Choosing Greatness

There are two different ways to make any decision in life; with your heart or with your head. Some people think rationally about every choice they make, weighing the pros and cons before going forward with anything they do. Others act purely according to what their heart tells them. I’ve always prided myself on finding a balance between the two in all parts of my life, including sports. This is why LeBron James and the Miami Heat winning the NBA Championship made me happy to no end but also felt very different than when the Packers won the Super Bowl a year and a half ago.

Not to brag, but I have a pretty impressive track record predicting the eventual greatness of young athletes. Among the players I’ve chosen as “my guys” early in their careers are Cristiano Ronaldo, Adrian Peterson, Rafael Nadal, Phil Ivey (not an athlete, still counts) and Rickie Weeks (shut up, he was an all-star last year). The only example I can think of who hasn’t completely panned out yet is Sergio Garcia. I made these decisions with my head, noticing unrealized potential that eventually surfaced in those individuals. While LeBron was, by far, the easiest to see that potential in, the decade-long journey as a lover of all things King James was anything but easy. But, it was worth the wait.

It was a strange feeling. Even though I’ve become extremely emotionally invested in LeBron, Thursday wasn’t heartwarming. A feeling of euphoria didn’t overwhelm me like it did when Ben Roethlisberger threw that final fourth-down incompletion. It was more a sense of relief. I’m sure that had a lot to do with the specific instance of LeBron. He finally realized the destiny that was inevitable but at the same time seemed like it would never come. He’s one of the most unique cases in history.

Maybe “relief” isn’t the correct word. It was just as much a feeling of accomplishment, granted I didn’t accomplish jack shit. It was what I imagine a proud parent feels when their child is named valedictorian or earns an athletic scholarship or gets married. No matter how many poor decisions took place along the way, and I’ll be the first to admit there were a few, someone I truly believed in achieved greatness.

I’ve always understood both the pro- and anti- LeBron camps, because, like I said, I understand the balance between heart and head. LeBron had every right to leave Cleveland. I’ve stood by that since the beginning, but we can all agree that “The Decision” wasn’t the best way to go about it. It just so happens that I’m part of maybe the only other fanbase who has experienced a more distasteful parting of ways with its once savior. Yes, technically it was the Packers’ “decision” to trade Brett Favre, but don’t act for one second like he didn’t push himself out of Green Bay with every intent to return to the division one year later and seek retribution.

This isn’t the time or place to get into how I feel about Favre (oh by the way he sent pictures of his wang to a smoking hot Jets employee while his wife was suffering from breast cancer; 1 million times worse than anything LeBron James has ever done). Luckily, we had a future MVP to replace the dolt, but it still hurt, and, as you can tell, I never forgave the traitor. So I can empathize with Cleveland fans.

But, like I said, LeBron had the right to leave, just like any athlete in the modern free agency era. Minus one big “Decision,” he has carried himself unbelievably well while facing more pressure than any athlete in history. With the exponential growth of social media and multi-platform sports coverage, even overwhelmingly liked athletes such as Derrick Rose and Tom Brady face more scrutiny than they would have in any other generation, and LeBron is analyzed 100 times more than either of them.

Every game, every quarter, every shot LeBron takes is picked apart by the hashtaggers and internet heroes. The pressure may have affected his play at times (vs. the Celtics in 2010, vs. the Mavs in 2011), but it never affected his composure off the court. Think about it. LeBron has never been in trouble with the law. By all accounts he is a loving fiancé and father. Practically every teammate he has ever had says only good things about the man. Yet he was broken down and dissected more than all the Pacmans, Mike Tysons and T.O.s combined. It’s because everyone saw his greatness, and deep down everyone wanted him to succeed because we all wanted to witness it.

Let’s also remember the greatness who embraced LeBron moments after the buzzer sounded at the end of Game 5, head shrouded by a Gatorade towel.

No matter how well I think LeBron has handled himself, while being the most scrutinized athlete of all time, it pales in comparison to the class and maturity Kevin Durant continues to display every day of his life. With all the chatter about how LeBron finally lived up to his name, I don’t think enough has been said about the way a 23-year-old handled losing and has handled everything throughout his career. I repeat; this dude is 23 YEARS OLD! He scored more than 30 points per game over the course of his first NBA Finals on 55 percent shooting, and when his team didn’t give him enough help to take down the Heat all he could do was hug his parents, fight off the tears and go to the podium to tell everyone how hard he would work to get better.

