« Reply #36 on: June 07, 2018, 11:27:03 AM »
I don't tweet but I do have twitter and this came across my feed a few weeks ago and I keep thinking about it. Someone asked Kevin Van Valkenburg (apparently an ESPN writer) what is your most biased sports opinion that you think is true no matter what? This was his answer:
Michael Jordan convinced a generation of sports fans (and athletes) that "greatness" had to be a joyless, obsessive, faux-alpha, corporate endeavor that required humiliating opponents, and 90 percent of bad sports takes can be traced back to people treating it as gospel.
I think this is right. Greatness looks a lot of different ways. Magic could be a nice guy and still be driven. Bird could be obsessive and talk trash but he didn't need the world to think he was great (just his peers). Russell could let others have the glory as long as he got the win. Tim Duncan didn't need to embarrass people.
Like I said before, Jordan is probably the GOAT. But there are real criticisms of the way he played and the way he led that have been dismissed for a long time in service of the cult of Jordan, I think.
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