The Story Isn't Over Yet

On April 21, 1991, Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls beat the Detroit Pistons 108-100 in the final game of the NBA’s 1990-1991 regular season.  Jordan was 28, a former MVP and Defensive Player of the Year, and a four-time member of the All-NBA first team, and led the league in scoring for the fifth time in a row.  He was the best individual player in the league, and would end up receiving numerous accolades for that year’s regular season efforts, including his second MVP award, fifth All-NBA first team selection, and fourth All-Defensive first team selection.

But he had never won a title.

It’s difficult now to think of Jordan as anything but one of the greatest champions in sports history.  He led the Bulls to six titles: a three-peat from 1991 to 1993, then another three-peat from 1996 to 1998 following a hiatus to play minor league baseball after the murder of his father.  Jordan was the ultimate winner, the man who never lost an NBA Finals, a fact weaponized against LeBron James in his quest to unseat Jordan as the consensus greatest player of all time.

But that wasn’t always the case.  Jordan was an incandescent talent, the most exciting player in the league—but without a championship, he was no Magic Johnson.  He was no Larry Bird.  How could he be?  Johnson had five titles.  Bird had three.   

The Bulls played 99 games that 1990-1991 season—82 in the regular season, 17 in the playoffs.  It was at the final buzzer of the 99th, a seven-point win to wrap up a victorious NBA Finals against Magic and the Lakers, that the narrative could finally change: that Michael Jordan became, or began to become, or maybe confirmed that he already was, Michael Jordan.

Shifts in Narrative

Let’s take as both granted and good that storytelling is fundamental to the human experience.  It’s our way of connecting—connecting the dots, connecting to each other, connecting to ourselves.  We aren’t going to stop telling stories, and we shouldn’t. 

But how quickly can a story change? 

Earlier this week, Tim Alberta of the Atlantic reported that Trump allies were second-guessing Trump’s selection of Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate—that the selection was borne of cockiness, meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout over Biden rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter against a replacement candidate we now know to be Vice President Kamala Harris.  Vance won his seat in the Senate by a 6.1% margin in 2022.  On the same ballot, Republican governor Mike DeWine won reelection by a full 25.0%.  Different races, even on the same ballot, can be apples and oranges—Vance was a political neophyte running against Tim Ryan, a well-known 20-year veteran of the House of Representatives and former presidential candidate, whereas DeWine was a widely popular incumbent with a long, well-respected political career running against Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton, who lacked Ryan’s state-wide and national profile.  But even if the 19-point gap between DeWine and Vance doesn’t tell us everything, it tells us something, and that something isn’t good.

Then, CNN reported that Vance has a net approval rating among the American people of negative 6, far worse than the average net approval rating of positive 19 that vice presidential candidates going back to 2000 have enjoyed in the days following their respective conventions.  But, you might argue, these are unusually polarized times!  FiveThirtyEight has Biden at a negative 17 net approval rating and Trump at close to negative 11, so what’s the problem?  Well, Vance isn’t the first man to run alongside Trump, and former Vice President Mike Pence was at positive 11 at approximately the same point in 2016.

Finally, Vance is now out on the campaign trail, and brief, selectively-edited clips of him making jokes at a Monday rally at his high school have gone viral, and not in a good way.  Now, to be clear, I am (probably) not going to make fun of anyone for making bad jokes or good jokes that don’t land.  Not everyone is funny, and there are plenty of very successful politicians in the not-funny camp.  Plus, I want you to still like me when I make my own bad jokes.  And maybe Vance is funny, a budding master in chrysalis—maybe he just needs practice.  Former President Bill Clinton is often regarded as one of the best political communicators of our time, yet it was said of his speech that opened the 1988 Democratic National Convention that he “droned on through 33 minutes that seemed about five times as long; the cheers that erupted when he said ‘in conclusion’ appeared to toll the knell of any hopes he might have had to succeed in national politics.”  And, frankly, maybe Vance’s jokes and speech were actually good!  I, like many, have only seen the clips.

But (1) there are many people trying to write the narrative—perhaps trying to make it true by doing so—that Vance was the wrong pick, that he is both alienating and boring and will hold the Republican ticket back in November; and (2) they have enough evidence to make the narrative stick—for now.

So what would need to happen to make the narrative about Vance change?

Go back to 2016—early November, before Election Day: the Republicans had self-immolated, had wrought the destruction of the Grand Old Party of Lincoln, a destruction not only welcome but just; perhaps if they had picked Jeb Bush, or John Kasich, or Marco Rubio, it would be their turn, but they didn’t, and it wasn’t.  Democrats were with her, or Her, in her suffragette’s white pantsuit; pontificators pontificated on the cracks spidering through the glass ceiling, on the history that would be made on November 8th, and again on January 20th of the following year.  The long arc of the moral universe was bending toward progress.

Until it didn’t—or until it did.  Depends on what you saw as progress.  On Election Day, the voice of 46.1% of American voters became the Voice of the American People, and that Voice chose Donald Trump and Mike Pence as their champions.  A new pane covered the cracks in the ceiling.  Democrats closed the chapter on the Clintons, and wondered whether it should have been Biden, or even Bernie—they wouldn’t have lost, right?  Only Hillary could have lost to Trump.  Trump became a winner—the Winner—and went from the man that was going to gift the presidency to a second Clinton after eight years of Obama to the fighter that proved that the coastal elites were just missing what much of the country was feeling.  They couldn’t even find it in the polls.

