It’s been written: No one will ever be like Mike

(Note: This blog can also be found here, at Talkhoops.net)

We’ve all heard the ridiculous Kobe Bryant vs. Michael Jordan argument several hundred times since the turn of the millennium, and I’m sure (at least I’m hoping) that we’ve all come to the conclusion that it isn’t even close. It’s always Michael Jordan and it should be. However, every time I find myself debating this (usually with some illogical Lakers fan) it always comes down to numbers, style of play, awards and all kinds of nonsense that really only matters when you feel like proving that you know a lot about basketball to look cool (something I happen to do a lot). However, I’m done with this argument – forever – and hopefully after reading this, you’ll wise up and never bring Jordan vs. Kobe, or Jordan vs. any other player ever again.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there will never be another basketball player greater than Michael Jordan. I’m almost certain that everyone from here on out will fall somewhere between second and last on the list of greatest basketball players of all time, and it has nothing to do with the number of points he’s scored, any record he’s broken or any award he received over the course of his career, and I plan on using George Herbert Mead’s Symbolic Interactionism Theory to illustrate this idea.

George Herbert Mead was a Philosophy professor during the “School of Chicago” era early in the 20th Century at the University of Chicago. Mead didn’t write his book, Mind, Self and Society, his students put it together after he died with class notes and conversations they had with him and published it in his name. Symbolic Interactionism was developed to help lead to conclusions about the creation of a person’s self and the socialization into a larger community. Herbert Blumer, one of Mead’s former students and professor a UC Berkley stated that there are three core premises of Symbolic Interactionism that deal with meaning language and thought – and all three premises can used to illustrate why no basketball player will ever be greater than Michael Jordan.

Premise One: “People act toward people and things on the basis of the meanings they assign to those people or things.”

“A symbol is a stimulus that has a learned meaning and value for people.”
-Peter M. Hall (Structuring Communication and Power)

Michael Jordan is a symbol. Michael Jordan is the Jumpman on your shoes, Michael Jordan is the number 23, and Michael Jordan is the theoretical bar that has set the standard of NBA greatness. This is why when new talent comes into the league, pundits don’t name them the new Julius Erving, Ervin Johnson or Larry Bird; they’re tagged as the next Michael Jordan because he is what great is, and to be great one must be “like Mike” but basketball fans will paradoxically write off the said rising star as “not like Mike” just as quick as they compare him to the legend simply because he is not Michael Jordan.

“Once people define a situation as real, it has very real consequences”
-W.I Thomas and Dorothy Thomas (The Child in America)

Because of Jordan’s myriad accomplishments, awards, and memorable moments (as chronicled in Adam Sweetney’s Jordan v. Kobe article on Talkhoops.net) it’s hard to fathom any two people interpreting Michael Jordan (remember, he’s a symbol) the same way. Your reality of Michael Jordan could be that he has very cool shoes (which remains true for millions of adolescents who have never even seen Jordan, the basketball player, take a jumpshot), and the consequences of this just gives another meaning to the symbol – business man. He sells shoes just as easily as he scored points, and for over a decade, he did this simultaneously. But you’re reality of Jordan could just as easily be the guy who won the dunk contest, the guy who averaged 30 points over the course of his career or the guy who had you wondering about undergarments.

In Jane Wagner’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe she poses this question: “How does a person know if they’re crazy or not? Well, sometimes you don’t know. Sometimes you can go through life suspecting you are but never really knowing for sure. Sometimes you know for sure ‘cause you got so many people tellin’ you you’re crazy that it’s your word against everyone else’s…” This fundamental question of, how do we know, can be posed in all aspects of human interaction. How do we know that we are funny? How do we know that we are nice? How do we know that we are intelligent? We know these things because of human interaction. We communicate shared meanings to each other, we associate those meanings with various symbols and people. With that being said, how can we go further in answering a question that no one is really asking: How do we know that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time?

Premise two: “Meaning arises out of the social interaction that people have with each other”

“Michael Jordan is the greatest of all time because I said he is [and you did too].”

