Lebron a bad sport?

Lebron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers had just lost in the NBA semi-finals. After leading a team with mediocre surrounding talent to the best record in the regular season, it was over. So Lebron James left the court and went home. Now he is drawing all kinds of criticism for not shaking opponent's hands or speaking to the media that night. As a star player, and team leader, he should have demonstrated good sportsmanship, so they say. And I agree to some extent. But looking back on my own limited sports experience, I have to ask the question, what is true sportsmanship?

It was my senior year of high school; my only year playing varsity soccer. It was the season I had been anticipating every since I had started playing for Penn Manor. And we started off 0-4. Next on the schedule was McCaskey, an inner city school known much more for their basketball than their soccer, so it was the perfect time to get a win and get our season moving in the right direction. But on a wet, rainy day, we slopped our way into a second overtime period, tied 1-1. With about six minutes left, a McCaskey player got the ball just outside the box shot it crisply, but straight at me on one hop. It was a simple forward dive to scoop it up, but when I lowered my arms, the ball slipped through, and went between my legs for the game winning goal. Heading off the field in disbelief, I had absolutely no desire to ceremonially shake the opponent's hands. Given the nature of our coach, however, I knew I had no choice unless I wanted tomorrow's practice to be more than miserable. So I took the keeper's position at the front of the hand shake line and proceeded. As we passed the other team, I slapped hands, saying nothing. If I made any eye contact, it was a scowl. Looking back, I see no sportsmanship in this, only anti-sportsman ship. It was even to the point that when one of my friends (who was on McCaskey's JV team and sitting beside the bench) called my name several times, trying to get my attention in order to offer his condolences, and I completely ignored him.

Now before I go any farther, let me say this. I could have made the choice to have a better attitude. I could have been more gracious in defeat. But this was at least the second game in the young season that I felt like I had single handedly blown. In a way, I felt like I owed it to the rest of my team to not just walk off the field like everything was great. But given the way I carried myself, and knowing how I would act while "congratulating" the other team, would it have been more sportsman like to have sat down on the bench and said nothing, done nothing to the other team? Isn't there a point when, though it may be the more difficult and criticizable, the right thing to do is sit down and bypass the token and somewhat legalistic exchanges, because you know you might do something worse in the heat of the moment?

Now this is entirely speculation, I don't know what was/is going on inside Lebron's head, but I wonder if some of the same reasoning was behind Lebron's comments. When asked if he had spoken to Dwight Howard or any of the Magic players, he responded,

"No, I haven't, I send him an email last night congratulating him. One thing about me you gotta understand, it's hard to congratulate someone after just losing to them. I'm a winner, it's not being a poor sport or anything like that. Someone just beat you up, you're not going to congratulate them on beating you up, that doesn't make sense to me. I'm a competitor and that's what I do. It doesn't make sense for me to go over and shake some one's hand."

While it's easy for these comments to sound like they came from a poor sport, I do have to wonder whether it was Lebron's attempt to articulate, "You know, it was a tough loss, I was obviously disappointed, and as the leader of this team, I felt like we let a lot of people down. I knew that if I would have went over to congratulate them it wouldn't have been from the heart, it would have just been tradition; going through the motions." Again, I could be completely wrong on this one. But when people go to one extreme to criticizing someone, for not legalistically shaking hands in the name of good sportsmanship, you have to go to the other extreme to defend them. This may or may not be the case with Lebron, but sometimes the right thing, the mature thing, the sportsman like thing to do won't look as good to the public eye as the standard response does. But it is the best thing.

Finally, a story of a time when I decided to sit down. My church youth group was in Honduras on a missions trip, and one evening, we went with some of the Honduran church members to play soccer at a rented indoor field. The way the small field was marked was: a midfield line, and a goal box line roughly six yards in front of each goal. Being the highly skilled ball handlers that many Central American players are, they played by the rule that you could only score from inside the goal line. I knew that there weren't many soccer players in our group, and those of us that were (myself included) lacked the precision passing skills that were required to set up such close range shots, so I asked if they could lay that rule aside for the evening cause we would hardly be able to score that way. In my head, I wanted to ask if they could trash the rule so we could actually play soccer instead of having a competitive passing drill, which was what their style of play looked like compared to the physical style I'm used to, but I elected to be respectful of them as the host culture.

So things were going great, we were allowed to shoot from farther out which helped our lack of skills considerably. But part way through the evening, some of the Honduran players asked if we could all revert back to "inside the box scoring" because they, quote, "couldn't play this way." While the rest of my group was saying, "Sure, whatever," I was thinking, "What do you mean you can't play this way?! Just cause you're allowed to shoot from far out doesn't mean you can't shoot from close up! You can still play the same way!" As I expected, scoring became much less frequent. Nine times out of ten, getting close enough to shoot meant getting close enough for the keeper or defender to take the ball. And we were divided into four teams, a new team went on to replace the team that got scored on. So with goals now only coming every 5 to 10 minutes, that meant a lot of standing around, and a lot less fun. It also meant a lot of time for me to get more and more frustrated. I tried to make my case a time or two to the people around me, but was basically just told to get over it. So I got more and more frustrated and eventually angry. But finally it seemed that my youth pastor bailed me out. We were the next team to finally get to go back on the field, and he buried a brilliant shot from the side of the field into the top corner. "Alright, it's finally time to play again, just forget about how irritated you are" I thought, but just then the goal was called back because apparently my youth pastor was a few micro inches outside of the goal box. That about put me over the top. I knew I was one unsympathetic comment, or one more called back goal from saying or doing something I'd regret. So I walked off the field and sat down by myself in the bleachers. I'm pretty sure that the Hondurans thought I was quitting just because I didn't get things my way. My peers probably thought I was just an overly competitive player who couldn't take a laid back, friendly game for what it was. I think the only person who understood why I sat down was my youth pastor who came and talked to me. But regardless of how bad it may have come across, I'm convinced that it was better than anything I would have done had I continued playing.

I'll never know what Lebron's reasoning for not shaking hands was, but if it was at all like what I expect, then I have a lot of respect for him. Walking off the field in Honduras was difficult. You know people are going to judge you. But in the long run, you know you've made the right choice.