What were you doing at 23? I was still in college, sleeping all day and drinking all night. Durant has three NBA scoring titles and unanimous claim to being the second best basketball player in the world, and he’s just going to get better. Simply put, he was placed on this earth to score buckets in basketball games. He cares about his family, his fans and getting better at basketball. That’s it.

Three days after losing the NBA Finals, Durant tweeted:

Went and watched some basketball at Barry farms and@RiseAboveAll3 displayed the best pump fake I've ever seen, need to steal it!

He was watching a Euroleaguer and former Central Florida player hoop and thinking of how to add a move to his repertoire THREE DAYS AFTER LOSING THE NBA CHAMPIONSHIP!!! LeBron is my favorite athlete in the world, but this kid is making it damn hard.

The difference between the two is that Durant has always chosen greatness. He really isn’t close to the all-around talent that LeBron is, but every day of his life he wakes up and chooses to be the best player and the best person that he has the ability to be. It’s unbelievable character for someone his age.

No matter how much room Durant still has to grow, LeBron’s ceiling is significantly higher. He possesses arguably the most raw talent of any NBA player (or athlete in general) ever. The only thing that made it close was their mindsets.

LeBron always used (and overused) his head. Durant has almost exclusively followed his heart. LeBron made passes to wide open but less talented players at the end of games. You couldn't pry the ball out of Durant's hand with the game on the line. LeBron decided to team up with Dwyane Wade in South Beach. Durant signed a ridiculously long contract extension with OKC the first chance he got. LeBron tried so damn hard to please everyone. Durant was so damn affable that pleasing everyone came easy.

On the podium, LeBron admitted that he spent his first season in Miami thinking about the people who doubted him and playing with too much hate. But at one point over the last month, some might say it was down 2-1 to the Pacers, I would argue it wasn’t until Game 6 against the Celtics, a neat thing happened.

Finally, LeBron chose greatness.

The Bad, the Good and the Unbelievably Beautiful

If it wasn’t for Thirsty Thursdays my life could be different. That statement is probably true in more ways than one, but today, two days after (hopefully) the series finale of The Killing and the season finale of Girls, it’s weighing on me heavily.

For those who don’t know, Thirsty Thursday is a weekly tradition among college students in Wisconsin, and I’m sure other places as well, that is basically what it sounds like. We got sloppy drunk. We made bad decisions. And, after freshman year, we knew better than to schedule Friday classes. One day, somebody decided that Friday and Saturday weren’t enough, and everyone went along with it. The weekend HAD TO start a day early. I’m sure a couple of generations down the road the weekend will begin on Tuesday, but when I was in college Thursday was often THE NIGHT to hit the town.

So where the hell am I going with this?

In addition to starting the weekend a day early, we usually kicked the night off before sunset. This meant that I was unable to catch the original airings of Louie, a now award-winning FX comedy created by one of my favorite people in the world that just so happened to air at 9:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Thirsty Thursdays. Instead I (being DVR-less) was forced to try and catch (sometimes unsuccessfully) a re-airing of each episode sometime during the following week.

If it had aired at any other time throughout the week, Louie could have been the first premium television show that I actively made an effort to watch each week from premiere to finale. I would have been proud of that. Regrettably, that distinction will forever go to the agonizing AMC drama known as The Killing.

(Quick note: I define premium television shows as any drama, or dramedy, that airs on HBO, Showtime, AMC or FX, with a few additional exceptions. If anyone thinks of a better categorization of these shows, let me know.)

Maybe I’m picking nits. In the grand scheme of things, does it matter what the first show that I followed beginning to end was? When The Killing premiered, I had spent the past two years retroactively playing along with the Ice Truck Killer and Trinity (from Dexter), seeing Jimmy McNulty (of The Wire) get drunk too many times to count and witnessing Walter White’s Heisenberg transformation (Breaking Bad). But, following along in real time, without the luxury of being able to watch entire seasons in one day connects the watcher to the show on a deeper level. And in a generation where television has finally established a cultural reach equaling that of music and film, “What was your first TV show?” could soon be on par with “What was the first CD you purchased?” (Korn’s Follow the Leader) and “What’s the first movie you saw in the theater without your parents?” (Old School).

