Nostalgia can be an ugly thing. It makes the future seem uncertain, the present feel unbearable and the good old days seem great. Ah, the good old days! The sun shone brighter, love was sweeter, and happiness felt richer. These were the days when Grandpa walked barefoot on railroad tracks to school uphill both ways in a hurricane. Or maybe it was a blizzard. Either way, it made him who he is today. Yes, those were the days! Deep down we know this is hyperbole. But that’s what nostalgia really is. It’s an Aaron Copeland accompanied exaggeration of what life used to be like and what we wish it was like right now.
Our sports memories work much the same way! When I was growing up there were serious rivalries between individual players. Magic and Bird had retired but the aura surrounding their rivalry was still fresh. Michael Jordan hated Isiah Thomas, Troy Aikman and Steve Young seemed to have a personal distaste for Brett Favre. Patrick Ewing made public statements dissing the Chicago Bulls at every turn.
In sports today, this type of individual rivalry is dead and it’s people who grew up during the aforementioned era -– like myself –who are to blame. Like Grandpa telling a kid what things were like when he was growing up as opposed to how easy things are today, people romanticize the era they came of age in. And it’s often to the detriment of today’s athletes.
No one has been victimized by that concept more than Miami Heat forward LeBron James. LeBron is seemingly unmatched. His toughest opponents are our faulty memories. Just this year LeBron has had public spats with both Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson. That is the downfall of social media and the media at large.
LeBron has grown up in the shadow of both players. His game is a mirror image of Magic Johnson’s with a little bit of Michael Jordan’s scoring prowess thrown in. LeBron has Karl Malone’s body, Dominique Wilkins’ hops, Scottie Pippen’s defensive skills and has recently developed a little Bill Russell rage. Yet LeBron is constantly forced to take a back seat to the legacies of many of those players. If he has a bad game he hears about how Magic or Michael would never have played that badly. If he has a great game he hears about how it was almost as good as Michael’s better games, but not quite as good. When Ray Allen hit the NBA Finals’ biggest shot, people didn’t talk about Ray’s greatness. They talked about how LeBron didn’t hit that shot the way Michael would have.
This chatter is constant. Twitter and ESPN never cease. Facebook pages trashing LeBron are everywhere. Skip Bayless is red-faced as he screams about how LeBron isn’t great
So isn’t surprising to see LeBron taking to these social entities to defend himself. Unfortunately, that seems to only make it worse as people shout him down for daring to defy the great Magic Johnson or the greater Michael Jordan.
Our nostalgia tells us that Jordan’s Bulls and Magic’s Lakers won every game by 40 points, never missed a shot, never had a turnover, stood for justice, peace and the American way.
Our nostalgia doesn’t tell us how Michael was the same age as LeBron when he won his first title or he didn’t always hit the big shot or about how he missed game-winning shots during the NBA Finals. Sometimes other players hit the big shot like Ray Allen did for LeBron this year.
Nostalgia doesn’t tell us how Magic singlehandedly cost his team a championship in 1984 and how he was badly outplayed by the vastly inferior Kevin Johnson in 1990. Then the next year, the Bulls bulldozed him in the NBA Finals.
If those things had happened today, we would be talking about them 24/7 on any number of media outlets. Debate shows would be raging, disrespectful tweets would be flying and YouTube clips of those failures would be viral.
The good old days weren’t that good. While the future is uncertain, the present doesn’t have to be unbearable. Players like LeBron James or his football counterpart Aaron Rodgers have a constant battle against our perceptions of their predecessors. Hopefully, people will learn to appreciate these players’ greatness before it is too late and they are gone.
Someday a kid will tell you how great this new superstar player is, about how no one could be better and that you just don’t understand that players’ greatness because you’re old and out of touch.
They will tell you how this new superstar would destroy any player from when you were growing up.
You’ll just sigh knowingly and tell them this new superstar is nothing compared to a man you saw back in the day, back when players were really great and back in the era of the king, LeBron James.
Don’t believe me? Just wait.