{"id":62,"date":"2010-07-12T10:35:48","date_gmt":"2010-07-12T10:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/2010\/07\/lebron-james-and-what-we-lose-when-we-win.html"},"modified":"2010-07-12T10:35:48","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T10:35:48","slug":"lebron-james-and-what-we-lose-when-we-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/2010\/07\/lebron-james-and-what-we-lose-when-we-win.htm","title":{"rendered":"Lebron James and What We Lose When We Win"},"content":{"rendered":"

The image I will remember most from the 2010 World Cup is Netherlands coach Bert van Marwijk pulling off his silver medal in disgust as soon as he left the podium. Welcome to a brave new world where winning is everything and losing a soccer match is more serious than exposing yourself as a petulant child in front of two billion people.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n


<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

When I was a boy I was intrigued by Archie
\nManning, one of the NFL’s greatest quarterbacks who played for its worst team,
\nthe New Orleans Saints. Season after<\/span><\/p>\n

season good ole’ Archie would be pummeled by
\ndefensive ends and Linebackers who came charging through his porous offensive
\nline to maul him into the gridiron. Never one to complain, Manning took the
\nbeating and continued to clock up impressive stats year after year, even as his
\nteam continued to lose.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Why stay with a team so awful that its fans wore
\nbrown paper bags over their heads? Why not be traded to a team that had a
\nchance? I never found the answer to that question. But after Arching Manning
\nretired two of his sons followed him into the NFL and became two of its
\ngreatest quarterbacks with his eldest son, Peyton, ranking as perhaps the
\ngreatest of all time.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Only a father who is truly his sons’ hero can
\ninspire them to follow so fully in his footsteps and only a father who has
\ndisplayed such enormous loyalty and dedication can raise children who, amid
\nbeing rich and famous, are widely regarded as possessed of high character. So
\nmaybe old Archie got his reward in the end after all. Not a Super Bowl but two
\nsons who won Super Bowls and who are models of sportsmen as<\/span><\/p>\n

gentlemen. This is the reward that character,
\nrather than a championship, can bestow.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

It’s a lesson that Lebron James, who clearly
\nbought into the ‘winning is everything’ mindset, ought to take to heart. When
\nJames dumped Cleveland this week – without the courtesy of even informing the
\nteam directly – in order to artificially manufacture a championship team with
\nDwayne Wade and Chris Bosh at the Miami Heat, he demonstrated that what really
\ncounts in sports is not character but victory, not loyalty but success.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, we all want to win, and no, none of us enjoy
\nlosing. But the price we’re prepared to pay for our victories is that which
\nwill determine our essential<\/span><\/p>\n

character.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Everywhere you look in sports today character is
\nsecond to victory. I’m an avid cyclist and experience few joys like getting on
\nmy bike and getting out into nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

What a pity then that so many professional
\ncyclists have ruined the sport through doping in the belief that crossing the
\nfinish line first trumps putting principles<\/span><\/p>\n

first.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

It started, of course, with baseball, where
\nplayers trade teams as easily as kids trade baseball cards. Every player is up
\nfor grabs to the highest bidder. In<\/span><\/p>\n

baseball team loyalty is almost nonexistent. It
\nshouldn’t surprise us, therefore, that the sport suffered the worst of the
\ndoping scandals.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

But since sports aren’t the most important thing
\nin life, why should any this matter? Because it’s indicative of a culture that
\nputs winning above everything.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

In today’s business world the biggest winners of
\nall are no longer the doctors or lawyers but Wall Street investment bankers who
\nmake all other professionals appear like losers by comparison. On Wall Street
\nif you’re not in the ranks of the super-wealthy, earning tens of millions of
\ndollars a year, you’re a failure who can only gawk in awe at the masters of the
\nUniverse who run multi-billion dollar hedge funds. No wonder then that so many
\non Wall Street took irresponsible risks in order to have the paydays that would
\ntake them into the highest echelons. The fact that<\/span><\/p>\n

their risk was paid for by our tax dollars did
\nnot much matter. Remember, it’s<\/span><\/p>\n

success at any cost.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span>The
\nwinning is everything ethos trickles down to an increasingly rancid and shallow
\nmedia culture where newspapers and TV rely on shallow Hollywood gossip to boost
\nratings even as all this nonsense makes the American audience dumber and
\ndumber. It then trickles down even further to vulnerable teenagers whose first
\ndesire is to simply be famous, however that might happen.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Want to know why kids cheat at school? Come now.
\nIs that a serious question? How different are they to the rest of us who employ
\na win-at-any-cost model.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

But there is hope among the youth who are, as
\nyet, not as cynical as we adults. The New York Times reported this week that
\nMiley Cyrus has rapidly dropped in popularity by twenty percentage points among
\ngirls because of her new hyper-sexualized image,<\/span><\/p>\n

which includes a video of her giving a lap dance
\nto a 44-year-old director and appearing seemingly nude, covered only by a sheet
\nin Vanity Fair. Likewise, her new album ‘Can’t Be Tamed’ has cratered, selling
\n72% less than her previous album, which sported a more wholesome female image.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Which just goes to show you. Not all kids will
\napplaud success at any cost.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The image I will remember most from the 2010 World Cup is Netherlands coach Bert van Marwijk pulling off his silver medal in disgust as soon as he left the podium. Welcome to a brave new world where winning is everything and losing a soccer match is more serious than exposing yourself as a petulant…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":203,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nLebron James and What We Lose When We Win - Rabbi Shmuley Unleashed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/2010\/07\/lebron-james-and-what-we-lose-when-we-win.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lebron James and What We Lose When We Win - Rabbi Shmuley Unleashed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The image I will remember most from the 2010 World Cup is Netherlands coach Bert van Marwijk pulling off his silver medal in disgust as soon as he left the podium. 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