Everyone is pretty excited about the professional basketball playoffs. Since I'm hearing about Kobe Bryant, I have to assume that the Lakers are in it. I'm NOT a basketball fan.
On NPR today, the newscasters were waxing poetic about the Lakers and how Kobe is behaving in the post game interviews. They expect him to be happy and bubbly after a win, but he's stern and unexcited.
When asked, he indicated that the job wasn't done yet, so it wasn't time for celebrating yet. I can understand that. Too many people celebrate early. We call it 'counting the chickens before they hatch'. What I found most disturbing about this interview is the actual dialog... which I will try to recreate here for you:
Newscaster: "Kobe, you seem so surly, why aren't you more excited about your second win?"
Kobe: "I don't know what that means."
Newscaster: "It's like you're stern or hard."
Then Kobe explained how the job wasn't done.
This made me think... do most NBA players graduate from college? High school? Kobe went into the NBA at 17. He went straight from Lower Merion High School in Pennsylvania to the pros. Perhaps if he had attended Duke University like he indicated he had planned, he would know what surly means.
An interview like that is an embarrassment to the player and the newspeople involved. I don't know how much money Kobe is making, but he needs a handler. Someone to sit next to him and whisper in his ear like the lawyers at a senate hearing. Then when he doesn't know the definition of a 5 letter word, he can ask a grown up.
--Sandee Wagner
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4 comments:
That's kind of sad to think about, but I know that Z, J & I were educated beyond high school. And I don't mean college, I mean the things we learned outside of school--like our SAT-word-of-the-day and such. It's something that I take for granted, but it's so easy to identify someone who is uneducated but intelligent...
Emm,
I honestly think that Kobe is NOT intelligent. Just wildly talented in a physical activity. Although he did make a high enough SAT score to get into college, he chose not to go. What I really wonder is this: if he'd gone to college (and learned what surly meant!) would he have had less of an NBA career, or the same? spw
I used to be a big Louie Lamour fan. If I remember right, he didn't graduate from high school. But he was a tremendously smart guy. Wrote bunches of very entertaining books.
He talked a lot about how school is just a kind out outline that we should fill in as we live our lives.
A truly intelligent person keeps learning until the day he dies.
A stupid one doesn't know how very ignorant he is.
Susan,
I think an ignorant man also doesn't recognize a 5 letter word like SURLY!!
I hadn't heard that about Louis... he was my dad's favorite author, him and Zane Gray. I've read every book he ever wrote--I know because my dad passed them to me when he was done and he told me we'd hit them all.
spw
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