With the regular football season kicking-off tonight I wanted to update this blog. Before I talk about football though, I wanted to comment on LeBron James. I heard an interview with him yesterday on "Fresh Air" and while listening to it I decided that LeBron has the potential to become the Yogi Berra of the NBA. He seems like an intelligent and funny individual (at least by professional athlete standards), but he's constantly mixing methaphors and misusing words. For example, he refered to his mother as being, "calm and collective." In a different interview, I once heard him repeatedly use the word "sustain" as a synonym for "repel" as in (paraphrase), "they kept trying to comeback on us, but we were able to sustain them." If LeBron gets a little nuttier as he ages and loses some of his youthful bravado, I'm predicting some great Yogi-esque quotes from him.
Listening to the interview, I was also reminded about how much hype surrounded James as a teenager (including a Sports Illustrated cover dubbing him the "Choosen One"). It's easy to forget that, because now he's just an NBA superstar doing NBA superstar things. He's completely lived up to the hype. It seems like we are constantly hearing about the next "Choosen One" in sports and occassionally they bust (e. g., Michelle Wie and Todd Maranovich), but often they really are the "Choosen One" or at least a close approximation of it. Other than James, Wayne Gretzky, Ken Griffey Jr., A-Rod and Tiger Woods are all examples.
Anyway, on to football...
Bill Simmons has a story up today, about how crazy and unpredictable the NFL is. One of his reasons:
Former Giants receiver Plaxico Burress (who accidentally shot himself in the leg while illegally carrying a handgun in public) was given a prison sentence 30 times longer than that of Browns receiver Donte' Stallworth (who killed a pedestrian while driving drunk and high). Not only weird, but perplexing.
Michael Vick defenders have pointed out a similar disparity between Vick's punishment and Stallworth's, but like Simmons, they always leave out a key point. Stallworth didn't mean to kill anybody. The result of Stallworth's actions were worse, but not the intent. Vick knowingly lead a criminal life for years, during which time he committed or oversaw many cruel and disturbing, violent acts. Then he lied about it. This is so different from Stallworth's case that I don't think the two are comparable. Burress' crime is more comparable, but Burress illegally owned a handgun, which is very much a premeditated act, not a temporary lapse in judgement.
Stallworth messed up when he drove intoxicated (and his insistance during his 911 call that the "man ran in front of his car" is terrible), but, unless Stallworth has a history of this, you can legitimately argue that he just "made a mistake". For the case of Vick and Burress this is much more difficult argument to make. Further, the fact that Stallworth killed somebody and Plaxico only hurt himself is basically just the luck of the draw. It could have very easily been the other way around.
I'm definitely not defending Stallworth by any means and maybe he deserves worse or Vick or Burress deserve better. I am just making the point that you have to take into consideration the intent along with the results when considering their cases, something it doesn't seem anybody is doing.
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