Bizlife Smarts

Air Jordan!

As the saying goes, “’nuff said!”. His greatness is that he was always completely present; and that was the difference. ‘I want to be like Mike’ was the marketing platform and heady mantra that overcame us fans. But was it just pure marketing and fanaticism; beyond the reach of us mere mortals?! It eventually evolved to being all about the idiom of, “To be the Michael Jordan of…”, to illustrate the pursuit of the sublime, supreme perfection and achievement.

In the vacuous 2020 COVID spring, where ‘The Last Dance’ was our only respite, I pledged that I wouldn’t allow myself to write anything about the 10-episode Netflix/ABC/ ESPN special, until it had marinated for a while. I felt that, to be fair to all the also-rans, that try and get into the same conversation of the Greatest athlete Of All Time (G.O.A.T.), let me wait until professional sports resumes: That time is now! As I struggle to force an interest in the resumption of sports across the board, I’m continually stifling yawns; and this is from super gung-ho sports fan! I repeat. The one bright spark of sports that we have had this year thus far, has been ‘The Last Dance’.

The next one I’m waiting for is the November 28th Mike Tyson-Roy Jones boxing exhibition bout. COVID has had a strange way of doing that to everything around us; it strips things of any hype, veneer and fakery, revealing the essence of it’s value. It’s a shame that present day sports hold less appeal than echoes of sports greatness from 3 decades ago!

‘Hagiography’ really can be used in a sentence

We don’t need to get into heady hagiography, nor subject you all to Air Jordan fanaticism. Yes, I do know a few words like hagiography. It means ‘writing about someone as if (s)he were a saint’, or something like that. So, now that the summer has passed, we’re into the fall and the current incarnation of the NBA is going nowhere quickly. https://www.deseret.com/2020/9/11/21432326/the-sky-isnt-falling-but-interest-in-the-nba-is. I have been accused of kicking a man when he’s down, and in this situation it would be justified. Today’s NBA is a pale shadow of the scintillating era of Larry, Magic and Michael.

I could, like so many have done, rattle on about Jordan’s greatness, his achievements or his character flaws, but I won’t; at least that won’t be my focus. This is simply a reflection on how a major part of my psyche came to be, upon my coming of age. Some may draw lessons from it, and find that it applies to what inspires them too. The reason for me writing this, is for us to more keenly note what drives us. We all hope for such inspiration, so that we are more able to truly live our passions.

A little hardship early on

So, we do need to start from the beginning. It has become clear to me that, for many of the greatest things on earth, you must try to understand from where they came, what they went through, how they transformed themselves, and to what they have become. Let’s look at a some of the key challenges Michael went through in his early life:

• Anxiety causing grief in his mother’s life, causes his premature birth.
• He has chronic nosebleeds from birth until the age of 5.
• He falls behind his parents’ bed as an infant, almost suffocating.
• At the age of 2, he gets an electric shock from touching two live wires.
• And then at 5, he accidentally almost chops his toe off with an axe.
• At the age of 7, as they are playing in the ocean, a close friend gets swept away by an overwhelming current, and dies!
• His college girlfriend dies from drowning.
• On his first attempt, he fails to make his high school varsity basketball team.

This is quite a lot to go through, all before the age of 21. I posit, were these the events that went into creating a superman?! Maybe. Was it mystical? Or did he simply become what he became, through character and pure skill? Do not underestimate the strong foundations that he had in his life. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1990-04-15-9002010875-story.html. The things that transform us are more than meet the eye.

First get the fundamentals right

“The minute you get away from fundamentals–whether its proper technique, work ethic, or mental preparation–the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job, whatever you’re doing.” – MJ

As has often been said, the only person who ever stopped Michael Jordan on the court was Dean Smith. Smith, his college coach, made the skinny kid from Wilmington play within a system. In order to earn a place on the court, he harnessed his transcendant flair and made him get the basics right. Jordan learned the right way to play, and practiced, and practiced, and practiced, until he got it right. Isn’t that a basic expectation of us all in the pursuit of excellence?

The Air of focus & determination

“How can I think I’m gonna miss a shot when I’ve never taken it before?” – MJ.

Before you focus on:

• 9,000 missed shots.
• 300 lost games.
• 26 missed buzzer beating, potential game-winning shot attempts.

Think about:

• Behind Sam Bowie and being only the #3 pick, and becoming the G.O.A.T..
• From the ‘Bad Boys’ Pistons beat downs, to undefeated 6 times in the finals.
• Gives away $150 million to Juanita, having been a not so stellar husband, to now being worth over $2 billion, with his 2nd family of Yvette and twin daughters to boot, as he heads into his 6th decade of life.
• The ball gets stolen from him in his first comeback playoff loss to the Magic, and he vengefully returns for his 2nd 3-peat.

