Michael Jordan once floated through the air like a feather, bound only loosely by gravity. He could switch hands in mid-air, relax in the stratosphere until opponents fell to the court (Craig Ehlo might remember that), or sky to floors that most players’ elevators could not visit. But in the end, as the story goes for everybody, he was mortal. He got old, lost a step and misplaced a few inches on his vertical leap, and soon he was a (bad-ish) General Manager drafting Adam Morrison with the third pick.

That’s what happens. Our heroes age and sometimes not so gracefully. Sure, we can still recognize Jordan. His face, for a time at least, was (and maybe still is) the most recognizable face in the world. But while he still facially resembles the man who terrorized Bryon Russell and kept Karl Malone from ever winning an NBA title, he can’t do what he used to do. He can’t step onto an NBA court and fadeaway J opponents to death. He can’t summons his powers to score a bucket whenever his team needs one the most. Hell, he doesn’t even play organized basketball anymore. And at risk of awakening Jordan’s inner competitive beast, I would bet my house (you know, if I owned one) that he couldn’t play for an NBA team even if he wanted to.

Just like Jordan, my grandfather Pop-Pop is one of my heroes. He’s strong and proud and tells stories that make everyone in the room laugh. He loves golf and can still perfectly remember holes he played 55 years ago. He served in the war and can still discuss every mission he flew. He recalls afternoons he spent at Fenway Park watching football games (yes, Fenway used to host football games); days he spent swimming in the (now-unswimmable) Connecticut River; nights he spent imbibing all-you-can drink drafts for five cents; and, as a former used-car salesmen, every local celebrity he sold a car to.

Pop-Pop tells one story about attending a professional golf tournament 30 or 40 years ago. He spent the morning following groups and walking the course. Later in the day, he spotted a young golfer sitting by himself.

“I didn’t know who he was, but I went over to talk to him because, hell, he was still a professional golfer,” Pop-Pop will say. “Plus, he looked like he could use someone to talk to.”

The golfer turned out to be Lee Trevino. He developed into a six-time major champion, Ryder Cup team captain, and, yes, he also played a cameo role in Happy Gilmore. Later, he would run into the brick wall of his own mortality. His signature fade would stop being so accurate, and his drives, already shorter than most great golfers, would travel even fewer yards. But when Pop-Pop met him, he was a seed waiting to blossom into a flower, an inexperienced golfer with miles of talent, a young stud a few years away from becoming a hero.

Pop-Pop was once young like the Trevino he met that day. I know only because I’ve seen pictures. One of the pictures is a newspaper clipping from when Pop-Pop arrived home after the war. The picture was accompanied by the headline “Hero on way home,” and it’s one of the few times I can see Pop-Pop before he became Pop-Pop, back when everyone called him Tom. His chiseled face was handsome and his smile was disarming and his wife was beautiful, and I imagine he could spin a great story even back then.

He had all his teeth at that time, and he did not yet have cancer to threaten his life. He did not yet have a tumor growing from his upper jaw and he did not yet need an electric contraption to carry him up stairs. He did not yet need a walker to move or a handicap-accessible bathroom to piss, and his feet were not yet permanently swollen and discolored. He did not yet spend almost all of his time sitting in the same chair, either trying to learn how to use On-Demand, chatting with my lovely grandmother, squinting his quickly-degenerating eyes to read a book, or, during the best of times, sharing stories with his children and grandchildren.

Our heroes are mortal, all of them. But they never disappear. They just change.

Wow. Amazing. Someody mashed up the new Lebron James commercial with this Michael Jordan commercial and came up with this:

After his friend told a Las Vegas sushi bar hostess that he was Michael Jordan, Doc Rivers was mistaken for the GOAT. (Orlando Sentinel)

Back in Vegas, the boys stopped at Nobu in the Hard Rock Hotel one night. Great sushi. Only the gang didn’t have a reservation. More than a two-hour wait, they were told. Doc figured it was time to move on and grab dinner elsewhere, but his buddy started chatting up the hostess.

All of a sudden, the gang was seated in the middle of the restaurant and being treated to free appetizers.

“I still got juice for an old-timer,” Doc thought to himself.

Then the waitress came over.

“It is an honor to have you here Mr. Jordan,” she said. “You are very good basketball player!”

I just took my 92-year old grandfather to the eye doctor. He’s legally blind in one eye and losing vision in the other. He took an eye test today and thought any letter with a single rounded portion was a zero. They showed him a B. “Zero,” my grandfather said. They showed him a C. Same thing. The showed him a D. “Why do you keep showing me zeroes?” he wondered aloud. He thought almost every letter the nurse showed him was a zero.

