Tag Archives: nba

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ESPN’s The Last Dance – A Few Thoughts

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I was born in 1977, so I got to experience the Bulls’ championships while in high school and college, which was pretty cool. I loved the NBA during those years. I remember staying up late on school nights every season during the playoffs to take it all in.

When The Last Dance debuted on ESPN, I felt disappointed because we don’t have cable–we’re cord cutters. I kept hearing it was on Netflix as well, but I came to find out that was just for the international market.

However, last week I learned that the ESPN app is free on smart TVs and that The Last Dance is available to stream via that app. Guess what my wife and I have done for the last few nights? That’s right–we binged The Last Dance after the kids went to bed, and we loved it!

I have to be honest–I know Michael Jordan is the greatest player to have ever picked up a basketball, but I forgot just how damn good he actually was. Seeing those years compressed into ten hours … wow. Amazing, amazing stuff.

The documentary played with time in an interesting fashion. It kept bouncing back and forth between the first championship run and the second. This juxtaposition made for some interesting viewing as you compared the “young” Michael Jordan to the “old” Michael Jordan.

Plus, it was fantastic to see those players I loved to watch so much back in the day. Not just the Bulls players, either. Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Isiah Thomas, John Stockton, Reggie Miller, Karl Malone, Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, Charles Oakley, John Starks, and very young versions of Shaq and Kobe.

If you enjoyed 90s basketball, The Last Dance is extremely fulfilling. Keep in mind, though, that this is pretty much Michael Jordan propaganda. There are no hard questions for the man, no controversies, no awkward moments for him to tackle. This is purely reliving his glory years, and I’m absolutely okay with that.

Here are a few things I learned from The Last Dance that I didn’t know back then …

  1. Michael Jordan tormented every teammate and opponent he encountered.
  2. Scottie Pippen was a little more selfish than I thought, but, even so, he wasn’t very selfish at all under the circumstances.
  3. Dennis Rodman’s shenanigans were far more calculated than I imagined.
  4. Phil Jackson cursed pretty hardcore for a zen master.
  5. Steve Kerr has always been hilarious and really, really smart.
  6. Scott Burrell was on the team.
  7. Horace Grant was a bit of a whiner.
  8. Jordan had a security guard who could have been a member of Lynyrd Skynyrd.
  9. Before Jordan joined the Bulls, they were a traveling cocaine circus.
  10. Michael Jordan had a very special relationship with his dad.

The Last Dance proved incredibly fun. I still enjoy the NBA, but nothing will ever replace those formative years spent watching the League and Jordan.

Oh, and I’ll finally admit that Jordan was better than LeBron, but I still like LeBron more and I always will.

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What the NBA G League Means For Businesses and Colleges

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The NBA’s G League is kind of a like a minor league for the NBA. Players in the G League are considered professionals, and they are paid. However, something very interesting has happened over the last several weeks. Top college prospects are electing to enter the G League rather than going to college for a year before entering the NBA draft.

Up until now, it was common for elite high school  basketball players to go to a top-tier basketball school for one year. In doing so, they raised their own stock and gained a national spotlight, but they also made a lot of other people very, very rich while not being allowed to legally earn a cent for themselves.

Jalen Green, who is largely considered to be the best of the best among high school seniors, is reported to earn $500,000 his first year in the G League. After that first year, he’ll be allowed to enter the NBA draft for, presumably, quite a bit more.

You probably have an opinion about the basketball angle of all this, but that’s not really what I want to talk to you about. No, I want to talk about why kids bother going to college at all.

Now, obviously, college is the only path for many professions–teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc.

However, quite a few of us land jobs that have virtually nothing to do with our degrees–it’s just the fact that we have a degree that allow us to obtain a job.

According to The Street, who got their information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American makes an annual income of around $48,672. The average annual college tuition is somewhere around $15,000. Keep in mind, that’s just the tuition. If you need room and board, that’s another $10,000. In other words, an average American can expect to pay somewhere around $100,000 total for an average public university’s undergraduate degree.

I teach at a local high school, and the idea of paying $100,000 for college is a crippling one, especially if a student has no idea what they want to do with their lives. Most of my students just want to live comfortably. Most want to earn a decent living. Taking on $100,000 worth of debt, plus interest, to earn somewhere around $50,000 a year doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to them.

If given the choice, I think most would opt for the Jalen Green route. Go right into the work force with the opportunity to earn lots more while learning valuable skills.

Frankly, I’m surprised corporations don’t offer their own in-house universities. Almost all of the large corporations have some kind of a learning and development department, and almost all of them offer ongoing training for certificates and advancements. Imagine if a corporation hired an eighteen-year-old at an entry-level position, then offered free courses specific to that corporation’s field of interest that the new employee could take at their own pace. After so many hours, the employee would have the equivalent of a college degree, and they could then use that degree to go find other jobs in the same field (if they chose to do so). Consequently, I’m guessing most would stay with the corporation that groomed them.

I’m going to be honest with you–I paid for a lot of classes at college that had no bearing on my career as a teacher nor did they particularly interest me. (Geology comes immediately to mind. My apologies to all of the geologists out there.)

I personally believe in the power of education. I also appreciate that college is intended for the student to receive a well-rounded education on a variety of topics. I know that education is the path to greater success and ultimately provides an easier life for nearly everyone. However, I also admit that college has become far too expensive for the average American, and that college is not particularly appealing to the average American because much of it seems unnecessary.

Education and college should not have to be one and the same when it comes to a high school graduate’s earning potential.

So why aren’t corporations following the NBA’s model? Why aren’t they creating their own “G League?” And if they do, what will be the colleges’ response?