yeah, but can he shoot?


an interesting story broke this week when projected number two pick in the upcoming nba draft, kevin durant, couldn't benchpress 185 pounds one time. espn.com's insider used this information to sell his point that greg oden should deserve the number one pick even more now. it all seemed kind of silly to me, but it made me happy that tons of folks picked up the "story" and had the same reaction that i did. something along the lines of, "yeah, but he can still shoot, right?" i mean, anyone who paid even a little attention to the ncaa season saw that the most dominant player in college basketball this year was kevin durant, not greg oden. i know. i know. greg oden's wrist was hurt. he's big. he's a center. he has more "upside". and that all may be true. but i know this, if i was starting my own nba team next year and had the number one pick, i would be taking kevin durant. the silliness and the attention paid to the fact that kevin durant can't benchpress 185 got me thinking about how little "tangibles" mean when it comes to sports and life itself sometimes.

there are countless examples (mike mamula, tony mandarich, robert gallery, sebastian telfair, kwame brown, todd van poppel, rick ankiel, among many, many others) in every sport i follow of workout warriors that wow scouts and teams with their sheer physical "tools", but suck when it comes to translating those "tools" to their respective game. i understand that combines and scouting are essential to the process of pro sports in the same way that school is essential to some careers. i wouldn't want medical advice from someone that had decided medical school wasn't necessary in their career development and i wouldn't want to to be a passenger on a flight manned by a pilot that was in the process of teaching him or herself how to fly. but most careers and jobs are not that school specific. and no sports are.

in football, basketball and baseball, does it help to be strong and fast? absolutely. the cream of the crop in most sports are the players that can combine superior physical talent with an abnormal football, basketball or baseball i.q. but can you be good or even great without the superior talent? i don't know. ask ben wallace. terrell owens. joe montana. george brett. dale murphy. bruce bowen. steve largent. rickey henderson. mike piazza. i could go on and on with a list of guys (sorry, girls) that weren't considered the most supreme talent, but went on to all-star to all-pro to hall of fame careers.

in jobs outside of sports, does it help to be "educated"? definitely. sometimes, you have to have that piece of paper to get in the door. but then i think of the field that i am in now, retail, and how little it has to do with education and how much it has to do with people and life experience. and how if i was starting a retail establishment today, my first pick wouldn't be my step-brother who just finished up at dartmouth. it would probably be my brother in florida or my 30 year-old co-worker at psp that has done a lot of drugs. i would pick them because they know how the world works and they know how to make something out of completely nothing. they've seen the bottom of the barrel and decided to scratch and claw their way out of the muck instead of just giving up. are either of my examples "there" yet? i and they would probably say no, but saying that would only add to my point. they would understand that life is a process of ups and downs and that the "tangibles" of life (education, etc.) mean very little when life throws you a curve or a big fucking rock, depending on how bad your situation was/is.

i don't know if this post has much of a flow to it. i think i was just looking for a reason to talk about brian. it's not like portland will rue the day they didn't pick greg oden. he's going to be an all-star even if he's not as good as kevin durant. and some firm in new york isn't going to rue the day they didn't go to a rehab community in florida instead of dartmouth to handpick their next great employee.

i guess my idea can be summed up so. in the nba, any story that doesn't focus on someone's ability to play the game is pretty trivial. in life, any story about a person that doesn't focus on where that person came from to get wherever the hell it is they are today is also missing the point. i like that, for some reason, my life is surrounded with people that society (not to mention their own families) would rather sweep under a rug. and i like that i can speak for them and stand up for them not because they have asked me to or because it improves my resume, but because i think those people are the ones that matter most in the grand scheme of things.

that, and maybe because i am one of those people.