It is only fitting that at the dawn of the month of my 34th birthday I am feeling old.
NOTE: I know that some portion of you just said something along the lines of ‘oh, bite me. You aren’t old’. Well, sorry. Get over it. I can’t do anything about you being older than me. Think of all the cool stuff you got to live through that I didn’t – the Vietnam War, Watergate, Super Bowls I – IX, Deep Throat, the UCLA dynasty and…well, that other Deep Throat.
NOTE #2: To the other portion of you that just said ‘wow, he is old’. Bite me.
Anyway, it isn’t just my completion of another trip around the Sun making me feel old, it is the world of sports. When I hear about the latest sports news, I inevitably end up sounding like Statler and Waldorf when responding. Damn kids these days.
It wasn’t always this way. It used to be I would cheer for teams based almost solely on them being the new, young up-and-comers. I adopted the New York Mets back in the mid-eighties in part because I was fascinating by this young phenom pitcher named Dwight Gooden. I even went out and put a Gooden poster on my wall and bought all the rookie baseball cards I could find. Until, of course, my mom threatened to ring the nose on my poster with White-Out.
Later, as the Lakers, Celtics and Bad Boys of Detroit ruled the NBA, I had a soft spot for this young kid playing in Chicago who seemed to have a little talent.
Now, when I hear about LeBron James, not shaking hands with the Magic after losing Eastern Conference Finals and then skipping the press conference, I think he sees himself above the every day requirements of being a professional. Do you think anyone that lost a playoff series wants to go in and face the press? No, but when you get millions of dollars to play a game, there a few obligations you have. You have to practice, you have to show up at charitable events for long enough to be photographed for those NBA Cares commericals, you have to do whatever your shoe company tells you to do and you have to talk to the press after games. These are especially true when you are the greatest player on the planet. An excuse that ‘you are a winner’ and you aren’t happy about losing doesn’t fly. You think anyone in the NBA is ok with losing? Other than Shawn Marion of course. You don’t become a pro athlete unless you are a fierce competitor who wants to win at any cost. But being a professional (or even being a man) means sucking it up and facing the music when things don’t go your way.
Of course, if you were given a Hummer in high school and were never held to account for it, why would I expect you to understand what responsibility and accountability means?
And it’s not like David Stern is going to call out his meal ticket of the future. Sure, Phil Jackson gets fined $50,000 for correctly pointing out publicly what we all know (that the NBA refs are slightly less incompetent than Sling Blade), but LeBron can act like the biggest baby this side of the Cutler family ranch and never get a slap on the wrist.
LeBron isn’t alone in making we worry about this entire generation of athletes. In the same week that LeBron took his ball and went home, Brandon Marshall appeared on Outside The Lines to explain why (yet again) he has been accused of domestic battery. While I don’t know the details of this charge, I have had enough. Less than a year after being suspended for three games (reduced to one) for a multitude of offenses to the extra-touchy NFL, Marshall found a new woman and more trouble. Is it so hard for a guy to find a stable woman and not get in massive fights with them? B-Marsh (as I call him) is entering his fourth year in the league and he has seen a team mate get shot and killed, shouldn’t it be about time he realizes that professional athletes are always targets? Whether by women or thugs, athletes are always going to be in the sights of those seeking money and fame. Understanding that and learning who you can trust should be the first thing that pro athletes learn.
Actually make that the second thing. The first thing is that no player is above being traded. No player. Especially not players that haven’t had a winning season since high school. Get it, Jay?
I won’t go into my feelings about B-Marsh’s contemporary, Mr. Cutler. I think I have sufficiently beat that story into the ground. What can I say, I am to Jay Cutler as Skip Baylees is to T.O.
I don’t mean to say it is just the off-the-field antics by the players these days that I don’t understand. I know that athletes have gotten in trouble for as long as there have been sports (or at least as long as newspapers have been willing to report it) but the growth of the me-first sports celebration drives me nuts.
When I was young…I can’t believe I just used that phrase, just shoot me now…the best known celebration in the game was the group high-five by the Smurfs on the Redskins. Now, we have the celebration dance of the week by a ridiculously overrated wide receiver on an awful team who legally changed his name to the incorrect translation of his jersey number. Maybe if his team had, you know a winning record and wasn’t just the punch-line of every joke about football teams with legal problems, his self-serving attitude might not have worn thin about 4 years ago.
Even on my teams, there are players who I don’t understand. Look at J.R. Smith. We get it J.R., you are a great athlete and made a great play. You know if you consistently did that rather than once every other game maybe you wouldn’t need to celebrate when you make a great play. It would happen so frequently it wouldn’t be worth going nuts every time.
Wow, just look at all that ranting about the players above. I am not sure what makes me sicker, how these guys act or my old man, holier-than-thou, things-were-better-in-my-day attitude.
It’s funny because my least favorite TV Sports opinionater is Skip Bayless and this is the exact reason why. He hates everyone and everything in sports and is so sure about what he thinks, he makes Bill O’Reilly’s opinions seem balanced and considered. Now I am starting to sound like him. When did this happen? What happened to the happy-go-lucky kid I used to know?
Getting old sucks. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go have some warm milk and go to bed.
