Sometimes I dream.....

10979 At the end of, what used to be a dirt road, resides a basketball goal with a slightly bent rim and a broken backboard.  No longer there is the kid that used to spend hours upon hours playing one on one against invisible opponent until the sun went down.  His tongue wagging as he drained game winning shot after game winning shot all the while humming a Gatorade jingle that he had heard on TV.  Somewhere in the dirt is etched a line where he would shoot free throws with his eyes closed and try to glide from there when he finally got tall enough to dunk on the 9 ½ foot goal. As I sat and watched Michael Jordan get inducted into the hall of fame I couldn’t help but remember how much I wanted to be like Jordan when I was kid.  The moment I touched a basketball I was immediately transformed into Jordan.  Out there in the southern sun I would smack my gum, as sweat poured off my bald head, posting up Michael Jordan or fading away from him as my dusty nets would snap after each made shot. Three, two, one the crowd would count down and then I would launch and arching shot over Jordan’s outstretched fingers, just before the buzzer, only have to rim out, but wait, there was a foul on the play and I’d replay the scenario until I hit the shot.  What can I say; I wanted to be like Mike. That’s why I sat on the edge of my couch completely immersed in Jordan’s hall of fame induction speech as I heard the G.O.A.T. describe what made him the G.O.A.T.  Honestly, that was the first time in my life that I saw the real Michael Jordan.  The off the court persona was not the real Michael Jordan.  That was Clark Kent groomed to hawk sneakers, push Gatorade to the denizens, and answer each question impeccably as if they had been rehearsed.  That Michael Jordan had been created by Nike in an accomplished effort to make Jordan into a global icon that he is today and that everyone wanted to be like.   But there on the stage at the NBA hall of fame induction stood Superman aka Air Jordan in all his glory dressed as Clark Kent.  That was the Jordan that we saw in the highlights: the guy with the flu, the guy jumping in the air after the shot over Craig Ehlo, the guy that climbed Mt. Mutombo and knocked it down with a wag of a finger, the cocky guy at the all star game with more bling around his neck than Run DMC, and the same guy that cried when he won a championship on Father’s day.  We heard in words what we saw on the court.  Was his speech petty or trivial?  If you measure it against the Nike version of Jordan then you’d have to say it was, but if you measure it against Air Jordan then you’d have to say it was right in line with what you’d expect.  He never pulled any punches on the court and didn’t pull any in his speech.  He was the peacock displaying his feathers to remind us of what we already know: that his game will never be equaled.  I appreciated his speech because we finally got a glimpse of what fueled one of the greatest competitors of all time and what it must have been like to play against Jordan on the court.  If it were anything like his speech then it was definitely an emotional experience. The lasting impression I think Michael Jordan wanted to leave with us is that he’s the same as any other person except that he took what a normal person would deem irrelevant and used that as motivation to make himself into the greatest basketball player of all time.  In that realm I cannot fathom what is to be like Mike but I sure can dream.   true

2009-09-16T17:38:54Z

94429 0 Sometimes I dream.....

2009-09-16T17:38:54Z