Hero. n. a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.
My heroes sit on a spectrum between ‘I want to do what these people do’ (Malcolm Turnbull) and ‘I cannot imagine being capable of what they do’ (LeBron James).
Ascribing heroism requires the suspension of disbelief. While you may admire or idealise someone, they’re human and fallible just like you.
Listing your heroes is risky. It’s like listing your favourite music. People will read a lot into what you choose. The wrong choice could result in someone writing you off in much larger areas of your character than just your choice of heroes.
If someone told me their favourite music was Matchbox Twenty and Jack Johnson, I could only assume they’d not listened to much music, had generally bad taste (not limited to music) and were someone who didn’t explore all of life’s possibilities.
In fact, the value isn’t in the list you produce, it’s in the consideration of which qualities you most admire.
Whatever your list ends up being, it’s a statement of values and aspirations more than anything else. Who are you? Who do you want to be? Who’s already made that leap? Who’s leapt beyond where you want to?
I have seven heroes. I’ll write about them in turn.
LeBron James grew up poor and fatherless in Akron, Ohio. Raised by his mother, he found solace in basketball. More than solace, he found family. His brothers were his team-mates. His fathers were his coaches.
Lives that start like James’ sometimes don’t end well or last long. There are many ways James’ life could have gone. But he became the transcendent athlete of his time and for that, he is one of my heroes.
When I was 17, my maximum output was doing well at school, making my regional basketball team, planning where to go on my gap year, scheming how to get older kids to buy vodka for our school formal after-party and working out what it meant to have girls like you or not like you back.
At 17, Sports Illustrated put Lebron on the front cover, anointing him ‘The Chosen One’.
The fact that he actually became the chosen one is what makes his story so remarkable. His ceiling has been ‘the chosen one’ since he was a teenager. The expectation on him is such that if he doesn’t have a better career than Michael Jordan, he’ll be considered a failure.
And he did all of this with no warmup. It’s not like he spent his childhood years being mentally prepared for the pressure that would come with being LeBron. He had a childhood in which the probabilities would have resulted in something much different, and likely much less.
But he’s carried that weight alone for more than a decade.
He made the NBA Finals four years running, playing more minutes than any other player in that stretch, and people are still questioning him.
He passes to an open teammate for the game-winner and people decry his leadership. The same guy that scored 45 against the Celtics. That single-handedly willed the Heat back into Game 6 of last year’s finals.
The guy who’s the same size as Karl Malone, the same speed as Chris Paul, with the court vision of John Stockton, the defense of Scottie Pippen and the best post-game in the NBA.
It’s as if those performances and attributes are what we expect and if he doesn’t deliver, then we cry failure.
Michael owns the archetype of lone psychotic and Kobe took the mantle from him.
When Lebron didn’t take it from Kobe, choosing instead to play like Magic and Larry, people immediately began to denounce him.
But Lebron plays like that because that’s how he originally found family.
Both Kobe and Michael had supported upbringings, strong fathers and loving siblings.
Lebron had just his Mum, his coaches and his teammates. If he didn’t pass the ball, if he didn’t make his teammates better, he was doing wrong by his family.
You can’t unteach that. You can’t extract that essence, to be liked, to be surrounded, to be loved, from Lebron’s story.
And that’s why I can forgive ‘The Decision’. I think he messed up. I think he was short-sighted. I think he took bad advice.
But knowing how much Lebron wants to be loved, and then thinking about how publicly reviled he’s been for the last 4 years, can you imagine what kind of inner strength it took for him to keep improving?
Now factor in that Finals loss to Dallas in 2011. After all the vitriol, the haters were proved right. Can you imagine what it took to come back from that?
That’s what makes LeBron a hero to me. He carried unimaginable weight. Generated unachievable expectation. Failed in front of everyone. And then came back, better, and prevailed.
LeBron is the only chance I have right now to see transcendent greatness on a nightly basis.
Email me when Nick Crocker publishes stories