The author of the First Look At Communication Theory text book, Em Griffin, says “meaning is not inherent in objects; it’s not a preexisting state of nature. Meaning is negotiated through the use of language – hence the term Symbolic Interactionism.” What makes the idea of humans so interesting is that we have the ability to name things, everything that is named is a symbol, each symbol has a shared meaning, and the collections of our shared meanings are all interrelated. Moreover, we don’t just name and give meaning to objects that we can see, touch or hear everyday, we also do the same with ideas and feelings. When we see a faucet, we know what it is because it’s been learned through human interaction. We know that when a faucet is on, water pours out. We know what water is and we know what it means when something is poured. The words chosen to describe these symbols are shared with people who share language, which is why I can leave California for Arkansas and get a glass of water upon asking for one. Griffin argues that symbols are random, however, I feel that it is the words used to describe the symbols are what is arbitrary about language. There is nothing random about a tree per se, but the word chosen is completely random. There is nothing in the collection of the four letters that form the word tree that suggests that there is to be deep roots, a trunk, branches and leaves, just like there is nothing in the name Michael Jordan that suggests the greatest basketball player to ever lace up a pair of sneakers. We only see that combination of roots, trunk, branches and leaves as a tree because it was named that way and there is a collective agreement within the community that says it is, in fact, a tree. With Michael Jordan, the basketball community collectively agreed that he was the greatest. If the basketball world would have defined Alex English instead of Michael Jordan as the greatest of all time, then I’d be writing an essay on the former Nugget right now. The extent of knowing is dependent upon the extent of naming. We know Michael Jordan as the greatest ever because we named him the greatest ever. Moreover, since words have default assumptions (i.e. if you hear the word nurse, you automatically assume that the nurse is a woman), we will forever think of Michael Jordan when we hear “the greatest” in a basketball conversation.

Premise three: “An individual’s interpretation of symbols is modified by his or her own thought process.”

“To his friend a looking glass/ Reflects his figure that doth pass”
-Ralph Waldo Emmerson (Astraea)

In Ralph Waldo Emmerson’s poem, “Astraea,” he writes “To his friend a looking glass/ Reflects his figure that doth pass.” The two lines from this poem begin an idea that Mead would make into his own and ultimately describe how Michael Jordan, the basketball player, became Michael Jordan, the symbol. Griffin explains that “Mead dismissed the idea that we could get glimpses of who we are through introspection. Instead, we paint our self-portrait with brush strokes that come from taking the role of the other – imagining how we look to another person.” All this means is that we essentially learn who we are through theoretically standing in others’ shoes and looking at ourselves – not by internal reflections of opinions of our own selves. This mental image of viewing yourself through the opinions of others is a concept called the looking-glass self, hence the Emmerson poem. Symbolic Interactionists argue there would be no self-concept if communication was tacit, in fact, the self is always in flux because the majority of our communication is viva vice.

“Michael Jordan is the greatest of all time because he saw that he was the greatest of all time through us.”

Studies have shown that children who grow up constantly being told negative things will eventually embrace that as a part of their selves. If a child grows up hearing things like “you’re a thief” on a regular basis because of a piece of candy they took when they were six years old, that child is eventually going to believe that he or she is a thief. That is how they see others viewing themselves, which is why I give my up and coming peers all of the positive reinforcement I can give them. If they constantly hear “you’re a great dancer,” or “you’re a great artist,” or “you’re a great writer,” they will eventually become those things. Michael Jordan was not the greatest basketball of all time player the first time someone said he was. On the 1982 North Carolina team that won the national title, Jordan was the third best player on that team, behind both James Worthy and Sam Perkins. When he entered the NBA, he wasn’t the best; Magic, Larry Legend and Dr. J were leagues ahead of him at the time. However, once one person named him the greatest of all time after averaging 37 points per game in 1987, that idea had a snowball effect on the rest of the basketball community. Sure, Michael Jordan did great things before he was deemed the greatest ever, but he didn’t become Michael Jordan, the greatest ever until we said he was, and more importantly, until he realized that’s what everyone though of him. Throughout the course of his career he showed tout de monde that he was, and still is the greatest to ever play the game. However, before he could do that he had to realize, through the world’s eyes, that his individual greatness would be Zeitgeist for a decade of basketball.

