Words. For Your Consideration...
"Why do we keep on believing that we'll see the arc of LeBron James' career just around the next corner? It's all Michael Jordan's fault.
...As every sports fan knows, Michael Jordan's storybook career is not a typical one. Sometimes a great player gets drafted by a team that already has the highest-scoring player in NBA history and starts winning championships his rookie year. Sometimes an all-time great only starts winning when he spurns his first team. It's also possible to stay with the same franchise your whole career and never win squat, or to move from team to team in search of a trophy and never come in first. Sometimes you have a bad game. Sometimes you lose.
And yet, Michael Jordan, the ultimate outlier in team sports, has become the bar that every basketball player must leap over. He is the basketball world's infallible older brother—Michael Jordan never would've done that, we say, tut-tutting disapprovingly when some wannabe heir has the audacity to lose a playoff series or to miss a bunch of shots in the fourth quarter.
As every sports fan knows, Michael Jordan's storybook career is not a typical one. Sometimes a great player gets drafted by a team that already has the highest-scoring player in NBA history and starts winning championships his rookie year. Sometimes an all-time great only starts winning when he spurns his first team. It's also possible to stay with the same franchise your whole career and never win squat, or to move from team to team in search of a trophy and never come in first. Sometimes you have a bad game. Sometimes you lose.
And yet, Michael Jordan, the ultimate outlier in team sports, has become the bar that every basketball player must leap over. He is the basketball world's infallible older brother—Michael Jordan never would've done that, we say, tut-tutting disapprovingly when some wannabe heir has the audacity to lose a playoff series or to miss a bunch of shots in the fourth quarter..."
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