This was a fun story to write because I got to pretend that I know as much about basketball as I do baseball. Because this prayer generated so many conversations the next couple days I was quickly exposed, but delightfully so since I was then able to get to the real point I was trying to make. It is true that all of us, but young people in particular, overlook the should-be-obvious fact that a lot of things happened before we were born, thereby also overlooking the wisdom gained by the experience of those who lived through those things. This is the root of both teenage rebellion and social revolution. It isn’t always bad, sometimes we need fresh approaches things, but we neglect a great store of wisdom when we don’t listen to our forebears.
Of GOATs and Wisdom.
There’s been a lot of talk these past few years about GOATs in sports: who is the Greatest of All Time? I first heard the term “GOAT” used this way in reference to the debate in the NBA, so I’ve looked into it and I think I know who the NBA GOAT is.
Over his 15-year career, he scored more points per game than all but one man in NBA history, no one has more rebound per game than he does, and he is one of only two men to have scored more than 3000 points in a single season, and he did it three times. The other guy only did it once. In fact, my GOAT owns 4 of the top five season points totals. Of the only six men who have scored more career points than he has, all but one played at least five more seasons than he did, and none of them scored 100 points in a single game like he did. All this he accomplished before there was a three-point shot in the NBA. The icing on the cake is that the 7’ 1” tall center won two of the five NBA championship finals series in which he played.
Really, unless you’re only counting championship trophies, I have no idea why Wilt Chamberlain never seems to be one of the options considered for the NBA GOAT.
I chalk it up to something like what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery.” We all have it to some extent, and it makes it difficult for us to appreciate history and easy to convince ourselves that no generation has ever had it as rough as we have it now, or that what we think and act now is superior in some way to what our parents and grandparents thought or did simply because our ways make more sense to us. If societies progress, then the most recent iteration must be the best, right?
Though it makes for a good argument, which can be fun, the idea that you can fairly contrast players from different eras is a practical impossibility, because the games and the players change so much. If you’re going to have the argument, however, you can’t really proclaim an all-time great until you look at other times outside of your own. You must actually look at all times.
What’s true in sports is even true in life generally. If you are going to proclaim some way of doing something as the all-time best, make sure you’re looking farther back in history than your own experience. If wisdom is an accumulation of experience—and it is—then he is a fool who relies only on his own.
LET US PRAY
Lord, we thank You for bringing us safely to this place and this time in our deployment. We pray You will continue your safekeeping of us and of our families back at home. As we continue to struggle into an uncertain future, help us to lean into what we do know so that we will have the strength to endure what we do not know. Heal our blindness to the wisdom of our fathers and prepare us to meet the challenges we will face tonight, tomorrow, and always. For You are the Wisdom, Word, and Power of God, and it is in Your Name we pray.
AMEN
An Orthodox Priest Abroad 