You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will (9 page)
Read You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will Online
Authors: Colin Cowherd
Guys, it’s time to grow—and grow up.
Michael Jordan is the most popular and revered athlete in the world. He is absolutely glorified as a global icon, to the point where his fiftieth birthday in February of 2013 caused the sports media to reach for new ways to cover what is essentially a nonevent.
LeBron James, on the other hand, is one of the most polarizing athletes in the world. Any of his missteps, or perceived missteps, is exaggerated. His flaws, or perceived flaws, are dwelled on long after they’ve been either rectified or proven wrong.
The Decision
is a running joke that may end up being the second or third line of his obituary.
Why? Why are two of the four or five greatest basketball players in the history of the game treated so differently? Is Jordan so morally superior that he deserves no criticism while the other is so morally reprehensible he deserves it all?
No. Far from it. Couldn’t be further from the truth.
To accurately assess the phenomenon, start with one word: Nike.
I am in no way insinuating that Michael Jordan didn’t do his part to fuel his popularity. But part of his appeal—a
big
part of his appeal—is that he had the greatest marketing ever put forth on behalf of an athlete.
Marketing creates popularity, and popularity creates a shield. Nobody on earth—nobody in the
history
of the earth—is marketed more thoroughly and effectively than Michael Jordan. It’s not even close. Nike is the only company that can create a marketing campaign that drives public opinion. And that’s not open for debate, either.
The type of campaign Nike runs creates an army of people who do the groundwork. They spread the word. They defend against all critics. This army of evangelists works in concert with the larger campaign to create an airtight, indestructible image.
It’s nothing less than a real-life superpower.
If you have it, nothing can penetrate. If you don’t, you’re going to have a hard time shedding anything even remotely negative.
Take USC football coach Lane Kiffin. He’s unpopular for any number of reasons. He got too much too soon when Al Davis hired him to be the youngest head coach in the NFL. He was an ingrate when he dared to question Grandpa Al’s football acumen after being fired by the Raiders. He’s considered cocky and egomaniacal. He remains Public Enemy No. 1 in Tennessee for the slippery way he left his job as head coach of the Volunteers. Kiffin is not always deft when it comes to public relations, so everything sticks to him. Big stuff, little stuff—doesn’t matter. If it went wrong, blame Lane. The Trojans were part of a ball-deflating scandal in 2012. He knew nothing about it and had nothing to do with it. He got blamed.
Unpopular guy: everything sticks.
Popular guy: nothing sticks.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
The closest comparison to Jordan is Ronald Reagan. His “marketing” campaign was a political movement that anointed him to save the country after Jimmy Carter, and the movement served as his Nike. Reagan was an immensely popular president, and his popularity was remarkably persistent. It withstood despite Iran-Contra, losing 241 Marines in Lebanon, and goofy jokes about bombing the Soviet Union. What did Reagan’s popularity get him? A lifetime—and beyond—pass that led the country to consider putting him on Mount Rushmore. Nothing could touch Saint Ronnie, and his popularity made him be known as The Teflon President.
Michael Jordan is the Ronald Reagan of the sports world.
He punched two teammates in practice sessions.
Didn’t stick.
He called Kwame Brown a homosexual slur.
Didn’t stick.
He was serially unfaithful to his wife.
Didn’t stick.
He left the NBA during his prime in a frivolous attempt to pursue a baseball career amid rumors and allegations that he was forced out because of gambling problems.
Didn’t stick.
He gave an outrageously petty Hall of Fame speech, going so far as to ridicule an old man who had the audacity to keep him on the junior varsity team when he was a sophomore in high school.
Didn’t stick.
He is one of the most ineffective, even
inept
, decision-makers as president of the Charlotte Bobcats.
Didn’t stick.
Indestructible and invincible must be a pretty cool way to go through life.
To make one thing clear: Jordan was the best basketball player I ever saw, but Nike created a mythical figure, where flaws disappear and attributes take on legendary status.
Jordan is the first athlete to literally become his own brand. It’s almost laughable when you say it out loud:
the man is his own brand
. How powerful is that? Consider this: the most recognizable player in Major League Baseball, the best player in the biggest market with the best image—
Derek Jeter
—wears baseball spikes with a silhouette of Michael Jordan on them. The most well-known baseball player wears a basketball player’s shoe.
That’s
some serious power.
LeBron, despite talent that is in the same neighborhood as Jordan’s, doesn’t have anything close to the marketing power behind him. Because of that, he doesn’t have anything close to the same impenetrable force field surrounding him.
Nike doesn’t need to turn LeBron into another Jordan. They still have Jordan to be Jordan.
When Nike started its marketing push with Jordan, it needed him. Nike was already a multinational company, but the late ’80s and early ’90s were a different time. The landscape wasn’t as cluttered. There weren’t hundreds of television channels; there was no YouTube, no Internet. A company like Nike could still drive pop culture with clever advertising campaigns like the ones they ran for Jordan.
How strong is Nike? Nike is a company so profoundly shrewd that it could take a geographically isolated college football program from a state that produces, on average, five Division I players a year, and turn it into one of the top ten brands in college football. You want to know Nike’s true power? Look no further than University of Oregon football.
Oregon football is a national brand. When I mention that program, you immediately think of a million different uniform combinations, an offense that runs a zillion miles per hour, and facilities that would make a Saudi prince blush.
All because Nike created the brand.
Here’s another example: Reebok spent $50 million to be the title sponsor of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. But when asked afterward to name the title sponsors, 22 percent of respondents to a survey said Nike, and 16 percent said Reebok.
How did Nike pull this off? In its usual smart, shrewd manner. It handed out swoosh placards in the venues and put giant billboards all over town. It put enormous swooshes on office buildings
and skyscrapers in downtown Atlanta, so whenever there was a television shot of the city, there was sure to be a Nike swoosh in it.
