This may have been the most disappointing article in months, the recent piece by (or is it on?) Michael Jordan in ESPN the magazine (read it here). If you find the link on the ESPN page it will be something along the lines of "Michael Jordan tells us how to fix the image of the NBA" or some such nonsense. I expected there to be some fluff because after all it is ESPN and it is MJ, and I do occasionally see an ad for Nike during sportscenter.
I hoped for a story covering what its like being the preeminent black athlete in a sport linked to "hip-hop culture" being marketed to a white middle America. If there's any special attention taken to be distanced from the hip-hop culture embraced by the infinitely less marketable Allen Iverson's. That sort of story. That would have been interesting. Equally interesting would have been a story on what exactly his plan for the Bobcats is.
Before the article even started I found this line
by Michael Jordan (as told to Ric Bucher)
There's an odd author line for a story. Apparently ESPN felt the need to send a reporter to write down or record what Jordan had to say about the NBA. Seems like a job for an intern, or somebodies secretary, or voicemail, or better yet Michael could actually put pen to paper himself. But I guess this is the treatment you get for being MJ. He truly is royalty I guess.
So Michael pens, I'm sorry, dictates an article that's not incoherent but is a bit confusing. He blames David Stern for marketing problems, saying that he can't force players into the molds he made and Magic made and Barkley, Bird, etc. A salient point. Although I don't know that David Stern has ever said anything about Vince Carter, Kobe Bryant or Lebron James being the next Jordan. I don't think he's holding private meetings with Kobe Bryant and giving him Jordan highlight tapes telling him to play more like that. Or telling Chris Paul to play like Isiah Thomas (although they'll market him as something completely different, disavowing any knowledge of Isiah). The network running Jordan's article, however, has made comparisons a couple of different times. Or maybe on a weekly basis. Strange that it was never brought up.
He also comments on cornrows. Explaining that he had them when he was younger and wondering aloud if he would have been accepted had he continued to wear them during his rise to prominence. It's not quite an old man sitting in a rocking chair prodding you with his cane and insisting "Get a haircut, damn hippy," (hip-hoppy?) but it felt along those lines. A subtle message of "To be accepted in corporate America, get a haircut."
He doesn't claim that he changed himself to be a corporate icon, but instead that a corporate icon is, in fact, who he really is. I suppose that's true, he would have looked ridiculous putting his male pattern baldness into cornrows, so in a sense he is the icon. He didn't choose it, his hairline chose it for him.
So where does the image problem lie? Maybe it's lies less with David Stern's marketing of the players and more with the media coverage afforded to different NBA players. How can a league not have an image problem when there's such varying discrimination from player to player.
Sure, MJ's an adulterer, and a questionable (at best) front office guy, and of course a (compulsive?) gambler to the point that he may or may not have been asked to take time off from basketball. Maybe he's been mentally and verbally abusive to other players on his own sideline, and he's also a brand that has resulted in more than a couple fashion related fatalities. These aren't the things we associate with MJ though. He's remembered for being the fiercest competitor sports has seen. And in spite of those travails I've listed, he's remembered as being perfectly marketable.
This brings me to a contemporary of Jordan's. A contemporary as a player and as an executive. Someone who doesn't have a fat Nike contract and doesn't receive the benefit of a short and selective memory of the public.
Isiah Thomas has always been a bit rougher around the edges than MJ, but he deserves to be mentioned by Jordan alongside the Bird's, Barkley's and Magic's that shaped the modern NBA. Isiah's legacy is forgotten, impossible to see through the mud networks like ESPN has drug him through (and rightly so, he's done some terrible work in places like New York and the CBA). All while the same network brushes the dirt off MJ's golden image.
I'm not claiming they were of identical importance of players or that they have equally tumultuous post playing careers. Isiah comes up with the short end of the stick in both cases, but not to the extent that it would seem from the current perception of the two. Isiah's made some bad moves, and has the luck of being under James Dolan who can afford to give him more than enough rope to hang himself with three times over.
Even though these two guys have walked similar paths through their lives, one shimmers while the other corrodes. I'm sure this has nothing to do with all the major news outlets for sports receiving millions of advertising dollars from Nike and Hanes (who's commercials make me about as comfortable as watching porn with my grandmother).
