The wisdom of Michael Jordan

The king of basketball.

Does being the best basket- ball player ever make you smarter?


Best answer:  It can't hurt. But it really doesn't necessarily make you smarter. Richer? Yes. Smarter? That depends on what you start with.

Jerry Lucas

Take Jerry Lucas for example. (Jerry Who? Aha! you are too young.)

Lucas led the Ohio State Buckeyes to three successive  NCAA titles starting in 1960 and was on the USA Olympic basketball team that won the Gold Medal  gold medal in the 1960 Games. He had a spectacular NBA career and in 1980 he was inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

But was he smart?

Wikipedia talks about "Lucas displaying a remarkable, if unusual intelligence. A straight-A student with a penchant for memorizing his school work, Lucas had started to develop memory games for himself as early as age nine. One trick he would be known for was his ability to take words apart and reassemble them quickly in alphabetical order. "Basketball" became "aabbekllst." He also applied his intelligence successfully to his later coaching in the game."

Bill Bradley

Then there was U.S. Senator Bill Bradley who played spectacularly for the New York Knicks winning NBA titles in 1970 and '73. He was a Rhodes Scholar. So basketball does have players with 'smarts."

There are others, of course, but I promised you the wisdom of Michael Jordan, so here it is:

If you have been watching ESPN's 10-part series, The Last Dance, featuring Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bull's fascinating trials and travails in their "six-peat" run to that final NBA Championship in 1999, you might have seen Michael's statement that so typifies where we, as the USA... as the world, sit today.

When faced with a potential career-ending broken foot injury in 1985-86 (his second year in the NBA), he was forced to sit out six weeks of the season. He was so competitive that he was willing to put his career on the line to play. It was then that Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, after consulting with doctors, conferred with Jordan.

"You're not understanding the risk-reward ratio," he told him. "If you had a terrible headache and I gave you a bottle of pills. And nine of the pills would cure you. And one would kill you, would you take the pill?"

Michael looked at him and said, "It depends on how bad the f---ing headache is."

So the take-away is that Michael understood the risk-reward ratio. The fabled wisdom I'm talking about is that he didn't choose to take the pill, which didn't leave him happier, but still playing out his career until he called it quits.

So America, same question: Are you willing to put your life on the coronavirus age line when one choice is NO and the other has a 10 percent chance of possibly killing you and/or loved ones you contact with?

It's anyone's guess on exactly what the odds are, but I'm thinking, that ratio doesn't sound too out of line. Problem is, if the ratio is absolutely correct, then the probability for guessing wrong grows exponentially beyond just you.

Final quiz question: Yes, the NBA does have smart players, but what is the number 1 statistic that is the most common to all players, not counting wealth?

Answer: Tattoos. About 53% of the players have tattoos.

Final Fun Fact: Think Michael Jordan isn't King Midas? A 1985 pair of his autographed Air Jordan shoes which he actually wore in a game go on auction this week. It is expected they will cost the lucky winner more than $160,000. My guess it will be a woman. I don't know many men who have more than a few pair of shoes, often bought for him by his wife who knows the value of shoes.

Is it time yet?

Our sun will burn itself out in the next 5 billion years or so, say astronomers, and it will get very, very cold. That will mean Burlington Coat Factory will have the greatest going-out-of-business sale ever!

Of course, we humans may have exited the scene years earlier. There will be warnings signs of the apocalypse (like this one maybe) many believe. Oh, and the usual plagues, famine, earthquakes, lakes of fire, etc. But if human nature is to be believed, there are subtle signs we are loosing it, if you pay attention.

• This Hermes Birkin handbag just sold for $298,000, and worth every penny, say those who know handbags. It is a fire-engine red crocodile bag with diamond hardware so what's not to love? A dirt-cheap Hermes Birkin goes for just $10,000 or so but really, doesn't your loved one deserve the best or are you a cheapskate?

So is this a sign we are going crazy or what?

• The NBA will put ads on player jerseys next year so we can watch basketball and have a yen for antacid tablets almost at the same time.

• A recent study showed a fall-off of belief in God but conversely, more of us now believe in an afterlife. So where will we go? As for me, I'll pick Cleveland. I've heard nice things about it. W.C. Fields picked anyplace else. The epitaph on his tombstone read, "I'd rather be here than in Philadelphia."

• Ethan  Couch, the then-16-year-old kid who killed four people while drinking and driving, was given only10 years probation in juvenile court, on four counts of intoxication manslaughter and for recklessly driving drunk. He was illegally driving on a restricted license and speeding, lost control, plowed into a group of people standing near a disabled SUV and struck the vehicle. Four people were killed in the collision; two passengers in Couch's truck suffered serious bodily injury and a total of nine people were injured.

The gist of the court case was that Couch was so rich and spoiled that he didn't know better. Then, when he skipped probation, fled to Mexico and had to be tracked down--at our expense, the judge slapped 180-days in jail on him for each of the four people he killed.

Some insist angrily, "That will show him!" However, I'm sure all those with less money and affluence... and kinder hearts, totally understand are hoping and praying that he learned his lesson.

But the scales of justice do tend to balance.

• A Canadian was stopped at the border as he tried to smuggle 51 live turtles hidden in his trousers while crossing from the  U.S back into Canada. He was given five years in prison for his heinous crime. At his sentencing he thanked Federal agents for ending "the darkness of my greed and ignorance." (FYI: He had 41 turtles strapped to his legs and 10 hiding between his legs. I'd have loved to watch him walk.)

• A giant galaxy orbiting our own just appeared out of nowhere. Surprised scientists say it is so large that it dwarfs our Milky Way galaxy. I guess we don't know everything, do we?

Giant Galaxy-not to scale

So when your spouse tells you she went shopping and saved $200, don't believe her for a second. But that global warming thing... believe.