For those who are inclined to dismiss that crusty old hand, Charley Rosen, simply because he chooses to express his considerable intelligence through insightful articles that skewer NBA players who fail to measure up to his almost unattainable standards for excellence, here's a refreshing change of pace. Here, one can find a list of the nicest guys in the NBA, according to The Basketball Curmudgeon himself. While I would like Mr. Rosen to continue producing articles that celebrate his observation that the players mentioned in his article "prove the lie to Leo Durocher's oft-quoted dictum: 'Nice guys finish last'," if only to preserve good old Charley for the emotionally taxing NBA season, I have to admit that he's just not very good at producing warmly inspirational human interest pieces. It's like he so desperately wanted to show that he's not always testy and demanding, he deliberately avoided making any observations that could possibly be misconstrued as negative. The end result, of course, is that he sounds like he was gritting his teeth as he pounded out the treacly goodness that makes his article so un-Rosen.
Still, check out the article, if only for his recollections of what a class act Julius Erving is. I don't think that it is any accident that, for a commencement address, Pulitzer-prize winning author David Halberstam quoted Erving as the venerable pundit offered his classic definition of professionalism as "doing the things you love to do on the days when you don't feel like doing them". It's always delightful whenever, despite consistent evidence to the contrary, we encounter instances where excellence in one aspect of human endeavor (like suspending one's self in the air with the greatest of ease) is complemented by excellence in another (just being someone people enjoy sharing good stories about).
Something just as incredibly stunning as Rosen turning into Mr. Rogers on MSN Foxsports is happening at rival ESPN Page 2. Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy, goes out on a limb and delivers something close to social commentary after seeing The Rock in the sports movie, Gridiron Gang. If anyone could ever be considered the popular sports anti-thesis to Charley Rosen, it would be Bill Simmons. In the same way that one has the sneaking suspicion that Rosen was popping blood vessels the entire time that he was typing out that article on nice guys in the NBA simply because it wasn't "him", most readers would just as readily assume that Simmons would suffer just as much if he were forced to eschew the usual pop-culture references and snarkily smug humor that has characterized his writing since 1997. Still, Simmons, in my opinion at least, meets with greater success writing incisive social commentary than Rosen did writing "nice". Check it out here.
Photo credits:
Julius Erving
Simmons as illustrated by Charlie Powell
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