No, this post is not about Tim Tebow, the well known Christian quarterback, stand up guy, and my all time favorite sports figure. (And I'm aware that guard Maurkice Pouncey is alleged to have taken money from an agent last year. He should be given a pass because he is a member of "the Pouncey Twins." Admit it -- don't you just love the idea of there being something called the Pouncey Twins?)
But have you paid attention to NBA star David Lee? Lee has quietly become one of the game's better forwards since coming out of the University of Florida to play for the New York Knicks. He has played during some terrible years for the Knicks, and has done so in a way that reflects well.
Read this article from yesterday's New York Times. It tells of how he traveled to New York earlier this month to attend the funeral of a security worker for the Knicks:
When Marni Jaffer was about to deliver her husband’s eulogy to a crowd of 300-plus mourners, she noticed a familiar face rising above the others in the back of the funeral chapel. She had never met the man, but she recognized him from her television screen.
It was David Lee, formerly of the Knicks.
“I thought it was wonderful that he came,” Jaffer said. “And it also struck me how he stayed in the back, paying his respects quietly, not wanting to have people say, ‘Oh, it’s David Lee,’ and intrude on my husband’s moment.”
The funeral for Scott Jaffer, a longtime N.B.A. security official whose primary post was Madison Square Garden, was held July 11. Lee had been in St. Louis, his hometown, after being dealt by the Knicks to the Golden State Warriors in a sign-and-trade transaction that was announced soon after LeBron James’s all-about-me ESPN extravaganza.
Expected back in New York the next week for a basketball camp, Lee was stunned to hear that Jaffer, 63, had died.
“The guy took care of our security stuff, drug testing, things like that,” Lee said in a telephone interview. “He couldn’t do enough for us, joked with us every night, and it turned out he had cancer for three years and not one of us knew about it.”
After five years in New York, Lee had one final act of hustle on behalf of the Knicks, flying into town on Saturday night and getting in his car Sunday morning for a one-hour drive to Airmont, N.Y., from his apartment on Manhattan’s West Side.
He knew much of the Knicks’ basketball staff would be working at the summer league in Las Vegas and he wanted to make sure that the team — given its extreme state of transition — would be represented.
The same team, of course, that could not wait to replace him with its latest high-end acquisition, Amar’e Stoudemire.
The article goes on to detail previous displays of Lee's team-first attitude. The culture of sports is in a perpetual state of changing from the "old school," the supposed Golden Age when attitudes were "right," and this decline mirrors the sense of decline that many have about our society and culture today.
But we should never forget to notice when we see an example of somebody who is different, who is exemplary, who is praiseworthy. Perhaps the big contracts are not (yet) going to these "character" players, but if we believe character matters we ought to take heed of it when we see it, and feel good about it.
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Philippians 4:8
No comments:
Post a Comment