A few nights ago, Lebron James passed Michael Jordan on the all-time NBA scoring list. He accomplished this great achievement to little celebration or applause from an uninterested Lakers Staples Center audience.
In comparison, when Kobe achieved this accomplishment, the game stopped, but that’s not why we’re here. There is, however, something to take away from this convoluted moment in sports history. One would expect the game to stop as Lebron receives a standing ovation for passing his idol in this moment but could also anticipate folks staying seated in silence. This is because Lebron James has always been a complex sports figure whose on-court and off-court realities have been hard to reconcile within the traditional ways we’ve become accustomed to reconciling them.
That last note is key, by the way. In my opinion, we as a society have been conditioned to place professional sports stars in neatly carved athlete archetypes. There’s the activist who is always pushing the boundaries of social consciousness with his or her statements during press conferences…