We rarley run entire collumns on this sight but this one needs it’s own slot.
- It’s funny, I can remember being young and in Cleveland and hearing old men — or, anyway, men who SEEMED old to me at the time — screaming about Jim Brown. Nobody was better than Jim Brown, they said. Nobody.
I believed this to be true, of course, having grown up in Cleveland at the Temple of Jim. But I was also a wiseass. “What about Earl Campbell?” I might ask. And it is true that to this day, I still say that Earl Campbell for three years — 1978 to 1980 — was the single most unstoppable force I personally have ever seen on a football field. Bo Jackson was for his short period of time the most electrifying, Emmitt Smith the most consistently good, Walter Payton the most complete, Barry Sanders the most exciting … but Earl Campbell was the closest thing to unfair I ever saw. There’s a good scene in the first Jurassic Park — the only one I’ve seen — where one of the dinosaurs is chasing a car, and it’s running REALLY fast, like 35 or 40 mph, and it’s terrifying to think that something that enormous could run that fast. That’s how I always felt watching Earl Campbell.
Anyway, I might have suggested Earl Campbell, just to set off the Cleveland men, and it always worked, these grown men on my father’s bowling team or teachers at my school or neighbors on my street … they would SCREAM at me — “Earl Campbell? Are you crazy? Earl Campbell? Compared to Jim Brown? I … I … Earl Campbell? Are you … seriously … I mean … Jim Brown to Earl Campbell … it’s like … are you CRAZY?” This is how they talked, they were so angry they sputtered, so furious about the blasphemous comparison they could not even put words or logic together. They did not want to argue. They were unwilling to argue. See, to even ARGUE about Jim Brown vs. anybody was to give voice to something profane and godless and unspeakable.
I used to get quite a bit of amusement out of this. And to be honest, I never understood the big deal. Yes, I understood, Jim Brown was a God in Cleveland. And I knew he was incomparably great. And I vaguely understood as I myself got older that we old people might not want let go of out own time, we often believe (and need to believe) that our time was special, our music was hipper, our movies were cooler, our schools were better and harder, our sports heroes were more heroic. Still, I never got why it mattered so much. I didn’t get why these people would go crazy about how Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano would knock Muhammad Ali’s block off, or how Joe DiMaggio would hit .400 every year against these soft pitchers, or whatever. I just didn’t get why it meant THAT MUCH to them.
And even as I have grayed and balded and aged into my late 30s and early 40s, even as the overwhelming superstars of my childhood have been surpassed and forgotten, even as Tiger Woods closes in on Jack Nicklaus, even as numerous quarterbacks make the case that they’re superior to Roger Staubach or Joe Montana, even as Barry Bonds passes Hank Aaron or Roger Federer stakes his claim … I don’t feel all that emotional about it. I might argue the point. I might stand up for athletes in my time. But I don’t go all Mad Money about it. Yeah, I think Carling Bassett was hotter that Maria Sharapova. Well, hell, I SHOULD think that, I was 13 then. Anyway, I’m not going to lose my mind over it.
Well, that is … until this NBA Finals began.
And then I started hearing people actually comparing Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan.
I should say up front that I honestly do not know how many people were making this comparison … maybe it was only Mark Jackson on TV and a few annoying people trying to cause a stir — sort of the way sports magazines of my youth (with original names like Inside Sports and Sport) tried to spur reader reaction by having these ridiculous headlines on their covers like, “Why Wayne Gretzky is not the best player in hockey” or “Why the Seattle Mariners are going to win it all” or whatever. So I don’t know if this Kobe vs. Michael thing is real or just something to talk about or a strawman to knock down. I really don’t know.
I do know this: Just the thought that anyone was even having this argument made me surprisingly angry.
Now, first, let me say that Kobe Bryant is an excellent basketball player who has led the NBA in scoring twice, who annually makes the All-Defensive team, who was a huge part of the three-peat Lakers and who was the clear leader on this Lakers team that reached the NBA Finals. He’s a terrific player, and I’m sure his stats are pretty similar to Michael’s …
Kobe Bryant: 25.0 points, 5.2 rebounds, 4.6 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.6 blocks, 2.9 turnovers, 45.3% FG pct.
Michael Jordan: 30.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 2.3 steals, 0.8 blocks, 2.7 turnovers, 49.7 FG pct.
OK, never mind, his number are not really similar at all. But Kobe still has some great years left, and he’s excellent and …
No, I can’t keep this going. It’s happened. Here is my first old man sports moment. This whole thing just ticks me off. Comparing Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan is like … er … it’s just plain … Kobe Bryant? To Michael Jordan? What? … I mean, that’s like saying that … um … I mean Kobe Bryant is like … are you CRAZY?“
Yep, that’s me sputtering. I cannot even begin a viable argument because it’s like arguing why chocolate cake tastes better than roofing insulation. It’s like arguing that Abraham Lincoln was a more significant American than John Candy. It’s like arguing that Casablanca is a better movie than the Bay City Rollers album Once Upon A Star … It’s like … Kobe? Compared to Michael? Are you serious? … it’s like here it is again, to even ARGUE the point is so frustrating, so infuriating, because you have to begin with an unfair premise, that being that there IS AN ARGUMENT to be made, and there is not.*
*I used to have an old newspaper editor who weaned me off the word ”arguably“ because, he said, ”Everything is arguable.“ He’s wrong about that. Kobe vs. Michael is not arguable.
Yes, this is the first time I feel really EMOTIONAL about an athlete of my childhood. I really do mean no offense to Kobe — OK, maybe a little offense, I don’t like him much, and I am partial to others like Tim Duncan, and I’d rather have Chris Paul or LeBron. Still, I appreciate that he’s a great player, one of the best of his time. But comparing him to Michael? What? I can’t help it … that infuriates me.
And the funny thing is that I wasn’t even THAT BIG a Jordan fan. It’s something else, something harder to describe, it’s an old man thought, I guess. Kobe is a great player. But Michael was the best player. He was one of the very, very few who you didn’t have to like … he towered over everything. And to compare those two, I guess, feels a little bit like saying my time doesn’t count, that my athletes were not as great, that there’s something more special about today than there was about when I was young and alive and brilliantly aware. Maybe that doesn’t make much sense. It’s emotional, I guess.
In any case, I was thinking about this again while watching the NBA Finals end on Tuesday in ignominy and disgrace for Kobe Bryant and the Lakers. I mean, seriously, the Lakers lost by THIRTY NINE POINTS. I won’t lie: That gave me some old man joy. The Lakers seemed to think they were playing a preseason game in Dubuque. They didn’t just get outclassed, they played like they didn’t care. Kobe was laughably bad. He was 7 for 22 from the field, he had one assist, four turnovers — you got the sense he only brought a carry-on bag with him to Boston.
And the argument is over. Forever. I don’t care what happens from here on out, I don’t care how many points Kobe scores or how many good years he has left, nobody with sense will ever have the gall again to compare Kobe and Michael. It’s not even worth saying that what happened to the Lakers on Tuesday could not possibly have happened to a Michael Jordan TEAM. What is worth saying is that Michael Jordan playing BY HIMSELF would have put up a better fight.
So, hey, score one for my era. There may someday be a player so great, so dominating, so victorious that even this old man will have to nod and say: ”OK, he’s even better than Michael.“ Then again, there may not.
Kobe Bryant won his first MVP award Wednesday night and Larry Diamond watched the whole thing.The crowd was jumping and I nearly wore out my clapping muscles before the game even started.