When that question arises, I will respond truthfully, but I’ll be ashamed that my answer is Veena Sud’s twisting mess of a detective drama and not Louis C.K.’ s very strange but equally brilliant half-hour therapeutic sessions.

As fate would have it, the final (dear God please) episode of The Killing aired on the same night as the first season conclusion of the aforementioned Louie-esque Lena Dunham experiment Girls, which, as fate would have it, is the second premium television show that I have seen each episode of on the night it aired.

On the surface, The Killing and Girls have nothing in common. A one-hour AMC crime drama based on an international hit series vs. a half-hour Apatow-produced niche comedy from the mind of a 25-year-old girl. Apples and oranges right? To an extent. But, every TV show boils down to the same pieces. How those pieces are shaped is what determines if the result is a completed puzzle of a cute puppy or some junk you throw in the trash because you can’t even find the fourth corner.

The success of any show is based largely on its characters. The Killing had crappy characters. Every member of the show that we were supposed to identify with (Linden, the Larsen family, Richmond etc.) had overriding character flaws that made them immensely unlikeable. Detective Linden was a terrible parent with workaholic tendencies and stretches of temporary insanity. Stan Larsen was an abusive father and former gun-for-hire. Mitch Larsen ran out on her husband and children when they most needed her to satisfy some weird need for independence (or something. I’m not really sure because the show was terrible at explaining things).

The four title characters from Girls, along with their various significant others, are also deeply flawed, but their flaws are relatable to people who aren’t lifelong criminals, suicidal and/or in the running for the World’s Worst Parent Award. They’re selfish, neurotic, pretentious and insecure. Just like people we ALL know.

When it debuted, the show immediately received tons of internet backlash for its lack of diversity and abundance of whiny entitled white girls. It was more of a referendum on Dunham herself, and the thought that she had been handed the keys to a premium HBO timeslot without the experience or talent to pull off something meaningful.

There’s a reason that uproar subsided steadily as the season wore on. Dunham built a quirky, hilariously dry, brutally personal foundation over the course of 10 short episodes, whereas Sud constructed a winding, unintentionally funny, nonsensical maze that droned on for 26 looooooong episodes.

But, no matter how long each episode seemed, it’s still hard to believe they contained, but were not limited to, religious profiling, escort services, the Russian mafia, at least three potential Rosie Larsen love interests, buried Indian bones, a high school sex dungeon, arson, anime tattoos, a psych ward, one successful suicide, another suicide attempt, fake ganja, photoshop, every flip phone on the market and a bunch of other shit I can’t even remember. The amount of red herrings this show had could have filled Puget Sound.

I don’t want to waste any more time promoting the utter uselessness of The Killing. If you haven’t seen it, please don’t bother. The only reasons I plodded on were because the first few episodes were legitimately intriguing, AMC has an amazing recent track record and I wanted to know “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?” It wasn’t worth it.

It seems poetic to me though that I was able to quickly scrub the stink of The Killing off with what might have been the best episode yet of Girls, which concluded with a sleepy subway voyage and lonely cake-on-the-beach moment that was so reminiscent of something Louie himself would create.

While Jessa’s surprise wedding at first seemed as unbelievable as the many twists and turns of The Killing, halfway through the episode it suddenly wasn’t. It was something that a character such as her could and would totally pull off. Just as Adam being sideswiped by a car seems like it could totally have happened and Ray’s creepily honest confrontation of Shoshanna could totally have convinced her to let him take her V-card.

Dunham spent the majority of the season providing unusual backstories and character traits for all these uniquely different but intertwined characters. Then, in the finale, she flipped shit on its head. But it all made some strange sort of sense, because her characters, like all of us, are continually questioning themselves and changing who they are. Twists and turns can be great plot devices as long as they’re based in human logic. It’s something Dunham understands, but Sud never had a grasp of.

So, while I’m disappointed that The Killing and not Louie was my first TV show, I’m proud to continue to let Girls be my second.

I’m going to conclude this rambling mess with a proclamation of my love for Girls character Marnie.

For nine episodes, Allison Williams played an unattainable, career-oriented beauty who we all loved because she hated her (ex-)boyfriend for being too sweet and nice. So how is it possible that she became even more attractive by smearing cake in her face and making out with this guy? Maybe it was the crimped hair. More likely it was the sudden possibility that a normal dude with cheesy jokes could win her over, if only for a quick face sucking.

