There's nothing like a redemption
story. It's a yarn older than the written word, more beloved then a
tale of true love and continues unabated in every form of
entertainment today. It's nice to believe in the power of redemption
evens when it's mostly just a dramatic device contrived as an
efficient if not accurate way to convey complexity either the writer,
the reader or both can’t fully understand.
Witness, if you'll excuse the
reference, the common theme of LeBron James' capturing of his long
sought after NBA Championship. Nearly every sportswriter with a
breathless thought has defined the Miami Heat's triumph as the
personal triumph of James as if he were a member of the Lost Tribes
of Israel who suffered long and hard and made it out of the desert
alive.
Some suffering. James is one of the
richest athletes on the planet. He lives a life of opulence and
privilege borne of his outsized athletic skills. That was true before
the playoffs started and remains true today and for the foreseeable
future.
But attaining the championship he
previously couldn't is more a result of attrition than redemption. It
was just James' turn in the barrel. The Heat's path to the finals was
clear and easy, relatively speaking. The Oklahoma City Thunder's was
harder and longer and their fatigue and inexperience showed in the
end.
James already lived his redemption
story anyway when he signed his first pro contract. It was the real
triumph of overcoming the very long odds of his upbringing. Having
long since arrived he long since surrendered any candidacy in the
redemption sweepstakes.
Let's all be honest with one another
about this. James was always going to win an NBA title at some point.
He's the best player on the planet, he still works hard at his craft,
and he makes those around him better. It was always just a matter of
time. Now or next year or whenever.
The other reason James' championship
can never be a redemption story though is far more central to the
ultimate narrative. For redemption to work the protagonist has to
reclaim his soul. That hasn't happened here because James remains
soulless having sold himself for his quest. He's no Jabez Stone and
he doesn't have Daniel Webster on retainer even if he was. The devil
drives a hard bargain and never renegotiates.
James is a forever man-child
perpetually caught up in an adult world he doesn't fully understand.
He commands an audience because of fame and fortune but he'll never
fully have their respect because children are mostly seen and rarely
really heard.
There is no real chance that James will
ever fully gain the perspective one needs for real individual growth.
Fame and fortune obscure. Look at Michael Jordan. It hasn't yet
occurred to him that he is the worst owner/basketball executive in
history not named Isiah Thomas. Fame and fortune obscure.
James will go on to win a few maybe
several more titles and earn more and more individual accolades. But
they will never change the essential nothingness of his being.
It's not really that James stiffed the
Cavaliers and did so like a total putz. That was just the gating
charge when he entered the land of souls departed. It's that James
divested himself of the value system he so richly earned by avoiding
all the crap that life threw at him early for the fast track to a
phony Promised Land.
Pat Riley, the NBA's Gordon Gekko in
looks and outlook, was certainly a far more attractive option then a
muddling Danny Ferry. And while Ferry probably did lack the chops to
put all the pieces together it's not as if James wasn't complicit in
Ferry's difficulty. Let's never forget the long shadow James cast on
the Cavs franchise and how his every twitch and quirk set off alarms
inside the Q.
The irony is that James isn't lazy. He
works on his game in the same way every truly great athlete does.
Perfect, to his way of thinking, is never the enemy of good.
And yet James just couldn't abide
things not happening for him quickly enough. So he sought a shortcut,
a stack decked and if that cost him his soul, so be it.
In certain ways James is like Roger
Clemens another rare talent for whom great was never great enough.
Clemens used more nefarious means to cheat the system but he was
seeking the same kind of edge as James did.
Indeed there are plenty of characters
thought the history of sports that sought a similar path. It's as
old, too, as a redemption story.
There's no reason to begrudge James his
accomplishments because rare is the goal achieved without some
compromise. But James will always have to live with the fact that his
goals weren't nearly as earned as they could have been.
**
Speaking of redemption stories, the
Penn State apologists can begin theirs in earnest now that Jerry
Sandusky has been convicted on 45 of 48 counts of child abuse. There
will come a point this season, maybe the next, when someone isn’t
writing about Penn State’s resurgence as a respectable university
after if put Sandusky and his sick exploits in the rear view mirror.
Frankly I’m not sure that Penn State
can ever be redeemed. Shouldn’t it be scarred for life for its
complicity in the long term abuse by one of its more trusted
employees? Most certainly each of Sandusky’s victims will be
forever scarred so why should Penn State ever get a pass?
