Summary Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 24

Summary - Essay Example Lake opposes this misperception, as he asserts that Herring did not cut Jordan to underestimate him and to choose a taller player only, but because he and his staff knew that Jordan needs further preparation. Instead of being an unfair coach, Lake shows Herring as a real person with real contributions to, not only Jordan’s growth as a basketball player, but as a person, and a real person with his own challenges, and not just someone who consciously failed to see Jordan’s greatness. Lake introduces the hardships of choosing who gets to be varsity players and how Herring follows objective criteria in the selection process, contrary to what Jordan and many others believe. Lake goes back a little more than three decades ago to the place where the infamous cutting occurred. He describes the anxiety that grips adolescents who merely want to prove their basketball worth and to hone themselves better as varsity players. After that, he illustrates the kind of man that Pop is. He is called Pop because he is more than a basketball coach. He acted more like a father in how he trains his players every day and how he welcomes them to his house like family. Lake zooms into the actual tryout date, emphasizing the difference between Mike, Michael Jordan’s high school nickname, then and now in terms of height and basketball skills. He underlines that Mike is as competitive as he is now as he was in his youth, but he was an average shooter during the tryouts. Lake also ex plains that the selection process is objective, where a group of coaches compares notes before everything is finalized. He emphasizes that Jordan was a sophomore then and sophomores rarely get chosen for the senior varsity list, and that, in opposite to what many people, including Jordan himself, believed, Mike did get to the jayvee (junior) roster list. Lake proves that Pop