"Heat" statement of Culture:
“The Hardest Working, Best Conditioned, Most Professional, Unselfish, Toughest, Meanest, Nastiest Team in the NBA.”
The statement of course, is Pat Riley's. The statement is more applicable to Riley's "Knicks" teams than to the current "Heat"; more applicable to the Alonzo Mourning "Heat" teams than this one. No way we're "meanest, nastiest". "Hardest working", yeah; "most professional", yes under Erik Spoelstra; "best conditioned", that has always stuck in my craw. There should be some correlation with that to "durability", shouldn't there? Yet, Gawd, every season we miss so many games to injury. It's not just impressionistic. In 2022/23 we were ninth out of 30 teams in games missed due to injury. This season we have the sixth most games missed. That's top 20%.
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Hardest Working
Saturday before last I was over at my son and daughter-in-law's house watching Rocket League. For a few years there has been a debate in RL over who is best, North American teams or European teams. To me it was European teams; to my son there was no clear difference. I deferred to my son. The desk was divided, with NA partisans (former players who were from the New World) and those who saw Europe as superior.
Then my son told me that Saturday that player Garrett G, a North American former player and the best-liked, most-respected player in the Rocket League universe, had caused a stir and at the same time settled the debate with his macro view. Hard work in North American Rocket League Culture is "cringe", looked down upon. "It's a game, it should be fun" is NA'ers mantra. They would actually look at the practice stats of players and make fun of the hardest-working players. My son said NA RL'ers mindset is "I have more talent than you, I can still beat you even if you work harder." Peer pressure is important to teenagers and RL players' peak years are in their teens. I was flabbergasted. On the one hand "It's a game, it's fun" is what I love about RL players. They're innocent, they play the game to have fun, they want to be accepted, they are empathetic, nice kids, and they are touched when an old guy like me feels them.
"Toughest, Meanest, Nastiest": lol. It always startled me to see team shots of the best Rocket Leaguers before a big match, with their wispy mustaches, pasty skins, and glasses.
But on the other hand, for the exceptionally skilled, preternaturally talented Rocket Leaguers, my son finished my thought, "It's their job". Yes! They get paid, more handsomely every year. They forego girlfriends, outside social lives, college, to play Rocket League professionally. They have a very narrow window to make their mark. Why wouldn't they maximize their talent and time? For the rest of their lives, whatever else they do and whether they make a mark or become drones like the rest of us they can always point to this moment when they were kings.
I told my son that I was flabbergasted by Garrett G's truth-telling because it was also at odds with the wider cultural differences between Europe and the United States. Europeans "cringe" at how hard-working and fast-moving Americans are. They take time to sit down and have coffee in a civilized little coffee shop; we get coffee to go in a paper or plastic cup and drink it in our cars on the way to work.
I told my son that the chill culture that Garrett G described reminded me of the difference in the wider American culture between West Coast and East Coast, the comfortable, La-La, chill dude of SoCal and the "I'll break your face" of NYC and asked if RL players were predominantly from the Left Coast. "The opposite," he said, because of the lack of server time lag in the East. It was an American generational thing, not an American coastal thing. I was stumped, fascinated, flabbergasted.
I told my son that the criticism that you hear constantly the older generations make of Millennials is the lack of responsibility, accountability and effort. One nutshell encapsulation of this criticism is "If you're going to do a thing, do it well." Practice! I told him that this is the reason I hate the Boston "Celtics". Like naturally super-skilled Rocket Leaguers, "Celtics" players lack responsibility, accountability and effort and think they can by on just their talent; that they have the attention span of teenagers and are not rarely booed off their home court by their older generation fans. I admire talent but I cannot respect a team like the "Celtics", nor work-averse Rocket League players and teams.
My son said that Garrett G has worked a paradigm shift among NA RL'ers. We'll see. We'll also see if the "Celtics" can change and finally win a championship with these players. Both need an infusion of responsibility, accountability, mental toughness, pride.