For those who always rushed to protect
Joe Paterno by claiming he had done what he could to stop Jerry
Sandusky, how in anyway has that view been vindicated now that
Sandusky is a convict? It hasn’t. If anything that view becomes
even more discredited when you consider the mountains of evidence
that were stacked against Sandusky and realize that because Paterno
hardly lifted a finger to have it stopped, the abuse continued long
after it could have been stopped.
In so many ways Paterno was a virtuous
soul. He did place great emphasis on academics. He worked hard to
build the stature of Penn State. For so many and for so long he
supposedly stood for what was right about college athletics.
But Paterno was never the country
bumpkin character that he liked to fashion for himself when it was
convenient to do so. More than anyone else, Paterno was well aware
that all his good non-athletic deeds for the university gave him
almost unchecked power on that campus. And Paterno wasn’t afraid
to utilize that power when he needed it to ultimately advance the
cause of his beloved football team. It’s been thoroughly
documented, for example, how Paterno kept his misbehaving players out
of the scope of normal university discipline. His greater good was
always far more narrow then he'd admit.
So when Paterno supposedly reported the
Sandusky allegations up the chain, Paterno had every reason to
believe nothing would come of it unless he specifically gave the word
to make something of it. That word never came and Sandusky continued
in his employ subject only to a whisper campaign while he quietly
went about abusing more vulnerable boys.
Penn State doesn’t get another
chance. Paterno was complicit and so was the rest of the university
administration. If the new administrative crew really wanted to show
its worthy of some level of forgiveness then it would start by
proving how much more important institutional integrity really is by
abolishing the football program completely and take whatever other
steps were necessary to reduce the importance of any remaining
sports. They’d wash Paterno off the books completely and take down
whatever statutes they erected.
It’s nice that Paterno had a positive
influence on so many young men. But this isn’t a balancing act.
You don’t get to cite those figures as a counterbalance because the
unthinkable, unimaginable horror that Sandusky’s crimes visited
upon all those victims trumps all.
If you want to understand how sad, how
truly pathetic this will all become, just wait until the university
finds it completely appropriate to play the victim card for itself.
It will pay out millions to settle lawsuits and then use that blood
money as some sort of proof that the university community has
suffered enough. It hasn’t and it never will because money will
never give these victims back what they lost most and it will never
erase the insidious way the university and its most important
employees allowed such atrocities to continue for years.
**
As a follow up to my column last week
about Scott Fujita, it’s been interesting that Fujita has gone back
underground, perhaps realizing that his mouth is his own worst enemy.
The other interesting thing is to
listen to union chief DeMaurice Smith call for a new investigation
into the Saints’ bounty case. That makes him an even bigger
hypocrite then Fujita, if that’s possible.
Smith didn’t participate in any
aspect of the first investigation. In fact, he specifically refused
to participate in the investigation and actively encouraged the
players to likewise not participate in it. If there was only one
side of the story that was heard, all the blame for that goes to
Smith.
But Smith has sensed, wrongly but
that’s another matter, that public opinion is such that the average
fan doesn’t think there was enough evidence to suspend the various
coaches, administrators and players. The average fan, I think,
doesn’t much care either way. No one’s going to march on NFL
headquarters in New York because Jon Vilma’s been suspended.
Smith gave decidedly wrong headed
advice to his members on this issue and now is deflecting by trying
to put the heat back on Roger Goodell.
The NFL has certainly put together a
strong case that the Saints had in place a bounty system and that all
that have been suspended deserved to be. There isn’t one
particularly smoking gun so much as it’s the evidence’s
cumulative weight that matters. That said, there were arguments to
make in rebuttal that never got made because of another failed
strategy by the union.
Goodell will rule this week and for the
most part close the book on this latest NFL scandal. Smith can
grouse about the decision because that’s what he’s paid to do but
hopefully the players’ whose lives and paychecks were adversely
affected will eventually come to realize that those adverse affects
were due in some part to the bad advice they got from Smith.
**
Since we’re on a litigation theme,
this week’s question to ponder: Even though he was acquitted of
lying to Congress, does Roger Clemens’ silence since that verdict
came down tell us more than a guilty verdict ever could?
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