There he goes, dribbling with one hand, pushing off an opponent with another. "Using his body" is the expression coaches use.
A long time ago, growing up around the then-great city of Detroit, I used to watch my dad coach basketball. He was patient but demanding; he liked kids. I'm not sure how successful his teams were, in winning percentage, but I know he was well-liked back by his players.
One of whom, for a while, was my cousin, Ed. Eddie was a natural athlete, who played several sports well, and eventually made all-state. One time we went to see him play in high school, for Royal Oak Dondero.
Possibly happy to have the chance to impress his old coach and uncle, Eddie had a "career game," as it's called, hitting shots from everywhere for 17 points, leading his team to an insurmountable lead, by halftime.
They coasted after that and he ended up with 27 points.
Once you have the physical gifts and the practice, athletics becomes emotional. You have to want to win to win. Which is the simple reason athletes often excel in business; they are used to hard work in pursuit of a goal; they're not easily side-tracked by failure; and they believe that they will ultimately prevail.
Artists, however, run on a different sort of fuel. I was talking to a singer/song-writer friend today about how hard it can be to do what he knows he must do to succeed. You see, it's all about marketing. You've gotta burn a CD, and aggressively push it out to the handlers, the agents, the door-keepers for the stars.
Once they sense your talent and that your style might mesh well with one of their clients, you might get the chance to front for them on a tour. After that, the sky is the limit for a musician.
If we are talking about boys here, boy athletes and boy musicians, there are girls who just adore athletes and girls who just adore musicians. We all know this. The truth is that girl athletes and girl musicians do not always garner the same adoration.
But from the perspective of what the producer wants and needs, as opposed to the consumer, it really doesn't matter what the fans think. An athlete wants to play, she wants to win. A singer wants to sing, she wants to connect emotionally with her audience.
There are plenty who care mainly about money, and there always will be. They sort themselves into professions called marketing, banking, or investment adviser. They have their place and their own small moments of meaning and accomplishment.
But they don't need to be celebrated. Wealth is its own reward.
That's why I write about athletes and artists, primarily. Theirs is the much harder path to travel in this life. You may be jealous of the success a few of them enjoy, but that simply identifies you as neither an athlete nor an artist.
No one does these things primarily for money. Money happens. More often than not, it doesn't. Personally speaking, all of the money the U.S. Treasury could print could never, for me, replace the pleasure of watching one of my child athletes glide across a court, a field, or a pitch with the speed of a rocket and the grace of dancer, handling a ball as if it were an extension of their lovely bodies, fending off opponents as if they were fleas, streaking toward a result that will make them and their mates successful in the challenge at hand.
Nor can money touch the feelings unleashed by art, be it writing, painting, photography, film, performance, dance, poetry, or my favorite, music. Money will never buy my love.
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