Let’s look a little closer at Michael and LeBron.
From the moment Michael hit the last-second shot for North Carolina to win the NCAA title his freshman year to the time he won his first NBA championship, eight years passed.
Eight years. Remember that.
From the time he graduated from high school, LeBron spent eight years trying to get an NBA title—six of them with a Cleveland team that had nobody else who even resembled a star—and it was seen as a huge character flaw. He wasn’t a winner, he didn’t care, he choked when it counted. LeBron was viewed as being more frivolous than Michael, less focused, the product of a generation that valued flash and cash over banners in the rafters.
Eight years for Michael, he became known as the ultimate winner.
Eight years for LeBron, and his inability to win was seen as a huge character flaw and proof that he really didn’t care about winning.
Michael was focused. LeBron was frivolous.
The Michael vs. LeBron argument is almost entirely driven by what Nike created.
Even now, even after LeBron has won back-to-back titles and has reached the Finals in all three years with the Heat, his achievements get minimized because he is seen as orchestrating a championship by leaving—no,
betraying
—Cleveland for the title-ready roster in Miami.
That’s the criticism: he had to leave to get his championships.
Excuse me, but isn’t mobility
celebrated
in this country?
Not everywhere, and definitely not in every instance.
Oh, we celebrate the guy who worked at Starbucks and left
to start Peet’s Coffee, but when it comes to sports we turn that on its head and vilify a guy who leaves a stagnant Cleveland team—for
less
money—to join a team with a better chance of winning a championship.
Joe Girardi went from managing the Marlins to managing the Yankees. Does anybody criticize him? No, he simply left for a better opportunity. Everyone seems to understand that—in most cases. Not in LeBron’s, however.
The power of marketing can be seen in other sports. Everyone loves Peyton Manning more than Tom Brady, even though Brady has three Super Bowl wins and two Super Bowl MVPs while Manning has one Super Bowl win. (Jordan, by the way, seems to judge everyone by titles won, as evidenced by his contention that he’d take Kobe Bryant over LeBron because he has more NBA championships.) Why is Manning more popular? One reason: he has more and funnier commercials, which means he has a better image.
Why does Derrick Rose sell tons of sneakers while Tim Duncan sells none? Because Adidas has created an effective and widespread marketing campaign around Rose—who has limited success in the NBA playoffs—and Duncan couldn’t care less about any of that stuff. It doesn’t matter that Duncan is one of the best players in NBA history and has won four NBA titles.
Again, Jordan made a lot of his own breaks. But he didn’t win any titles until he was teamed with Phil Jackson and Scottie Pippen. And look at these numbers: the year he retired for the first time, the Bulls went from fifty-seven wins with him to fifty-five without him. Nobody’s saying he wasn’t the most important player on that team, the difference between an NBA title and a flame-out in the playoffs, but the fact remains: fifty-seven with him, fifty-five without him.
LeBron’s final year in Cleveland, the Cavs won sixty-one games. The next year, they won nineteen.
Nineteen
. They dropped forty-two games and went from having the best record in the NBA to getting the No. 1 pick in the draft.
Let’s look at two specific charges at LeBron:
1. He’s a quitter. This stems from the 2010 Eastern Conference Semifinals, James’s last games in Cleveland. Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert was quoted as saying, “He quit in games two, four, five, and six. Watch the tape.”
Let’s grant Gilbert Game 5; there’s no dispute he disappeared in that game, possibly because of the unsubstantiated rumors of problems with a teammate. But in Game 6—another game Gilbert cited—against a Celtics team that went to the Finals and outplayed the Lakers—LeBron had 27 points, 19 rebounds, 10 assists, and 3 steals in 46 minutes.
A triple double. If that qualifies as quitting, LeBron should immediately be inducted into the Quitters’ Hall of Fame. He’s the world’s greatest quitter. Retire the trophy.
But whatever. Don’t let facts get in the way. LeBron has been labeled a quitter, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
Back to Jordan: he quit on his sport—his entire
sport
—during the prime of his career.
One doesn’t stick, one defines.
2. LeBron’s a traitor: he misled the Cavs and the entire long-suffering city of Cleveland by waiting until a television show to tell the world that he would play in Miami.
Let’s look at this a little bit closer. LeBron’s destination was the biggest basketball scoop in ten years. Was he going to New York? Miami? Chicago? Would he stay in Cleveland?
Take yourself back to those days and remember how relentless and breathless the reporting became. Every NBA reporter was on this story.
Did he know where he was going? Three days before LeBron announced his decision, Stephen A. Smith told me the people around James had no idea what he was going to do. People
inside
LeBron’s inner circle didn’t know. And if Stephen A. knew, he would have broken it. There was no value to holding the information. None at all, and as it turned out he broke the news shortly before
The Decision
aired.
And yet the misperception persists: LeBron knew where he was going to play and simply chose not to tell anybody because he wanted to make it hurt Cleveland worse.
Again, this sticks to LeBron like flypaper.
Now, back to Jordan: his longtime trainer, Tim Grover, wrote a book about his days working with Jordan. Before it was published, he told Yahoo! Sports that after the 1992–93 title, Jordan told him, “I’m done. Start preparing me for baseball.” And yet it took six months for Jordan to finally get around to informing the Bulls that he was retiring. Back then, it was reported as an abrupt retirement. Tim Grover—and Michael Jordan—knew it was anything but abrupt.
So one guy, by all available evidence, truly didn’t know three days before he made his decision and got vilified for it. The other guy made his decision months in advance, withheld the information from his employer and the fans and the media, and yet nobody really questioned it.
