Will the Real #6 Stand Up? MMM 7-12-2010

WILL THE REAL #6 PLEASE STAND UP?

Monday Morning Message, July 12, 2010

Just a few months ago, LeBron James suggested that all players, including himself,  should stop wearing #23 in honor of Michael Jordan, and he petitioned the NBA to be able to wear #6.  This is ironic because LBJ indicated he is a student of the game and proper respect should be shown to those who have forged the way in making the game of basketball what it is today.  Perhaps his history books did not go back as far as 1955?

The fact that someone would choose to wear #6 in deference to #23 rankles me as much as the manners and displaced loyalties that we observed in the South Beach shopping spree.  Not only did Bill Russell #6 of the Boston Celtics win 11 championships to MJ’s 6 championships, he was the player-coach for the last one.  Add to the statistical difference the fact that the USA was a much harder place for African Americans in the fifties and sixties and you have the difference between Nike hype and the real deal!  If you don’t believe me, read it for yourself in Bill’s book, “Red and ME”… My coach, My Lifelong Friend.

But do not shed a tear for Mr. Russell.  You see he never asked for sympathy and he always was able to take the lessons from a segregated South from his youth, and apply them through his university studies at the Univ of San Francisco and into the NBA in Boston.  The current #6 that is the current rage of Miami looked a little strange in his departure speech and his MTV staging in South Beach.  Too bad they didn’t have any NBA history books in Akron that could go back past 1980! Mr. Russell’s father also would have insisted on his son showing proper respect in leaving home because you may wish to come back again!

But even with all that has happened, Cav’s fans let’s not void the seven years of basketball respectability by lowering our reactions to the base anger we all feel.  We had those seven years by a fortunate opportunity to draft a great player.  This too shall pass!

Hebrews 5:12-14 (RSV) “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need some one to teach you again the first principles of God’s word. You need milk not solid food; for every one who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.”

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