Monday, June 13, 2011

Why People Write Shitty Things About LeBron James, Alternatively Titled "LeBron James Will Never Clerk for the Supreme Court"

By popular demand, the first-ever re-post of a G:TB entry. Consider this G:TB Classic:

Getting a job in the NBA is an incredibly competitive task. Only 60 people get drafted each year, and perhaps a handful (I'll ballpark it at nine) of undrafted players make teams.

An even more competitive job market exists in DC. Each year, the Justices of the Supreme Court hire clerks for one term. Each Justice may hire up to four clerks, and the Chief may hire five (but apparently he typically takes only four). So only 36 or 37 people get taken in this legal draft.

Hear me out before you scoff at this comparison. Supreme Court clerks command signing bonuses in the neighborhood of $250,000 if they go to a big law firm after their clerkship. Many just go to a firm for a year or two for the bonus, then go on to whatever career they want to have until they die. Many take cushy jobs like professorships or 9-to-5 government work and resign themselves that in exchange for the easy lifestyle they will never make baller money. But if they choose to stay at a law firm they are all but guaranteed to become partners with seven-figure earning potential. And even if they choose to work a government gig for ten or twelve years, many can get a partnership at a firm and make seven figures due in no small part to their SCOTUS clerkship.

In short, getting drafted by Scalia is just as much of a golden ticket as getting drafted by the Bulls. Perhaps even more so, given the length of a career in law compared to one in the NBA.

Getting drafted by one of the Supremes (or "the Big House" as some law students call it) may be the tougher task. The majority are pulled from the holy trinity of Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, with a fair number from Columbia, Chicago, Virginia, and Berkeley. Before earning one of these golden tickets, applicants must first complete another clerkship, almost always with a federal appellate court judge. Getting an appellate clerkship is very hard too, and even then you have to clerk for one of the "feeder" judges.

Most SCOTUS clerks are put on a track to the Big House early on in law school by attracting attention from famous professors. For example, Laurence Tribe writes one clerkship recommendation per year, referred to as "The Larry Letter" by HLS students. Anyone who gets The Larry Letter has an inside track on a SCOTUS clerkship.

How, you ask, does one make this happen? I'll tell you. First, you have to be smart, born that way as Lady Gaga would say. Second, you have to work your ass off for at least the first 26-or-so years of your life. You have to do well in high school and on your SAT's so that you can go to a premiere undergraduate program. Then you must earn excellent grades for three years. Then you must place in the top percentile on the LSAT. Then you will hopefully be accepted to one of the HYS trinity schools, where you must continue to assault your schoolwork and graduate in the top 10 or so of your class. Not the top 10%, but in the top 10. While doing so you must attract the attention of professors by showing genuine interest in the subject matter of their classes, and by proposing creative viewpoints on how the law should be. Then you land a top clerkship with a feeder judge and dazzle him or her with your brilliance, work ethic, and scholarly mien.

While everything in the previous paragraph is happening you can never fuck up. You can't get a DUI, you can't get busted for smoking pot, you can't get in a fight and break a potted tree over some guy's head, you can't be the summer associate who jumped into the Hudson River, you can't be the featured baby daddy on "16 and Pregnant," and you can't get caught spray painting an "A" between the unit letters on the frat houses across the street from yours. In fact, you probably can't be in a frat. Scholars look down on them and so should you, if you want your name called in the biggest of legal drafts. And you certainly can't be a really smart guy who never studied in high school but still managed to do well enough to get into one of the country's best schools with a top-notch biological sciences program, who, despite his interest in biology, instead went to a very-good-but-not-outstanding public school with almost no national street cred because his guidance counselor, who, incidentally, wore a very bad toupe, suggested it was the wiser idea, and then proceeded to do absolutely no work whatsoever in college, somehow graduated in 4 years, putzed around for 7 years, went to a good-but-not-very-good law school despite his undergraduate shortcomings, applied himself, beat the snot out of law school, and got a good job. That guy has no chance of even sniffing the chambers of the Big House, outside of a guided tour.

The NBA draft seems somewhat similar, if not a bit more forgiving. First, you must be born with insane athleticism and, ideally, freakish size, speed, jumping ability, and hand-eye coordination. Then you must work your ass off at the high school level to attract the attention of scouts from premiere undergraduate basketball programs. You might be fast-tracked to the pros via some AAU league, but you must sign with the right school, one where you can start, learn the game, and get plenty of TV time. You must work your ass off to be a starter, and then you have to do all the things that are now terrible sportswriting cliches. Show heart. See the floor. Make your teammates better. Be clutch. Feel the moment. Raise your game. Swing momentum. Be a leader. Be coachable. Be a student-athlete. Be a student of the game. Do the little things. Have a feel for the game. Have a high basketball IQ. Know how to put your foot on their neck. And so on.