So Allison, if you’re reading this and you want to give it a shot with a guy who (not braggingly) is better looking and has cheesier jokes than Bobby Moynihan, I’m available. And for those of you who haven’t caught on to Girls yet, Marnie is at least one reason to give it a shot.

Oh, and Alex Morgan, if YOU are reading this, that thing about Allison Williams was a joke. You’re the only one for me.

(But seriously Allison, call me.)

One quick note, then I gotta go. I swear I didn’t mean to partially steal the subject matter of Andy Greenwald’s Grantland article and the site’s Hollywood Prospectus Podcast on the exact same day. Great minds think alike I suppose.

Being Wrong Never Seemed So Right

I was sitting with my friends at a rooftop bar in downtown Madison, Wisconsin when I saw it scroll across the bottom of the screen. My first thought was that my beer goggles were kicking in a little early. Bradley defeats Pacquiao by split decision?

Not 15 minutes earlier we had been scrolling our Twitter feeds and finding no one scoring the match in such a way that a Bradley decision could possibly be the end result. I inquired if anyone else at the table could verify that my eyes were playing tricks. No one else had seen the breaking news. Back to Twitter I went, and quickly discovered I wasn’t the only confused one.

Bill Simmons ‏@sportsguy33

Does everyone who watched tonight's fight have to appear as witnesses at the trial for the people who fixed it? How does this work?

Tom Crabtree ‏@TCrabtree83

What. The. Fuck. Just. Happened. Fuck.

Mike Hill ‏@MikeHillESPN

What were they looking at?????? This is OUTRAGEOUS and there should be some sort of investigation! #PacBradley

And so forth…

In the days following, the outrage and conspiracy theories haven’t petered out. The question is “Where does boxing go from here?” The answer might not be as bad as you think.

I consider myself a boxing fan. In my age range, that’s a rarity. As mixed martial arts became more popular, the number of young boxing fans dwindled. It’s hard to blame us. The number of marketable boxers has also fallen steadily in the past decade. The top two, Pacquiao and Mayweather, refuse to fight each other, as do the best two heavyweights, the Klitschko brothers. I didn’t even consider ordering Pacquiao/Bradley or going somewhere where it would be playing, because I just assumed that Manny would win convincingly, which, apparently, he did. And, like I said, I consider myself a fan.

So, will the controversy over the Bradley win cause boxing to lose what fans it had left? Not likely. It’s not as if this is the first match that has drawn questions of fixing or foul play. Boxing has been one of the most corrupt major sports since the 1800’s. There are a few things it will do, however.

In all likelihood, it will further delay the Pacquiao/Mayweather mega-match that everyone has been waiting on for years. Instead we’ll get Pacquiao’s rematch with Bradley late this year, which I’m sure Manny will win, and then the rubber match in 2013. But it’s not like there was any indication that an agreement with Floyd was going to get done anyway. Actually, the fact that there now MUST be a second, and almost surely a third, fight between Pacquiao and Bradley will help keep the public’s mind off the fact that they still aren’t getting the fight they want to see.

Yes, Pacquiao is getting robbed of a victory that he deserved. But how much does it truly hurt him if it’s unanimously accepted that the judges, for whatever reason, made the wrong decision? It’s not like he had an unblemished record. There is no number one contender who’s going to step in and grab his thunder now that he lost.

There is a buzz around boxing now. It’s not a positive buzz, but bad publicity is better than no publicity. There is an assumption that it will be difficult to sell the big tickets for Pacquiao/Bradley II. This might be true for the time being, but as the fight grows closer and we all want to see if Manny can right a wrong, the tickets will sell. The pay-per-view numbers will be higher, if only just from me.

For the fans, it wasn’t good. For Manny, it was downright atrocious. But for boxing, it could be a blessing in disguise.

None more and I gotta go.

Mock the Vote

For those who don’t know (and by that I mean absolutely no one inside the Wisconsin border), a long-awaited gubernatorial recall election was held on Tuesday. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker retained his seat by defeating Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, once again, and I, for one, couldn’t care less.

Now you might be asking yourself, “If you couldn’t care less then why did you write about it?” or “What the hell does this have to do with sports and/or popular culture.” Well the answer to question two is “Nothing,” and the answer to the first question is “I didn’t.”

This isn’t about the election. I’m not interested in debating the pros and cons of Walker and Barrett, because frankly I know very little about either of their platforms. I really have very few political views in general, but, weirdly, I have some very strong opinions on the voting process itself.

