WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A STAR?

Does a star have less responsibility to the team than other players? Is it just their role to be great and win games? Or does a star have more responsibility than others? What does Michael Jordan think? “In our society sometimes it’s hard to come to grips with filling a role instead of trying to be a superstar,” says Jordan. A superstar’s talent can win games, but it’s teamwork that wins championships. Coach John Wooden claims he was tactically and strategically average. So how did he win ten national championships? 

One of the main reasons, he tells us, is because he was good at getting players to fill roles as part of a team. “I believe, for example, I could have made Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] the greatest scorer in college history. I could have done that by developing the team around their ability of his. Would we have won three national championships while he was at UCLA? Never.” In the fixed mindset, athletes want to validate their talent. 

This means acting like a superstar, not “just” a team member. But, as with Pedro Martinez, this mindset works against the important victories they want to achieve. A telling tale is the story of Patrick Ewing, who could have been a basketball champion. The year Ewing was a draft pick—by far the most exciting pick of the year—the Knicks won the lottery and to their joy got to select Ewing for their team. 

They now had “twin towers,” the seven-foot Ewing, and the seven-foot Bill Cartwright, their high-scoring center. They had a chance to do it all. They just needed Ewing to be the power forward. He wasn’t happy with that. The Center is the star position. And maybe he wasn’t sure he could hit the outside shots that power forward has to hit. 

What if he had really given his all to learn that position? (Alex Rodriguez, the best shortstop in baseball, agreed to play third base when he joined the Yankees. He had to retrain himself and, for a while, he wasn’t all he had been.) Instead, Cartwright was sent to the Bulls, and Ewing’s Knicks never won a championship. 

Then there is the tale of the football player Keyshawn Johnson, another immensely talented player who was devoted to validating his own greatness. When asked before a game how he compared to a star player on the opposing team, he replied, “You’re trying to compare a flashlight to a star. Flashlights only last so long. 

A star is in the sky forever.” Was he a team player? “I am a team player, but I’m an individual first. I have to be the No. 1 guy with the football. Not No. 2 or No. 3. If I’m not the No. 1 guy, I’m no good to you. I can’t really help you.” What does that mean? For his definition of a team player, Johnson was traded by the Jets, and, after that, deactivated by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I’ve noticed an interesting thing. 

When some star players are interviewed after a game, they say we. They are part of the team and they think of themselves that way. When others are interviewed, they say I, and they refer to their teammates as something apart from themselves—as people who are privileged to participate in their greatness.