The big difference is that athletes are allowed to fuck up as much as they want. They can take money from scouts, they can get in fights, they can smoke pot, they can get drunk and piss on the Dean's door. They'll still get drafted.

No one ever got a Supreme Court clerkship just because they were smart, and no one ever got drafted in the NBA just because they were tall. It takes lots of effort and God-given talent and people teaching you, coaching you, generally giving a shit about you and your success.

Which (finally, you might say) brings me to the point of this post. LeBron James is by all accounts a good guy. No DUI's; drugs; gambling rings; serial animal cruelty; manslaughter, murder, attempted murder, murder-for-hire, or murder cover-ups and the associated obstruction of justice; womanizing, bastardizing, or using public funds to cover up same; rape; brawling; drunkenness in a public canal; defecating in a laundry hamper; gunfighting; making it rain and then gunfighting; or anything like that.

But people still dislike him. I can tell you why.

Remember that hypothetical smart guy I mentioned before? I bet he would have hypothetical friends from his hypothetical high school days who lambaste him about how lazy he was when he was a kid and how he "could have done something" beyond whatever it is he did or does, like "you could have clerked for the Supreme Court." Kind of like in "Good Will Hunting" when Ben Affleck tells Matt Damon "Fuck you, you don't owe it to yourself man, you owe it to me. Cuz tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'll be 50, and I'll still be doin' this shit. And that's all right. That's fine. I mean, you're sittin' on a winnin' lottery ticket. And you're too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that's bullshit. 'Cause I'd do fuckin' anything to have what you got. So would any of these fuckin' guys. It'd be an insult to us if you're still here in 20 years. Hangin' around here is a fuckin' waste of your time."

Not to say that this hypothetical guy is a genius, but his hypothetical friends hold his intelligence in pretty high regard. Hypothetically. Whether he truly could have been a Supreme Court clerk is irrelevant. That his friends think he could is key. His failure to live up to their perceived potential irritates them, no matter how much he redeems himself through hard work as an adult.

It's safe to say that people envy LeBron James. He has unbelievable physical gifts, and, despite being born to a 16-year-old single mom, he managed to get enough love, support, coaching, and direction to avoid all the pitfalls that typically ensnare kids born to 16-year-old single moms. So not only is he physically gifted, he was lucky enough to be surrounded by people that cared about him. This convergence of good fortune, this embarassment of biological and social riches, allowed him to become the best basketball player on the planet, to make millions of dollars, to have legions of fans, and to become ragingly disproportionately important in public discourse.

When a guy with that much good luck fails to give, or appears to fail to give, 110%, people get pissed off. Squandering such gifts makes the average person angry, perhaps irrationally, but that's how it works, especially when these squandered gifts are bestowed upon someone who makes hundreds of millions of dollars via his squandration.

And that's why people write shitty things about LeBron James.

49 comments:

Dave said...

wow! what a post.

and i'm trying my best to watch this game but i'm still holding fast to the opinion that the nba is stupid. it's unfortunate, but they are too skilled and can shoot from too far away to make the game interesting. maybe they should make them play with a medicine ball.

rob said...

great post. why the fuck did you waste it on a sunday night?

zman said...

Because if the series ends tonight it's irrelevant tomorrow. And today was the first day I had time to write it up.

rob said...

also, disregard previous dogshit comment.

rob said...

you should have had a clerk write it up

zman said...

Who else is excited for tonight's installment of "Game of Thrones"?

rob said...

lebron left the bench. no fucking way anyone gets suspended here.

TR said...

Marion is a sure-fire first ballot All-Ugly Hall of Famer. He's the most naturally gifted person I've seen since Pippen.

rob said...

shoot the fucking ball, lebron!

rob said...

mark's at this game, isn't he?

rob said...

jesus, the heat are disintegrating

Shlara said...

Love this post zman!!

zman said...

I aim to please, from time to time.

zman said...

If I someone put a gun to my head and said "Describe the Heat's collective body language in one word" I would say "Listless."

I don't know why anyone would do that to me though.

Shlara said...

The Mavs are playing like they want it more.

zman said...

Eddie House has the green light to take 3's in this spot?

zman said...

Do the Heat know that the first to 4 wins?

TR said...

Heat in 5.

rob said...

needs more pictures

Marls said...

Zed-man - Nice post.

Hypothetical smart guy sounds like a lot more fun than your typical federal clerk.

Marls said...

I am completely amazed by Dave's "too skilled" and "can shoot from too far away" reasoning behind not liking the NBA. I will readily admit that I prefer the college game to the NBA, it seems like Dave would prefer the Jr. High/Police Athletic League/CYO version. (ie. a bunch of marginally skilled players huddled under the hoop tossing up wild shots.

Of course, it would explain why local youth soccer and its thrilling "20 kids in an amoeba shaped blob chasing the ball around" is quickly taking viewership from the EPL.

zman said...

I'm trying to take us in a Grantland/Klosterman direction so no pictures; sorry rob.