First of all, a lot of people are morons. They see that so-and-so supports gay marriage or what’s-his-face is pro-life and, because they share a similar stance on that hot button topic, they do their best Sammy Davis, Jr. impression and half-blindly cast their vote. Or, even worse, they align themselves with the democrat or the republican, because over their long, storied, commercial-watching lives they have decided that one of those parties is more in line with their views than the other.

Some of you might be taking offense to this. Notice I didn’t say all people are morons. If you are truly a diehard democrat and arrived at that decision through critical, rational thought then more power to you, but you should be just as outraged about the half-baked voters who blindly align themselves with you. The problem is both the morons and the savants have the exact same right to vote.

I propose a change that will never be considered because it makes too much sense; one simple test. Those attempting to vote would take a 10 to 20 question test covering the candidates, their political affiliations and their stances on the core issues of whatever election is being held. Everyone who takes the test would still have the right to cast their vote, but votes from voters who scored high on the test would be weighted higher. The test would separate voters into, let’s say, three categories, with the highest scorers earning three-point votes, average scorers earning two-point votes and everyone else with the traditional one-point vote.

Considering that the state of Wisconsin didn’t even require voters to show a valid ID at the booth this year, the chances that this amount of time and resources would ever be devoted to the voting process are slim. Naturally, the process must be simple as possible so as not to confuse any of the idiots. I mean it only determines who runs the country, so does it really matter? (We’ll get there).

This is the main reason I don’t vote. I don’t consider myself a moron, but I do consider myself highly uneducated in the field of politics. I don’t watch the news often. I don’t know enough to make a rational decision of who to vote for. At the same time, a five-minute Google search could probably help me make a more logical decision than people like this. This is where I would get pissed off if I were a passionately political person; not because there are people like this who have astonishingly warped senses of reality but because their votes carry exactly the same weight as mine does.

“It doesn’t matter who you vote for as long as you vote.” Is there a better word to describe that statement than “bullshit?” Instead of telling people to get out and vote regardless, we should be encouraging them to get educated. If you told me to get educated I would politely decline but respect the effort. When you tell me to go vote, I get pissed and write rants on my blog (wink).

The second problem I have with elections is the selfishness of humans, particularly Americans. Nearly every single person who casts a vote does it for selfish reasons, usually related to their career field. If you’re a union worker, you’re going to vote for the guy who supports unions. It’s not rocket science. It’s also the reason Occupy Wall Street didn’t cause any rich white guys to stop supporting other rich white guys who understand their rich white guy problems (come to think of it, Occupy Wall Street didn’t cause anything). This selfishness exists because of the inflated sense of importance that is inherent to everyone. You think your job is harder than everyone else’s, and therefore more important, because you’ve done it and you’re good at it and other people have no idea. It’s an excusable point of view. A threat to your career is a threat to your money, and a threat to your money is a threat to your livelihood. I understand. But it also means that you aren’t voting for the person who you think will be a better leader, you’re voting for the person who has your interests in mind. It’s selfish. But hey if Friends taught me one thing (actually Friends taught me EXACTLY one thing), it’s that it’s impossible to act selfless.

And in the end, does it really matter? I mean honestly. What kind of major policy change can be executed over a term of four, six or even eight years? And what’s to stop the next guy from simply changing it back? Over the course of a political term, nearly every governor, senator, president, whatever will do a couple of good things, a couple of bad things and almost everything will end up essentially the same as when he or she took office.

And you know what? We will all deal with it. Because no matter how moronic the masses can be, they are equally as resourceful. We live in absolutely the greatest, freest country in the world. Maybe you aren’t happy that gay people are allowed to get married, but you’ll get over it. Maybe you’re pissed off that your job got cut, but you’ll get a new one. In the grand scheme of things, with all the privileges and opportunity we’ve all been handed, this all seems like petty shit to complain about.

Of course, this is all from my point of view; a privileged upper-middle class white male who has probably performed about 30 days of real work in his life. I’ve never fallen on hard times or had my livelihood threatened, but it’s hard for me to believe that if you try hard enough, America won’t provide you with another chance that’s just as good as the last.

One more thing, then I gotta go. This is, in all likelihood, the last time you will see me write anything even remotely dealing with politics. So if it turned you off, please come back for the fun stuff.