And even my grandfather can tell the difference between Michael Jordan and Doc Rivers. I’m not going to lie, the hostess and waitress at this sushi bar need to step up their games.

(h/t Red’s Army)

A belated sign of respect to the Dream Team, which was inducted into the Hall of Fame last Friday. The best basketball team ever assembled. Enjoy the dunk-fest.

The man needs no caption.

Hate Lebron for the way he Decided where he would “take his talents” next season. Hate him for being an egotistical prick. Hate him for being disloyal to Cleveland. Hate him for no-showing against the Celtics in Game 5. Hell, I don’t care, hate him for picking his nails or because you get annoyed by his goddamn puppet.

But should you really hate him for choosing to play with two of the NBA’s top ten players?

Of all the things Lebron is getting backlash for, choosing to play with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh is far and away the most unreasonable. The most pressing argument against it is usually, “Michael Jordan never would have done that!” But the argument isn’t that Lebron has to win on his own. It can’t be, can it? Because Jordan happened to have Pippen. And Bird had McHale and Parish. And Johnson had Kareem, Worthy and a host of other stars. So it isn’t just that people don’t want Lebron to play with another star. It’s that people fault Lebron for playing with another star on that other star’s turf.

But it’s not Lebron’s fault the Cavaliers couldn’t add another star in Cleveland. It isn’t his fault he HAD to leave in order to play with a quality sidekick. He saw what many others saw; the Cavaliers weren’t built for playoff prosperity, and they didn’t have much flexibility. Say what you want about Lebron failing to deliver a championship after the Cavs tore through the regular season, but when you look at his supporting cast you can see it would have been a miracle if Lebron HAD won a ring in Cleveland. They won a ton of regular season games, sure, but when it came down to it they weren’t built to win in the playoffs. Antawn Jamison would have been the worst second-fiddle in history to ever win a title, am I wrong? He was murdered by the half-KG we saw this season. And Mo Williams was always hit-or-miss. Neither were the reliable options Lebron needed to be flanked by if he wanted to win a championship, and Lebron knew that as well as anybody else.

People hate Lebron for his oversized ego, but then think that same ego should have been bigger. By that, I mean that people believe Lebron should have stayed in Cleveland. He should have felt he could win a championship on his own, supporting cast be damned. Even if said cast was flawed. Even if the Cavs had little flexibility for the future and might have already peaked in early defeat. But with the knowledge of all the Cavs’ shortcomings (and there certainly were shortcomings, despite leading the league in regular season wins), should we really blame Lebron for leaving? I don’t think so. Could he have gotten things done in Cleveland? Yeah, it was a possibility. But it wasn’t his best opportunity to win championships. It wasn’t his best chance for immortality.

But Michael Jordan wouldn’t have done that. With superstars, especially those who play on the wing, it always seems to come back to Jordan. And His Airness never would have gone to Miami, common knowledge says, because he was too competitive. He wanted to tear the hearts out of his closest competitors, not win championships with them. Hell, Jordan even said it himself.

“There’s no way, with hindsight, I would’ve ever called up Larry, called up Magic and said, ‘Hey, look, let’s get together and play on one team,’” Jordan said after finishing tied for 22nd in the American Century Championship golf tournament in Stateline, Nev. “But that’s … things are different. I can’t say that’s a bad thing. It’s an opportunity these kids have today. In all honesty, I was trying to beat those guys.”

There’s one aspect of the above quote that hasn’t been talked about much: Jordan qualified it with the phrase “with hindsight.” Obviously, Jordan can say that with hindsight. Six championships in Chicago later, Jordan can obviously look back and say he never would have played with those guys. He did it on his own terms, in Chicago. He didn’t need to go anywhere else, he didn’t need to join forces with another super-duper-star. But what if Pippen had never developed into one of the game’s best players? What if Jordan had hit what he thought was a dead end? Wouldn’t the fiercest competitor ever, a man who wanted to do nothing but win, have wanted to go somewhere else so he could earn a ring? Wouldn’t he have wanted to do that? We don’t know and his quote can’t tell us, because he chose to qualify it by saying “with hindsight.”

But let’s just pretend Jordan never said “with hindsight.” Let’s say he wouldn’t have wanted to go anywhere, no matter what. Let’s say Jordan wanted to win a title in Chicago or die trying. If so, is it really wrong of Lebron to choose another route? Is it wrong that he doesn’t follow the path Jordan laid out? Is it wrong he wants to establish greatness in another fashion?

