I know this may sound weird seeing as my blog is titled Hate
Diary, but stay with me. I’m getting to
something big here.
Magic Johnson used to say he was driven to go to the gym and
work in the off season because he knew 3000 miles away Larry Bird was in a gym
working, and he couldn’t let Larry have that edge. When I heard this it made
all the sense in the world. Magic and
Larry were chief rivals. If it weren’t
for Magic, Larry would have an NCAA championship and 5 NBA championships, and
if it weren’t for Larry, Magic would have 6 NBA championships and the Jordan mystique
would feel a lot different. It also made all the sense in the world because
they were opponents in the same arena playing a zero sum game. I win you lose. You win I lose. The math is easy and makes sense.
When a team won a championship they were happy for
themselves and what they accomplished.
They would look in the camera and say “Hi Mom… we did it.” There was personal pride because they knew
they beat the best to accomplish their goal.
When Isiah Thomas reached the mountain top he said “Heaven must be like
this.” He reached heaven by defeating the Los Angeles Lakers.
Fast Forward a decade or so later. Now when teams win a championship… you hear
this “We all we got” and my personal favorite “No one believed in us.” So your arena is packed every night, your
shoes, and clothes are sold all over the world, your commercials are on every
TV network, and “NOBODY BELIEVES IN YOU.” I find that hard to reconcile.
Stark difference. What
had changed is that people had started to put a supremely high value on the
opinions of other people. They started
concentrating on the voice of the onlooker, the fan, the spectator. This is not only a sports problem. This is happening everywhere. Check Facebook, twitter, IG. All you see are people creating haters for
themselves for motivation. It’s a
slippery slope to KNOW without reservation the thoughts of others and how they
truly feel towards you. But these
simpletons do it every day because they feel fake opposition is better than
looking inward.
Ballers lost the gumption to go hard against old AAU or
college friends. They want to win but
not at the expense of their friend/colleague.
It is easier to go after the nameless, faceless critic. They would save press clippings and tape them
on the gym wall so they could do those extra reps. Creating an opponent from scratch, the very
definition of a straw-man. The media
became the enemy. They DVR “First Take”
to see what Stephen A, and Skip have to say.
Hoping they’d disrespect them so they could add more fuel. The goal is
not to win but to prove others wrong.
This is so misguided because in the heat of the battle your
opponent is in front of you. Your
opponent is not the fan, or the media, and you need to HATE your TRUE opponent
to win.
LeBron James got reminded of that again. His two greatest performances in his payoff
career occurred when his manhood was tested.
Down 3-2 to Boston in 2012, and this year in game 5 of the NBA Finals
after Draymond Green called him out of his name. He concentrated his HATE on his TRUE opponent
and channeled his greatness.
The problem is after he tapped into his dark side he went
right back to being a sheep. The Ultimate
Warrior T-shirt, and the tea sipping Kermit were a reminder that he still
thinks his opponent is not in the battle. I keep hoping they learn, but alas they never
do. It’s a sad life when your primary goal is to prove something to someone
else rather than prove it to yourself. Because SELF is the ULTIMATE OPPONENT.
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