Sky Hooks & Bird Poop

I read that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was fired up that he didn't have a statue of himself erected yet outside of the Staples Center, the home of the Los Angeles Lakers. Kareem is the all-time leading scorer in the NBA and has won 6 NBA titles (5 with the Lakers). He was pretty good.

He went on kind of a rant in the media and at one point tweeted, “Rumor has it that I will be getting a statue. A caveat for all my fans-don’t hold your breath. Lakers don’t care about me.”

3 things here:

1.) There was recently only one Laker basketball player with a statue outside of the Staples Center. Can you guess who that could be............................Earvin "Magic" Johnson. (Jerry West, the NBA logo just recently had his erected.)

2.) The Lakers had already informed Kareem earlier in the year that he would be the third Laker to be honored and that they would be putting up his statue in the near future.

3.) As Justin Timberlake so succinctly put it, "Cry me a river."

This is the problem when our identity is completely and solely wrapped up in what we do or did instead of allowing or lives to be identified solely by the cross of Christ. If Jesus is our purpose and our identity then everything that happens to us or for us in life, good or bad, will be to honor God.

Getting a giant statue of yourself would be great but Kareem needs to be asking himself the question of why is he is so embittered by this? Is he bitter because now he can't honor God through this great achievement? I highly doubt it. He's bitter because he feels slighted, and maybe rightly so, but are we to act out like 4-year-olds every time we don't get our way?

I've got to be honest, a giant statue wouldn't really even be that great. It would just be an opportunity for a bunch of birds to poop on your head. But hey, maybe that's what he really wants.

(By the way, Kareem was my second favorite Laker of the '80's behind Magic and closely followed by James Worthy, Byron Scott, and Michael Cooper.)