For many of us, Summer means little to our fansmanship. As much as we try to appreciate America’s great past-time, Baseball is too slow and monotonous. We are seeking more than just an old timers’ game; more than five dollar English Leather cologne.

It is supposed to be the fun-time of the year. Many of us get time off of work to visit the world, sit on the beach, party with friends. Most importantly for us bachelors (and non-bachelors if we’re honest) the quadruple B’s are out in full force–blond, bronzed, bikini’d, bodies.

Head out to Avila Beach or Pismo for an hour and you will have plenty of memories by the time you’re done eye-surfing the summatime candy.

But hold on. Just hold up a bit. We don’t want to be creepers now do we? When you took the career job or said I DO, life took a turn for the better. Life was no longer a never-ending scene from Baywatch, and you are no longer David Hasselhoff and his abundantly woodsy chest.

Promiscuity is a bad bad word now, it will cause you to pull a groin or pat on tiger balm morning, mid-day, and night. It is not meant for us mature ones, but for the spry youngsters with a libido the size of Roseanne.

This my friends is no fun, I know. Yesterday I nearly pulled a hamstring on the stationary elliptical. I was trying to both watch ESPN and fake-run at the same time. Sounds easy enough, but nearing thirty, nothing has become easy. The “honey yes, honey of course, honey I will,” sorts of answers, are all that are easy. My life is a tedium glass house, I say no and the world comes crumbling down.

Summatime…

Remember playing ball nine to five on the blacktop with a few friends? It’s seventy five, a clear ardent blue coats the horizon, and the dead day just slumped on your shoulders with not a thing to do. Each one of your pretended for an eight hour period you were MJ, Scottie Pippen, Penny, Shaq, Larry Johnson, Zo, Grant Hill, or Hakeem.

Those were the days. Now, as a tax-paying citizen you’ve grown to resent the group I listed above. As you collect your unemployment from your poor paying teaching gig, your rose colored glasses including your young affair with believing in the impossible have slapped the basement of your life and crumbled into a million little pieces.

Summatime…

Relax, at some point all of us end up washed up. If an epic duo like Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff could never produce anything more than their one-hit album, then trust me, you and I will be forced to scan, fax, make copies, and staple for a living.

But what Summatime foreshadows are feelings of freedom. Despite our limited free time and fading memories of running the black top with skinned knees and soda pop, we all have a place within us that can go there.

Who would of thunk watching men’s professional tennis could excite me like Pam Anderson’s bobbing twins used to? Now as an unemployed man I have the ability to depressingly relive the glory days and bring back the first loves of season: sports, sports, and more sports.

Yes, sports.

Currently, A-Rod is stepping closer and closer to Barry’s all-time home run mark, Tiger is trying to return to form and assume his rightful place as golf’s all-time greatest, and the best living tennis player is still playing at an extremely high level in Roger Federer. Not to mention on Sunday, Jeff Gordon won his 84th NASCAR race, ranking fourth all-time on the list and assuming at forty one, he may go down alongside Richard Petty as the greatest driver in World history.

All this and it’s Summatime. Some things to keep an eye this Summer as you either bum it or find the time in your hectic life to Tivo something. Keep an eye on the Boston Red Sox, who after starting the season 1-9, currrently own the second best record in Baseball and are on pace to be just the ninth team in league history to eclipse 1,000 runs scored in a season.

Watch A-Rod continue his climb to home run greatness, as he sits just thirty four shy of the great Willie Mays mark of 660 at fourth all-time.

The NBA draft on June 23rd is always an intriguing experience. For NBA fans, this not only can shape your future (think Boston in 07′ with the trades of both KG and Ray Ray), but offers a glimpse in the leagues future. This year the popular names are the tweeners, Jimmer Fredette of BYU and Kemba Walker of Uconn, both highly talented but not sure lottery choices as of now.

Normally the draft would be all fun and games. That is if there was not a looming NBA lockout. According to NBA analyst Charles Barkley, the owners are at a “point where they are going to try and break these players unions down.”

Like the NBA’s situation, the NFL lockout has to be the most intriguing situation for sports fans. Most of us wait the two dead  Summer months: June and July, for August when football training camps report and news regarding trades begin to swirl. As of now, both sides remain at a stall and the idea of living without football for many not only kills their Summer, but does away with Sunday beer drinking hoots around the tube. Now Church is the only sad option.

June gloom is definitely upon us. A marshmallow cloud bank over the Pacific does it justice. Not only are we concerned about our lack of freedoms living as grown adults but we also may have to live without two of our favorites next year. In order to keep the faith, now would be a good time watch Baywatch re-runs or finally take up those dance lessons.

There is only one man who can answer these pondering’s, that being “Big Shot Bob,” otherwise known as Robert Horry, who made a living with the Rockets, Lakers, and Spurs, en route to seven rings by nailing the clutch shot.

Why does this matter? He was never a star, but he has rings galore bronzed on his swish- svelte fingers. 

In today’s NBA we judge  all-time greats by how many rings they’ve won and whether or not they led their teams to title town. But is this a fair assessment, considering a life-long bench guy like Horry can be carried to seven?

Never was Horry the franchise guy. In fact, as great as he seemed in closing minutes, Robert Horry never became the player we expected him to be after his timely three point shooting for Houston’s 2nd title run.

Horry’s brief stint in Phoenix after a trade in 1996, proved he was not endowed with a star motor. A hot tempered, dramatic and aloof head case, Bob languished averaging 6.9 points at a career low shooting clip: 41.8%. A trade by mid-season to the L.A. Lakers–a team filled with Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Nick Van Exel, Eddie Jones, Elden Campbell, and Cedric Ceballos changed the trajectory of his failing career.

So why then is Bob a champion? Why not franchise guys like Barkley, Malone, Stockton, Dominique, Ewing, or Reggie Miller?

