You Kids Today, You Don't Understand

This was a very old week for me. I had aspirations of being a professional basketball player or football player when I was a kid, as most American boys do. They weren’t serious. I never spent extra time working on my game or in the weight room. If a guy with a whistle wasn’t screaming at me, I wasn’t doing it. I was always going to get in gear tomorrow. Tomorrow arrived on June 24, 1992. That was the day Shaquille O’Neal went number 1 to the Orlando Magic. That was the day it sank in that pro sports wasn’t going to happen for me. Shaq was the first guy I was aware of to go pro who was younger than me. That created a connection for me with him. He was some kind of life cycle benchmark for me. That was seventeen years ago. Shaq went on to be one of the best six or seven basketball players ever, and about three years ago he got old. The NBA playoffs started this week, and for the first time since his rookie season Shaq won’t be a part of them. He’s probably going to retire after next season – his contract is up – and then he’ll be the first hall-of-famer younger than me to retire. I don’t have the same connection to Chuck Liddell. He’s a fighter, for those who don’t know, or he was until he got knocked out for the third time in his last five fights this past Saturday. He was MMA’s first star. He was Mike Tyson – in the ring, not out. Tyson has tattoos on his face. The Iceman has tattoos on his head. For about eight years if you stepped into the cage against Liddell, he put you to sleep. Now, like Shaq and me, he’s old. He can’t do what he used to do. He’s Willie Mays stumbling around the outfield for the Mets, and I’m the New York Giants fan who watched him do magic for a decade, and I’m annoyed that kids don’t know how great he was. I’m turning into an old man. I’m calling adults kids. I don’t start sentences with “BACK IN MY DAY!!!” but I feel the sentiment. How the hell did this happen?