We often talk about learning from failure. However, these losses or shortfalls demonstrate the focus and determination of the man. Jordan was often accused of manufacturing slights and motivations to drive his passion to overwhelm his opponents. But I think that when you focus, you need something to keep you anchored to your target. His determination to overcome his past shortfalls did that for him.

The Air of politically incorrect domination

Jordan has been accused of cruelly dominating the will of every person he came up against, including his teammates. Now this is dangerous territory to wade into. Nearly all of the rest of us on this planet, no matter how good we are at what we do, are expendable…except for Michael Jordan! So, I preface my next comments with this: you are not Michael Jordan! You must always remember the adage that, it is better to be kind than to be right. But…if you want to win against insurmountable odds, you’re gonna have to forget the niceties of civility, and take your destiny into your own hands.

Now, that said, Jordan always ruled by being right. He possessed an incomparable ability to ruthlessly dominate men; yet everyone knew he did it for one reason, and one reason only – to win! He often had to do so under overwhelming odds. For that reason, all those around him, except Jerry Krause, knew it wasn’t personal. Winning is a heady potion, that all around Michael drank from. And his awe-inspiring charisma didn’t hurt either.

So, the lesson in this tale is that, yes pull out all the stops to win ethically. However, you are not Michael ‘Air’ Jordan. Whenever you start behaving like a bull (please don’t pardon the pun) in a china shop, remember that you are neither as transcendent, nor awe-inspiring, nor charismatic, nor simply magical as he is; for it to be overlooked or forgiven. What you should do is balance the personal costs of winning, versus the reward that will come to you.

Clarity of who you are & what you do

One thing that we should gift to our children, is their knowledge of self. That may seem like a random thought in this whole piece, but is key to the child that Deloris and James raised and nurtured. I have never seen what can be called cockiness in Air Jordan, but he has always had a supreme confidence, rarely found. Jordan is the type of person you take notice of when he walks into a room; be it as a scrawny North Carolina freshman, or as the richest athlete in the world. There’s a way such people carry themselves: without announcement, declaration nor braggadocio.

Michael knew what he was and what he wanted to be from an early age. He let big brother Larry, pound it into him on the court. And his parents, recognising it, nurtured it. Life’s heartbreaks then made him never want to go to those places again. He was always skipping chores as a kid, but was always the hardest working player on the team. His parents knew it would be difficult for their son to ever hold down a 9 to 5, so they nurtured his sporting talents.

Isn’t that part of the reason that after his father’s murder, he donned number 45, wielding an ash bat and leather glove, while travelling on a bus with men-children 20 years younger than he, rather than the usual private jets?! And overall, he held his heart in a gilded cage – those who try and break down his complexity, overlook the simple fact that he knew his heart from an early age, and never wanted it broken. I believe that is why he worked so hard to become the G.O.A.T.

Air Jordan: The relentless pursuit of a goal

People throw the word ‘relentless’ around too freely. You name one single other athlete in the World…or in history, who is or was always on, and we can continue to have this G.O.A.T. argument. Only Michael Jeffrey Jordan, or Air Jordan, or Mike, was always on, in everything he did.

I would have liked this to have been a story of what we can learn from Jordan, in aspiring to greatness, but unfortunately that has been overdone. This is simply my understanding of the man, that resonates with me, and inspires me every day; more than the wins and the trophies. I was a Chicago Bulls fan who endured those losing years in Chicago stadium. That was the dog house they played in, in the years before the house that Michael built – The United Centre. This storyline and these attributes struck a cord in me before the first championship, and the six of them were purely icing on the cake.

To imagine that a character, a player, a life story and supreme dominance of the nature of Michael Jordan would or could ever exist, was pure fantasy. But yes, those of us who were on the sidelines, and in front of our screens, witnessed the once in a lifetime phenomenon of the greatness that he has been, and will forever be.

In conclusion

What we can learn however, is to simply take those snippets of his life and career, and bask in the glory that we lived to witness such a phenomenon. I’m frankly tired of the debates of who is the G.O.A.T. Jordan himself has said that there will be players to come who will score more points, win more championships and capture the imaginations of their eras, long after his time has past. However, that is not what is this is about. There is no other player, who will capture our hearts, minds, imaginations, hopes, dreams, aspirations, rapture and pure joy, like Michael Jeffrey Jordan has…and each of us should just try and learn a tidbit or two from his triumphs over the sport, and in life.

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