There Will Never Be Another Jordan

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.

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 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 player of all
time 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.

Michael Jordan is God disguise as a basketball player. -Larry Bird

i agree that no one can ever be like michael
jordan. just to at least approximate his achievements in basketball is
already an honor!

laker fans says kobe is better than jordan.

They always compare His Airness to Kobe....I say this.....

There is no point of comparison between MJ and Kobe.

MJ has proven his superb prowess and stats can justify it. He has gained the respect of his peers not only in basketball but the whole world of sports. He helped the league get back on its feet and raised its marketability notches higher with his awesome popularity.In short, his IMPACT in the world of sports is unparalleled and unequal. MJ is already retired, a legend and arguably considered by many as the greatest player of basketball.

Kobe is young yet is already showing a sign of greatness with his all-around playing abilities. We still don't know about the respect of his peers as media seem harsh in portraying Kobe. He has still a lot of playing time to do, championships to notch and an opportunity to polish his image. A very approachable and friendly guy, he even went to my son's seat and gamely autographed a Kobe NBA card my son was holding.

In a way, we can say that they belong in different NBA generations. Though they were able to play against each other, they were still ages apart . Moreover, one has proven himself and the other one is still proving his mettle ergo comparison is inutile.

Yet, all of us will agree that both are great players and both deserve the respect they truly deserve.