Each of those listed above were worthy of winning gold, were they not? All of them were respective franchise pieces with the heart, skills, and late game heroics to hold the O’Brien.

The answer to their problems was Michael Jordan’s Bulls: a team of role guys surrounding the king of the sport with that IT factor needed to win it all. Something today’s critics use to gauge greatness and rank the all time elites.

So what is the issue then with the tautness of this old-time equation? Why not turn a blind eye and allow this to be the answer to everything?

Simply because it just does not add up. It does not offer enough answers. If Big Shot Bob has seven, or the likes of Jack Haley–former twelfth man for Jordan’s final three peat has three, the equation’s a bit off. We need something else, a new perspective when thinking of the greats and why and how they never hung the O’Brien.

And I believe individual luck IS the partly the answer, luck, a maddening machine random like the California Lottery. Historians prefer the term historical happenings–a notion that choices are made for no other reason except that they were made, and the dominoes re-arrange the cosmos of a world more closely inter-connected than we might wish it to be (think guy who smells like farts at the movies, or the swine flu victim winding a cough onto the back nape of the neck.)

Luck.

To think Michael Jordan fell to number three in the 1984 draft could be easily overlooked for a variety of reasons: Sam Bowie, the number two pick before MJ, was a  college superstar and a big man compared at the time to the greats. The Blazers already had a gifted wingman in Clyde Drexler andat the time the league was built around bigs: Kareem, Sampson and Olajuwan, Robert Parish, Patrick Ewing, and Moses Malone.

But that doesn’t make things less ludicrous.  Look at how the draft shaped the NBA forever. MJ goes to an ordinary Bulls team built in perhaps the greatest city in America, where he wins ROY, ultimately five MVP’s, slam dunk contests, becomes the games biggest mogul, and wins six titles. Alongside Oprah, MJ is easily the greatest name in Chicago history and can be attributed for an economical explosion that saved the lower West side of the city once run with crime: drug abuse, gang wars, and prostitution.

Bowie, in the annals of the NBA, is known as ‘the bust.’ He never won a thing in the pros: no all star games, no shoe deals, thus injuring the once bright ideal the Blazers had in trading their franchise Center Bill Walton to Boston.

This, my friends, is the Sam Bowie, a supernatural element that cannot be ignored.

Luck.

Yet like so many children born into inner city poverty without the tools necessary to change their lives, we cannot judge the stars through the a similar bias, because not all players are born lucky into a posh franchise. The gift of playing in Los Angeles or Boston does not come to everyone. Not every player is born into a showtime era, a team so deep they make the ocean look like a kids pool.

For some, seeking a new home is like divorcing an abusive wife. In order for Mitch Richmond to adorn gold, the talented and true shooting guard had to eventually break ties in the perils of Sacramento. Karl Malone found it necessary to join with Kobe and Shaq in 04′ after a long tenure in Utah. And even the humble Clyde Drexlerleft a hell of a situation in Portland to win it Houston. All three of which were great with or without (Sing it Bono) a championship.

The reality of the situation is heart breaking for most. We as childish dreamers wish our favorite player could be greater than the others, but this is not real. Embracing a pragmatic approach to the sport tied less to your heart strings will allow you to see greatness wrapped in many different packages. 

Reality 1: Great players DO NOT win championships, great TEAMS win championships. The 2004 Detroit Pistons are a perfect example of this. A team of role guys without a future hall of famer, the Pistons had the momentary IT. Call it faith, hard work, purity, and any other beautiful thing you want, but to explain why they won a title over an L.A. Laker team stocked with four future hall of famers would be absurd.

Reality 2: Like the stars in the sky, NBA STARS need other STARS. Think for a moment about the teams who’ve won championships the last thirty years. All of them have one thing in common: team depth and stars surrounding stars. Magic had Kareem and Worthy; Bird–Mchale and Parish; Dr.J–Moses Malone; Isaiah–Dumars and Rodman; MJ–Pippen; Hakeem–Clyde; Shaq–Kobe and Wade; Duncan–Robinson, Parker, and Ginobili; Pierce–KG and Allen.

Reality 3:  Winning titles does mean a lot, but it does not mean everything for a myriad of reasons. If the 1919 Chicago Blacksox or dirty referees like Tim Donaghy can throw World Series and playoff games, then how serious can we take this thing? Not very. Take everything with a grain of salt and learn other decided facets when it comes to judging all-time greats: MVP’s, All Star appearances, Career Totals, Game Winners, Ability to close, Athleticism, Re-defining the sport, dominance-ometer, and sociological affects.

LeBron James is not a sell out because the guy wants to win, he’s a realist. A star unselfish enough to admit that NO star including himself, can win a title completely on his own.

LeBron is stuck in the the Bill Clinton Vacuum. Though he does great things, he is brushed aside because of one unlikeable decision.

But greatness is not a grade school quiz on being friendly, it is brutal giftedness. And likeability is not the twin brother to being great.

LeBron made a  decision to better his career andhis life. Leading a Cleveland Cavs team the last seven years, that never boasted anybody better than a has-been version of Antawn Jamison warrants James departure.  No it does not warrant the overdone TV cinematic’s regarding “the decision,” nor the Pat Riley blowout introduction party in South Beach. Yet neither should it foster the illogical hysteria across America attempting to deny the man’s sheer dominance and greatness.

This isn’t patty cake kids. We are talking about a production entertainment, where all titles are but a decorative decor. They might help the woman look fine, but if that woman is not fine without the jewelry or the tight fitting jeans, I say run, run as fast as you can.

Drop by the nearest bar and have a scotch on me. Look through the world with freshness and at what is truly great (it is not the girl next to you.). It is the scraggly bartender able to whip up drinks faster than the average Joe.