I Want to Believe

Yesterday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I knew that in advance, I thought about it yesterday morning, but when I logged on this morning, I saw some stuff about it, and realized, I did not say anything pirate-like at all yesterday. I didn't even post pirate-like phrases in my blog yesterday. Aaargh! What a scurvy thing for me to do! Ye must think me to be quite the scallywag.

Oh well, I can't go back and change it now. What's done is done.

Something that popped into my head for no apparent reason this morning: Some years ago, when I was in the Navy, I was stationed in the Chicago area when Michael Jordan was playing for the Bulls, and I had a roommate that was from Michigan. He hated the fact that, even though the Pistons were a good team, the Bulls kept beating them. I think he really hated Michael Jordan. He read somewhere that Jordan was averaging better than 25% of the Bulls points, and he harped on that fact for weeks. Anytime he heard anything about the Bulls (even if it was criticism), he would say, "You know, that's pretty sad when one guy scored 25% of your team's points. Pretty sad."

For a long time, I didn't really get what he meant by that, but someone else overheard him (someone that had played for his high school basketball team), and kind of pulled me aside, and explained that what my roommate was talking about was that with five players on the court at once, and, generally, one player isn't going to play the whole game; if everyone on the team is equally skilled, and they play as a team, no one player should score more than 20% of the team's total. Of course, there are a lot of if's there. He pointed out that, given Jordan extra-ordinary ability, and the fact that he was spending more time on the court that the average player, for him to only score 25% of the Bulls' total was actually a testament to their teamwork.

The next time my roommate made his "pretty sad" comment, there just happened to be a newspaper lying nearby. I picked it up, flipped to the sports section, and, as it happened, it had a rundown of the Piston's latest game. If memory serves, Isiah Thomas had scored 35 points of the Pistons 98 point total. I don't even need a calculator to figure that percentage. I read the numbers to him, and then said, "You know, that's pretty sad when one guy scores 35% of the team's points." He didn't say anything. I didn't hear him say anything about the Bulls for about a week, and then something set him off again. As luck would have it, there was once again a newspaper close at hand, with a Pistons write-up in it. This time, Thomas had scored 37 points, and Detroit still hadn't broken 100. I don't have to tell you what I said next. I never heard anything more about Jordan's 25% again.

Come to think of it, I think I know why this popped into my head--Isiah Thomas was in the news yesterday. But that's another story, and I'm not going to get into that.

I think sometimes we all get in the mindset that, I want to believe this, so whatever evidence supports my belief (no matter how flimsy), I will hold onto that, and I will disregard any evidence to the contrary. We make excuses for the evidence that we don't like, if possible: Oh, that study was done by such-and-such a group, and they are funded by this other group that... What ever. And certainly, sometimes studies are tainted, but sometimes we just plain want to believe what we want to believe.