Fuck Michael Jordan
“You just had to be ready to hear what the answer actually revealed.”
Start Reading BelowHe said it the first time in ninth grade.
Not as analysis. Not as a position he had thought through and arrived at carefully. Just as a fact about the world the way you state facts when you're fourteen and everything feels that certain.
Fuck Michael Jordan.
We were figuring out girls. We were figuring out fashion. We were figuring out who we were going to be when the version of ourselves that other people saw finally matched the version we felt on the inside. We didn't have time to interrogate every sentence that came out of each other's mouths.
So I let it go.
The first time. The fifth time. The tenth time.
He was my guy. We came up together. Same neighborhood. Same hallways. Same understanding of where we came from and what we were trying to get to. That kind of history doesn't come with a terms and conditions. You accept the whole person including the phrases that don't quite make sense yet.
Besides I had my own certainty.
He had T-Mac. I had Kobe.
We both watched them come into the league at the same time. Both young. Both gifted in ways that made you stop whatever you were doing and just watch. We hedged our bets the way young men hedge bets on the things that feel like they matter. Tribal. Personal. This is mine and that is yours and we'll see how it plays out.
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