Jerry said...

So now LeBron James is more hated than Michael Vick because he didn't drive to the basket enough in the NBA Finals.

Danimal said...

clarence clemmons had a stroke yesterday.
69 yrs old.
anyonen have him in their death pool this year?

Danimal said...

and his replacement - billy hicks

T.J. said...

I really thought Jerry would have more to say about this zman post...

zman said...

If LeBron could beat Dallas the way Vick beat Dallas then he wouldn't have these problems.

Danimal said...

was Dallas his dog?

Jerry said...

Vick lost in the 1st round of the playoffs. And he tortured dogs to death.

Jerry said...

I have become bored and somewhat exhausted by the whole situation. It boils down to the fact that people hate LeBron James on some sort of base, subliminal level. It doesn't take a scientist to observe that. LeBron James in 2011 is the most hated sports figure that I have ever seen. More than Vick, OJ, Rae Carruth, ARod, Kobe, Tiger, Crosby, Dan Snyder, Bud Selig. Nobody even comes close.

People just hate him. Pretty much everybody except for a few guys I know and a few dozen people that I've located on the internet. And part of hating him is trying to rationalize that hatred. So you hear a lot of tales like this one (although generally not as well-written) -- most, possibly all, of which will crumble under any logical scrutiny. But it doesn't really matter because they're going to hate him nonetheless.

Ultimately, following sports is inherently irrational, so it may be unfair to expect a rational explanation for the way that people relate to certain teams/athletes. There is a near-universal hatred of the guy that I can't completely understand. I have spent some time pointing out various logical inconsistencies in people's points of view, but in the end those points of view belong to someone else, so I'm probably not going to have much of an effect on anything.

Dave said...

i'm more about hating the whole nba and not just lebron james, but i think the real lesson here is that if you blow really hard into a saxophone for fifty years, you're going to have a stroke.

Dave said...

and if you haven't seen my cake, you are missing out.

zman said...

The proposition that LeBron's perceived lack of effort makes people irrationally angry doesn't stand up to logical scrutiny? Are you relying on strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, or rational basis review?

Jerry said...

So everyone loved him before the Finals?

Marls said...

He is relying on the ruling in US v. Fishbien.

Mark said...

Everyone didn't ove him before the Finals but basketball analysts were almost universally praising him for what he was doing on the court. I agree that the hatred of him is irrational and doesn't make much sense considering he hasn't committed some terrible and doesn't seem to be a terrible dude at all.

With that said, he was pretty underwhelming in the second half of each of the last two games. You'd agree with that, no?

rob said...

he lacked whelm, for sure. it was weird.

luuuuuuonnnnnnnngo!!!

Danimal said...

On the subject, NBC/Brian Williams actually had a piece on this tonight. Wow.

Jerry said...

Oh yeah, he certainly didn't play well in the Finals.

Whitney said...

"LeBron James in 2011 is the most hated sports figure that I have ever seen."

Really??? I'm not being facetious, I trust Jerry to know much more about this stuff than I ever will. I am just stunned if that's true. Does anyone even try to articulate a reason to "hate" him?

Look, I rooted against LeBron all season because he rubbed Cleveland's nose in it with that ill-conceived method of departure, and because the assemblage of talent there made them seem like the Yankees or Man U. Not because I hated him, not at all. And I think others may have done the same.

Mind you, that stuff paved the way for racists, people who hate the NBA, Jordan lovers, old people who think the set shot was still the best, and mindless losers who hate anyone and anything that others like to weigh in...

zman said...

The GOP debate is now addressing the topic of "Muslims in America." Not a lot of nuance going on here.

rob said...

they're bad and scary, right?

zman said...

Herman Cain recently said he wouldn't be comfortable with a Muslim in his cabinet. Tonight he clarified that there are peaceful Muslims and violent Muslims, and when he made that statement he was referring to the Muslims who are trying to kill us. So to reiterate, Cain would not appoint a terrorist to his cabinet.

Jerry said...

I could build a supporting case for it, but it would take some work and would end up being somewhat boring to read.

If you want to scan through a 1300 post thread on the Giants message board:

http://corner.bigblueinteractive.com/index.php?mode=2&thread=405995&show_all=1

Scan around the internet - check the comments sections of blogs. I guarantee there's a similar thread on just about every sports message board in the country.

I also tried a little search engine trick that failed, but if you type in "Douchebag Basketball" on bing, Kyle Singler's wikipedia page is the #3 result.

Lumpy said...

you think he's more hated than barry bonds?

Danimal said...

i predict that 10 mos from now, the majority will be rooting for lebron. months of piling on will do wonders for his fandom. unless of course he does or says something stupid again, which is likely. so, in short everyone will probably still hate him.

Jerry said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jerry said...

Bonds is a good call - I could see an argument either way on that one. Both of those guys really "heard it" from fans in every city they visited.

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