Maybe there wouldn't be such an image problem with the NBA if every player were signed to a great big Nike contract. Then things like drugs, unregistered handguns, troublesome entourages, and domestic disputes would be a thing of the past. At least to the casual fan who only gets news from a couple episodes of sportscenter.
There's an odd author line for a story. Apparently ESPN felt the need to send a reporter to write down or record what Jordan had to say about the NBA. Seems like a job for an intern, or somebodies secretary, or voicemail, or better yet Michael could actually put pen to paper himself. But I guess this is the treatment you get for being MJ. He truly is royalty I guess.
So Michael pens, I'm sorry, dictates an article that's not incoherent but is a bit confusing. He blames David Stern for marketing problems, saying that he can't force players into the molds he made and Magic made and Barkley, Bird, etc. A salient point. Although I don't know that David Stern has ever said anything about Vince Carter, Kobe Bryant or Lebron James being the next Jordan. I don't think he's holding private meetings with Kobe Bryant and giving him Jordan highlight tapes telling him to play more like that. Or telling Chris Paul to play like Isiah Thomas (although they'll market him as something completely different, disavowing any knowledge of Isiah). The network running Jordan's article, however, has made comparisons a couple of different times. Or maybe on a weekly basis. Strange that it was never brought up.
He also comments on cornrows. Explaining that he had them when he was younger and wondering aloud if he would have been accepted had he continued to wear them during his rise to prominence. It's not quite an old man sitting in a rocking chair prodding you with his cane and insisting "Get a haircut, damn hippy," (hip-hoppy?) but it felt along those lines. A subtle message of "To be accepted in corporate America, get a haircut."
He doesn't claim that he changed himself to be a corporate icon, but instead that a corporate icon is, in fact, who he really is. I suppose that's true, he would have looked ridiculous putting his male pattern baldness into cornrows, so in a sense he is the icon. He didn't choose it, his hairline chose it for him.
So where does the image problem lie? Maybe it's lies less with David Stern's marketing of the players and more with the media coverage afforded to different NBA players. How can a league not have an image problem when there's such varying discrimination from player to player.
Sure, MJ's an adulterer, and a questionable (at best) front office guy, and of course a (compulsive?) gambler to the point that he may or may not have been asked to take time off from basketball. Maybe he's been mentally and verbally abusive to other players on his own sideline, and he's also a brand that has resulted in more than a couple fashion related fatalities. These aren't the things we associate with MJ though. He's remembered for being the fiercest competitor sports has seen. And in spite of those travails I've listed, he's remembered as being perfectly marketable.
This brings me to a contemporary of Jordan's. A contemporary as a player and as an executive. Someone who doesn't have a fat Nike contract and doesn't receive the benefit of a short and selective memory of the public.
Isiah Thomas has always been a bit rougher around the edges than MJ, but he deserves to be mentioned by Jordan alongside the Bird's, Barkley's and Magic's that shaped the modern NBA. Isiah's legacy is forgotten, impossible to see through the mud networks like ESPN has drug him through (and rightly so, he's done some terrible work in places like New York and the CBA). All while the same network brushes the dirt off MJ's golden image.
I'm not claiming they were of identical importance of players or that they have equally tumultuous post playing careers. Isiah comes up with the short end of the stick in both cases, but not to the extent that it would seem from the current perception of the two. Isiah's made some bad moves, and has the luck of being under James Dolan who can afford to give him more than enough rope to hang himself with three times over.
Even though these two guys have walked similar paths through their lives, one shimmers while the other corrodes. I'm sure this has nothing to do with all the major news outlets for sports receiving millions of advertising dollars from Nike and Hanes (who's commercials make me about as comfortable as watching porn with my grandmother).
Maybe there wouldn't be such an image problem with the NBA if every player were signed to a great big Nike contract. Then things like drugs, unregistered handguns, troublesome entourages, and domestic disputes would be a thing of the past. At least to the casual fan who only gets news from a couple episodes of sportscenter.
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I don't like you
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