Marcus Smart Lacks The Entrepreneurial Skills To Be The Celtics Team Captain
Often times, when I’m powering my way through a cross-fit routine in the corner designated to be mine by the instructor due to “immeasurable amounts of sweat”, I find inspiration in the story of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs made one of the most successful companies in the world, Apple, through strong branding and that deserves our respect. I’ll admit that I don’t know much about Mr. Jobs beyond that fact, but everyone seems to agree that he was good.
That’s leadership. Leadership is when even people who don’t really know who you are think you are good. For that reason it’s no surprise that a lot of our most famous celebrities are also great leaders. LeBron James, Jeff Daniels (any ACN fans?), and Bam Margera are all leaders whom I’d follow to the ends of the earth, and there’s no doubt that that gravitas is what has carried them to fame.
I don’t see any of that gravitas with Marcus Smart, someone who is not that famous by NBA standards. In fact, what Smart garnered the most national attention for was a childish outburst, in which he shoved a hard-working season ticket owner just for screaming a slur in his face. The finals might be in Utah this year, so if I want to count on Smart’s leadership I have to believe that he won’t lose his cool like that in a hostile gamer-language environment.
I understand Smart’s charm, don’t get me wrong. He’s a blue collar, lunch pail worker who will grind thing out when they get tough. He’s a great “lead by example guy”, but I’m not sure what he has to lead this young core. If Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum couldn’t even focus when Kyrie was explaining that JFK was on adrenochome, how can we expect Smart to transfix this wandering-eyed youths?
Youths here in America respect one thing. Smart, intelligent data, typically connected to the Cloud through IBM servers. Data is king to our tech-savvy zoomers, and they’d rather spend an evening on TikTok rather than going to the disotheque to ‘pop and lock’.
For that reason, it’s the nerds that are king in today’s America. Tech moguls, playboy entrepreneurs, and freelance NBA data journalists are quickly becoming the sexy new oligarchs, and in order to claw your way to the top in today’s America you gotta have entrepreneurial spirit.
We play by some pretty easy rules here in America. If you work hard, you will achieve the American dream and get exactly what you deserve. Often times, I’ll see people demonizing the rich and powerful on Twitter, claiming that they don’t deserve the money they have. Well, those are the people who haven’t put in the sweat and tear of working 80 hour work weeks lying about their companies valuations.
My broader point here is that we are losing our country to a bunch of radicals who think that the status quo stinks. I hate to be the adult in the room for you whiny babies, but the status quo actually rocks! That’s why it’s the status quo! Things staying the same is the only way things can get better. You need a solid ground to build on accomplishments of the wise men who came before us, and push through when history reveals them to be incredibly cruel, stupid, a pedophile or all three.
People will try to invalidate the accomplishments of famous people and can never separate the accomplishments from our cancel culture. Sorry that Richard Nixon wasn’t woke, was an alcoholic, and got thousands killed, but guess what? He was powerful. Can’t take that away from him.
Maybe if Marcus Smart was more like President Nixon, I’d have less misgivings, but he’s got to prove to me that he’s mature enough to appoint Henry Kissinger to be the special advisor to the team before I’ll cosign on him inheriting Paul Pierce’s letter C.
Sam Sheehan is a graduate of Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco School of Business (’15 M.B.A.) and the senior sportsfellow at the Steve Jobs Center for Dynamic Marketing Strategies. You can talk about Westworld and Billions with him on Twitter @SamSheehanNBA
