No One Understands Him
Richard Sherman is a complicated man.
Jae-Ho
Letters To AnOverseas Friend.
…or things I might have wondered aloud.
Fin.
Letters To An Overseas Friend by Jae-Ho Yoo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://letters.jaehoyoo.com.
That was extraordinary.
A trend I’ve noticed in sports writing: the analysis of a “difficult” player through the lens of how complicated his life might be/have been. Complicated here tends to be short-form for growing up under hardship, and thus the player’s difficult behaviour is interpreted through the lens of whether his childhood—murdered father, battle with illness—has made him what he is today.
See: Boogie Cousins.
This leads to some pretty loose psychology, as the difficult player is examined through the lens of childhood and his difficulty either “explained”, and thus forgiven, or determined as inexplicable, and thus he is fully culpable for his bad behaviour.
Complicated can also mean “makes decisions the majority doesn’t understand.” Richard Sherman might be complicated in this sense. Barry Sanders was complicated. As a syllogism it seems to work like this:
All complicated players are difficult.
Mario Balotelli is a complicated player.
Therefore, Mario Balotelli is difficult.
But it does not seem the reverse is true. And so the false syllogism:
All difficult players are complicated.
J.R. Smith is difficult.
Therefore, J.R. Smith is complicated.
Did it work?
Yep.
Yes. Not mediocre.
Two things I learned today:
1. There is a word for a concept I’ve know of for a long time. That word is
syllogism. And false syllogism.2. DeMarcus Cousins in also known as Boogie Cousins.
To complicated and difficult, I’ll throw in the word compelling. I understand that this is not completely explicable, but I find Richard Sherman and Barry Sanders very compelling. Add Kareem Abdul-Jabbar that mix. Not JR Smith. Tom Brady? No.
Is there a less-compelling “superstar” than Tom Brady? (I put that in quotations for your benefit).
Not Sidney Crosby, because people hate him for some reason. Hatred is kind of compelling, or inspiring hatred.
Is there another world class athlete you’d less enjoy a meal with?
Definitely compelling.
http://quietube6.com/v.php/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va29YFkchXo
Richard Sherman wrote an article touching on why some athletes who have “made it” risk their success by not disassociating themselves from their difficult pasts. Not such an epiphany if given any serious thought (his explanation is that some of the “questionable” people from your past are your real friends [read: past and future support network], as opposed to tenuously positive acquaintances such as fans, GM’s, agents, and sponsors). Predictably, he got some support for the article and a lot of vitriol. I guess he compelled them whether they were looking to be or not.
If you haven’t read it, the article:
http://mmqb.si.com/2014/04/02/richard-sherman-desean-jackson/
A hunch: by writing that article, Richard Sherman gained some new fans, pissed off existing enemies, and made some new ones. All the while, his friends remained his friends.