September 13, 2009
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THUD!!!!
Did you hear that loud thud? That was the sound of Michael Jordan falling from his pedestal. Although most of what I wrote about last week is still true, turns out that he is actually an insecure, bitter, kind of crazy asshole. In his speech for his Hall of Fame induction, instead of making peace and being humbly reflective on his brilliant career, he spent most of the 35 minutes he was on stage condescendingly thanking people who had motivated him by what he perceived as doubting him. As many people know, Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Well, he flew in the guy who was picked instead of him to attend Friday’s ceremony just so that he can tell his coach “see, I wanted to show you that you made a mistake by not picking me.” Well Michael, I’m sure your coach realized that probably about 25 years ago.
At first when Michael got up on stage he was sobbing, which I thought was cool. But, as he went on to speak, it became obvious that instead of showing appreciation to the people that helped get him to this point, he wanted to stick it to the people who tried to stop him. Earlier in the night, fellow inductees David Robinson and John Stockton paid tribute to the great coaches and teammates they had over the years that helped get them to this point. Not Michael. In fact, the only time he really mentioned his teammates or coaches was to point out how some of them doubted him. The same would go for his family. It was really quite a sad display. A guy I played cards with said that Michael was drunk when he made his speech. At first I doubted him. Then I saw a video of a press conference Jordan had earlier in the day and in comparison with the speech, he attitude and demeanor were vastly different, although he still had a hint of arrogance and bitterness in his words. Some people might make excuses if he was drunk, but you know what they say, a person’s true self comes out when he is drunk. While Michael Jordan is without a doubt a hall of famer in the sport of basketball, when it comes to sportsmanship and the quality of a person, he would be a first ballot Hall of Shamer.
Yesterday I played cards at Scott’s house. Over the course of the past year, I have tried to get Jt to go on a few occasions, but was always reluctant because he is so much better than anybody else there and I assumed he would dominate the games. Well, last night he was able to go. Hell, even Dave showed up for the second game. In the first game, we had 14 people and I actually outlasted Jt. In the second game, I took the guy next to me out on the second hand of the game, meaning I was chip leader of the remaining 10 people. As the game went on and more and more people went out, I got both worried and excited that the game would come down to just me, Dave and Jt. As fate would have it, it got down to the three of us and Scott. Some how I managed to take Dave out before Scott went out. Soon though, it was just me and Jt left in the game. Although I was beating him in chips, he managed to come back and beat me.