Think about what that day did to the narrative.  For some, it darkened and diminished what it meant to be American; for others, it restored it.

Then, fast-forward to 2020: Biden and Harris ran on restoring decency to the White House, on restoring competency, on restoring America’s place in the world.  For a while, for many, that’s what it felt like they did.  On February 2, 2021, day 13 in office, Biden’s approval rating was at 57%, higher than it had ever been for Trump, who never topped 49%.  On June 18th, day 149, it was still at 56%.  But on September 17th, day 240, it was 43%.  It hasn’t risen above 44% in the years since and dropped to 36% before he withdrew from his campaign on Sunday.

So what happened in the summer of 2021?  American troops withdrew from Afghanistan.  To be fair to Biden, he was the third president to run on withdrawing the troops and the first one to actually do it.  But, to probably also be fair to Biden, it didn’t go very well, and however poorly it went, it looked worse.

Nothing that has happened since, including many of what Biden would very reasonably call the highlights of his term, has restored the approval lost that summer.

The stories we tell as part of campaigns can be helpful: we paint a picture as to what the country will look like under our party, under our opponents’ party; we emphasize, and sometimes exaggerate, our virtues and our opponents’ vices.

Bringing this back to Senator Vance, my point isn’t that he isn’t a bad pick, or that people shouldn’t say he is.  I also don’t begrudge people wondering whether Kamala can win—write the story you want to write.  Just don’t be surprised if the story changes.  

In Which I Attempt to Stick the Landing on What is Actually a Very Big Idea I’m Only Lightly Touching On Today

Permit me a sojourn back to basketball: Dirk Nowitzki.  Dirty Dirk.  The Tall Baller from the G.  Retired as the greatest-ever European player.  He played 21 seasons in the NBA and remains the sixth-leading scorer in NBA history.  He is revered, and played no small role in changing the narrative that Europeans are softer than their American counterparts.  

Imagine you get to take one season of the 21 away from him.  Some seasons, he could do without.  His rookie year, sure.  His final year.  Even his MVP year, 2007, when his top-seeded Dallas Mavericks were upset in the first round by the eight-seed Golden State Warriors.  

But if you take away 2011, the year the Mavericks beat LeBron and the Miami Heat to win Nowitzki’s sole title, you change his career entirely.

Don’t stop telling or believing stories—question them.  Look at Charles Barkley, or John Stockton and Karl Malone, no-time champions all three, and wonder what we’d think of them had they not made it all the way to the Finals only to face Jordan—twice, in the Jazzmen’s case.

And don’t just question stories—recognize when they’re not over.  Look at Michael Jordan, six-time champion, and know that he was a better player before he won his first title than when he won his last.  Look at the following men who did not win the presidency (or even the party’s nomination) the first time they ran: Joe Biden, Donald Trump, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Herbert Hoover, James Buchanan, Andrew Jackson, James Monroe, and Thomas Jefferson.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the vice presidential candidate on the unsuccessful Democratic Party ticket of 1920, twelve years before he won his first term as president.

Point is, stories change.  Don’t be surprised if a lot of the stories we’re hearing now—that a woman can’t win, that Kamala can’t win, that Vance will kill the ticket, that Trump will kill the ticket, that [Democratic vice-presidential candidate] will [verb of choice]—change on November 5th.

Random Fact

Two for today: first, shortfin mako sharks are capable of bursts of speed up to 46 miles per hour, approximately 46 times as fast as I can swim.  They can grow up to thirteen feet long and have fatally attacked humans.

He (she?) seems nice.  

Anyway, second (last basketball reference for a while—maybe), your odds of playing in the NBA if you’re a 7’0” male are roughly 1 in 6.  The odds are worse if you’re, say, 5’9”.

Pictured: Muggsy Bogues (5’3”—same height as my mom) and Shawn Bradley (7’6”—same height as my mom plus my son a few months back)

Random Recommendation

BBC Maestro—the UK’s version of Masterclass—offers access to every course for a year for $120.  It’s not super cheap, but if you can stomach it (at one point, they ran a sale where the same annual access was $35—sorry I didn’t mention it), the courses are excellent: topics range from writing popular fiction and starting and scaling a multi-million dollar business to living healthy and decorating with flowers.  I just started working (very slowly) through Vineet Bhatia’s course on Indian cooking.  Bhatia was the first Indian chef to receive a Michelin star.  Signing up gives you the chance to watch a brilliant chef walk you through 45 minutes on de-mystifying spices or 28 minutes on how to make a chicken tikka without a tandoor (among 30 lessons covering 14 hours).

And if $120 feels steep, a full lesson on making spiced potatoes was uploaded to YouTube. 

Subscriber Update

We’re nearing 200!  Yes, we’ve been nearing it for a little bit.  Nonetheless, we are more nearly nearing it.

As such, I propose something of a challenge: this weekend, I will do a mile on the stationary bike at the New York Sports Club on 73rd Street for every subscriber received through 5pm ET tomorrow (Friday).  I would run instead, but I’m currently working through a bit of Achilles tendonitis and getting over a cold. I might also be scared.

Obviously, this could backfire horribly, but that is a risk I am willing to take as I finish this at 1am on Thursday.  Proof of miles will be provided.

If no one signs up, I will sit moodily in the sauna.