I’m sorry (actually, no I’m not), but you shouldn’t blame Lebron for taking an alternate route to greatness. You shouldn’t fault him for joining a team that, in time, could stake its claim as one of the greatest ever to grace the hardwood. Because, really, the same reason Lebron chose to travel to Miami is the same reason we were drawn to his game in the first place: He’s unselfish. He gets that basketball is a team game. Even during his time in Cleveland, Lebron always tried to foster his teammates along the way. He passed to open teammates with games on the line. He took pictures with them before games. He celebrated with them after wins and after big plays. What Michael Jordan took several years to realize, that he would need teammates to help him along the way, Lebron instinctively knew.

He just didn’t think his old teammates were good enough. Or he didn’t think he could pass up an opportunity to play for a team that could prove to be one of the best ever assembled. Or maybe there was some other reason we don’t know about. Whatever it was, Lebron chose the place where he felt he would have the best chance at multiple championships. 

And he sucked up his elephant-sized ego to do it. By leaving Cleveland, Lebron admitted he wasn’t good enough to make a dynasty there. He wasn’t good enough to do it by himself. He wasn’t good enough to carry Antawn Jamison and Mo Williams on his back, even though that very back is emblazened with the tattoo, “The Chosen One.” Lebron’s decision was at once the most egotistical thing to happen to the NBA in years and an admission: I can’t do it alone.

So take Lebron’s decision (not the production of it, but the actual choice) whatever way you want. Call him a coward for seeking out help or intelligent for joining the team with the best chance of multiple championships. Or cowardly intelligent, if you wish.  

But just realize what Lebron knows: If this SuperFriends experiment goes to plan, if Lebron James wins as many championships in South Beach as he envisions, he’ll put this all beyond him on his way to immortality. Just ask Kobe: Winning has a curious way of curing public perception.

In the end, isn’t a winning-driven immortal all we ever expected Lebron to be? Or did we somehow expect more of him than even that?

Would YOU want to play with Kobe?

Last night, Kobe Bryant put on one of the most mesmerizing shooting exhibitions I’ve ever seen. Double-teamed; fadeaways; on the dribble; from downtown; hands in his eye sockets; none of it mattered to Kobe. He was in a zone the likes of which only Michael Jordan and a couple other guys in NBA history could ever enter.

But there’s another side to the story: As good as Kobe was, as amazing as what we witnessed last night happened to be, some people will make the argument that he Lakers would have been better off if Kobe hadn’t gone buck wild. I don’t know if I agree with that, but there is definitely one thing I took from Kobe’s barrage (other than the fact that he is a ridiculous, ridiculous basketball player):

I would hate — no, despise — playing basketball with Kobe Bryant.

When he gets into “Kobe vs. the World mode” (which admittedly isn’t every night), Kobe berates teammates who don’t get him the ball, takes shot after impossible shot, and then berates his teammates a little more if they make even the smallest screw-up.  Not only are his teammates unlikely to touch the ball, but if they ever make a play they’d better convert a basket — if not, they’re getting an earful from Kobe.

One Kobe moment from last night stood out more than any other — more even than any absurd shot he sent miraculously through the basket. During the middle of Kobe’s hot streak, Luke Walton had just gotten into the game and made a nice drive from the wing into the middle of the lane. When the defense collapsed, Walton kicked it out to a wide open — and I mean wide open — Derek Fisher for three. Fisher’s three rimmed out and a timeout was soon called. Kobe could be seen screaming at Walton, saying (I’m guessing), “Give me the damn ball. I’m hot. Pass me the rock and get the hell out of my way. Don’t try to make a play, don’t pass to anyone else… or else.”

The going gets tough for the Lakers and the furious Bryant glare comes out. He swings his arm at officials even after plays during which he wasn’t fouled. He demands to defend whoever’s scoring for the other team. He throws his arms in the air after teammates’ turnovers. He looks off open teammates and keeps the ball to himself. Would you want to play with him? Would you want to be a designated defender and Kobe’s personal bitch, while he plays 1-on-5?

Not me. As great as Kobe is, as mind-boggling as his talents can be, I would never want to play on his team. Not in a million years. Give me a lesser player but one who will pass me the ball when I’m open. Give me someone with half Kobe’s talents but who will run the offense. Give me a guy 6’1″ and pretty slow but who won’t humiliate me on national television.

Kobe Bryant is an amazing basketball player, quite possibly the best in the world. Last night was a testament to his other-worldly talents as a player.

But as a teammate, it was also a glaring display of his shortcomings.