By the end of the 1991 season, Jordan had become the symbol we know him to be. He was perceived as great by the basketball community, he had viewed himself as great through the eyes of others and he had validated and achieved his greatness with an NBA championship. Because we named him the greatest ever, he was able to give meaning to the symbol in his own way by viewing what each of his actions meant and what others expected of him. This process is what Interactionists call the generalized other. In Peter Kollock and Jodi O’Brien’s book, The Production of Reality, they explain that “the generalized other is an organized set of information that the individual carries in his or her head about what the general expectations and attitudes of the social group are.” We all have this composite mental image and we use it when we try to figure out how to behave or evaluate our own behavior in social situations. Kollock and O’Brien go on to say “we take the position of the generalized other and assign meaning to ourselves and our actions.” With that being said, it’s only natural that we assume no one will ever be better than Michael Jordan, both the basketball player and the symbol.

Michael Jordan did things on the court, which, in turn, forced us to label him as the greatest to ever do it. He viewed himself through our eyes and created his own reality. He was then able to create his own expectations – except they weren’t the expectations he had for himself (which were probably much larger than any expectation we had for him) – he was able to create the expectations that others (we) had for him because we allowed him to. Michael Jordan hit big shots, Michael Jordan dunked on whoever was in his way, Michael Jordan won championships, he had the coolest shoes, he was charismatic in the public eye and a leader, not just on the court, but in all aspects of life. To be the greatest basketball player of all time, you have to embody all of that and more. That’s what Michael Jordan, the symbol of basketball greatness, means. Michael Jordan, the symbol, is what basketball fans will always associate with the best, which is why we’ll never accept another ball player as being greater than Mike. Not only will another player have to completely dominate the NBA for at least 10 years, but he’ll have to dominate the sneaker game and capture the hearts of not only all of America, but capture the hearts and imaginations of the whole world. We’ll need to care if he wears boxers or briefs before he can be mentioned in the same breath as Michael Jordan.

I will preserve the legacy of my favorite player of all time [Michael Jordan] for the remainder of my natural life.
-Celia Kelly (Relapse)

In Kelly’s blog she talks about why she’ll never like Kobe Bryant. It has nothing to do with any point he has ever scored, any award he’s ever won or any game he’s ever played in – hell it isn’t even because he played for the Lakers. She doesn’t like Bryant because media pundits were quick to slap the “next Michael Jordan” label on him as soon as he played his first pre-season game for the Lakers, and this resonates with a lot of basketball fans across the nation. Not only will she preserve Jordan’s legacy, but so will I, your mom and ESPN Classic. The expectations that we allowed Michael Jordan to set for us have never changed. He is not playing basketball anymore, but we still expect the greatest basketball player of all time to do the things he did. Since there is no one who is capable of doing those things, we are left with Michael Jordan’s undying legacy. Basketball fans are nostalgic, which is why we all appreciated the 2008 match-up of the Lakers and Celtics. We hold unforgettable moments of the past dear to our hearts, this is the one sport where history might mean more basketball fans than the present. However, when it comes to the symbol of greatness, we all have selective memories. We have all erased the memory of the 1995 playoffs when Michael Jordan and the Bulls lost to Orlando (yes, this really happened) out of our minds because this is not what Michael Jordan, the symbol represents. Neither does his second season in the NBA when he only played 18 games due to injury (yes, this also happened) or the few years he played in Washington (I’m not sure if this really happened). The thing about Mike is, he did some things throughout his career that weren’t great, but we’ve created this reality that he did no wrong while he played, and this is the main reason why there will never be another Michael Jordan. When Kobe Bryant’s career is over, we will remember those air balls he shot against Utah in 1997, we will remember the Colorado incident and we will remember him not playing in the second half of Game 7 in the first round of the playoffs against the Suns – and we’ll remember all of the bad things every other “next Michael Jordan” does until we aren’t able to remember anything anymore.

Michael Jordan’s greatness doesn’t have to do with his numbers, they only add to this complicated symbol that we’ve grown to love. Basketball fans don’t have the ability to let him go, and because of this, we’ll never allow another basketball player in. No one will ever be like Mike, and I don’t think I have a problem with that.

Stay Hideous
-PB

(Word count to date: 20,500
87 days and 79,500 words to go)