Kwame Brown has reunited with the man that originally drafted him and subsequently emotionally stripped him, Michael Jordan, by signing a new contract with the Charlotte Bobcats. Michael Jordan is the majority owner of the ‘Cats and Kwame is now his employee. This right here is a shining beacon to formerly abusive relationships everywhere, if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.
You see, its tough to get past the whole “I abused you relentlessly” thing. Look at Chris Brown and Rhianna for example. They couldn’t get past their prior abusive relationship to give things another go in the present. Michael and Kwame though, see they know better, nay, they ARE better than mere mortals. Apparently they can get past those errors in judgment.
When Kwame first got into the league, he was a naive young boy. Jordan took him under his tutelage and made him a MAN. An emotionally crippled and useless seven footer on the court, but a man nonetheless. Jordan accomplished this by constantly tearing Kwame down to his emotional bare bones, at least that’s what Scoop Jackson said in this 2005 ESPN page 2 article. Let us quote liberally:
Sticks and stones can paralyze the most immortal of men, but these words – they stripped Kwame Brown of ever having a chance to be or find himself as a basketball player and as a person.
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“Flaming … ” That was the first word. One of life’s other “f” words followed. It came in succession. It came from Michael Jordan’s mouth. The words never reached Kwame Brown’s ears, they went straight to his heart.
In Jordan’s quest to build the next him while he was in charge and out of retirement in D.C., he broke Kwame Brown down to the very last compound. Emotionally and psychologically killed his spirit.
Want to know what that 2nd “F word” was that Jordan used against Kwame? Lets go back to an article by the Washington Post’s Michael Lehay from 2003 recounting Jordan’s last season with the Wizards (only accessible through the Post’s archives) and some more of the emotional abuse he laid upon Kwame.
As always, he reserved his harshest criticisms for 21-year-old Kwame Brown, at whom, a year earlier, he had screamed, “Flaming faggot,” when Brown complained as a rookie about being fouled in an intrasquad game.
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But Jordan and other Wizards officials were swayed by Georgia high school senior Brown’s abilities after he dominated another highly touted prep player, Tyson Chandler, during a private one-on-one competition. But now Jordan was tired of waiting for Brown to get better.
For his part, Brown said the right things: “Anyone can learn from Michael” if that “player listens.” But, privately, Brown reeled under Jordan’s and Collins’s criticism off and on for two seasons now, desperate to receive a slice of the encouragement Jordan had lavished on him during Brown’s golden days. On many nights, he had gone from wunderkind to waste. Despairing, Brown began to seek counsel from other teammates, notably Stackhouse, who could provide solace but little else, suffering beneath the weight of his own disappointments and, like Brown, having nowhere to turn.
Wow. So now things are better between them? I mean, its cool that Kwame can turn the other cheek after Jordan helped to ruin any chance he had at meeting his potential as a number one pick and turning him into an emotional basket-case. I wonder if Jordan is going to be any better this second go around?
Who knows, maybe Jordan has changed. Sure he’s not going to be near Kwame as much as when he was a player or general manager, but they are going to have to interact with each other at various points throughout the season. No way that goes wrong, right? When has getting back together with your abuser ever gone wrong? We all know that leopards can change their spots…oh wait they can’t? Well damn. In that case, maybe this ISN’T a good thing and I am horribly wrong about this.
This $1.3 million veterans minimum contract Kwame got is really just Jordan saying “I’m sorry baby, have a million bucks on me, it’l never happen again baby, I just lost my cool back in 2002. It’l never happen again.”
Yeah right.
