why do I put these athletes on a pedestal? The answer is because they have superior athletic ability.
However, little is known about them other than their charitable endeavors or edited sound bites. We want to believe that if they sound sincere and coherent, they must be quite intelligent and knowledgeable.
I harken back to my childhood team—the New York Knicks of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. They were as cerebral a team as ever may have been. Bill Bradley, Princeton grad, Rhodes Scholar, U.S. Senator. Dick Barnett achieved his Ph.D. Walt Frazier uses words that Columbia Law grad, the late Howard Cosell, would understand. Earl Monroe, a successful businessman. Dave De Busschere, a GM and President of the Nets. Phil Jackson, the Zen Master as he was called, so well read and gifted. He coached the Chicago Bulls and Los
Angeles Lakers to a record number of Championships.
Then there were Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Bill Walton, big men with intelligence and pride. Len Elmore of the Indiana Pacers, is a lawyer. Jay Bilas, one of the foremost experts on college basketball, is a practicing attorney. NBC’s Chris Collinsworth graduated law school. Baseball’s Tony La Russa, a Hall of Fame manager, did, too. Alan Page, a defensive lineman on the Purple People Eaters of the Minnesota Vikings in the late 1960’s, became a recognized justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court.
My sights are high when I listen to people talk. I have so much respect for Colin Kaepernick and his beliefs and how he expressed them. Which is why I resent his obvious blackball from the NFL.
I want my sports heroes to be intelligent and respectful, honorable and decent. Good men playing children’s games for money and prestige. I don’t expect them to be Rhodes Scholars like Senator Bradley. Yet I don’t want them to be inane and inarticulate.
With Steph Curry, he sounded smart and sincere. He did the right thing when a girl questioned why Under Armor made his sneakers only for boys. Curry led the Warriors in their boycott of President Trump. He and his wife are religious.
In this world of fake news and counterculture biases, I yearned for heroes like my Knicks teams. I thought that I might see that with Golden State and especially withSteph Curry. On both counts, I have been let down.
I still will respect Curry’s gifts on the floor. Just as I will, for now, respect LeBron James’ sincerity and motives with his school in Akron and his charitable activities along with the ferocity of his play.
What I am unsure of is whether I will pay to go to an NBA game soon. And, believe it or not, I am unsure of the NFL, except that they seem to impose their own brand of justice on societal offenders.
This has been an unsettling day for me. One of my heroes is merely a very good basketball player, lacking a dose of common sense and some academics.
Retiredlawyesportsop will be on vacation. See you in about two weeks; I hope the sports world doesn’t further implode during that time.
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