Player Selfishness in Sports: A common trend in Football and Basketball amongst others
Team sports are a very competitive affair; all teams are out to win. That is what they are paid for and that is what fans come to see. The fact of the matter is that team sports are exactly that: team sports. Teams win by working together and creating plays and being a single unit. Sometimes, though, a single player becomes a superstar and then that one player starts to steal all the glory and the team suddenly becomes a one man show. A lot of famous sports stars have been accused of being selfish by not passing the ball, trying to score when there is an open player they could pass to, or trying to take all the glory for themselves. Is this necessarily a bad thing, because if a player makes a team win, isn’t that good? Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it’s not.
The definition of being selfish is a person who is devoted to caring only for oneself; concerned primarily with one's own interests. This can be put into a sports context by seeing that one player in a team is primarily concerned with only their own interests over the interest of the entire team. There is a highly clichéd statement used in sports that says there is no I in team. This is a way to say that no team can win simply on the shoulders of one player; it takes the efforts of an entire team to make a win happen. Sometimes though, the presence of one selfish player can boost the entire team and all the passes go to that one player and goals are scored and the team finds itself winning. This is the paradox of selfishness in sports; it seems that there is a degree of selfishness that a team will tolerate and nothing more. Every team needs leaders and being a leader in sports means someone who demands action is taken and someone who is sometimes selfish enough to take the ball and not pass it but score himself.
This balance of selfishness and not seeking glory is what makes team sports work. If the entire team was completely unselfish and everyone passed the ball and did not want the glory to themselves, that team would find that it scores a lot less goals in the process. At the end of the day, a game like football is all about scoring goals, and sometimes the only way to win is for someone to step up and take charge and be selfish. But it becomes a serious problem if one person is continuously selfish. A team will only tolerate it to a certain extent, and beyond that, it will put a stop to it. We see this in football all the time: when strikers are trying to get a Golden Boot award for scoring the most goals, they will try to score a very difficult shot instead of passing it to an open teammate. Some people have even said that these types of contests are ruining the game of football today with everyone out for self glory.
Basketball is also a sport that is not immune to selfishness. Certain top rated stars of the NBA, like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, have sometimes been accused of being ball hogs or not passing enough. A lot has been said about Kobe Bryant and his apparent selfishness. When asked by reporters to describe himself, he once stated that he was Kobe Bryant and he wanted to win 6 championships. He did not say that he wanted to help his team win six championships, which would also see him winning them; his choice of words were what got him into trouble. However, on the other hand, Bryant does win championships and he is a very solid player, so maybe that is why his teammates tolerate this level of greed and selfishness. As long as it does not get out of hand, it seems to be okay with his team.
Through with the amount of sports that are a part of our lives, it seems that a certain amount of selfishness is accepted and normal, even encouraged. However, coaches, fans and other players all wait for that one beautiful moment when a player, who is open to score, passes the ball to a teammate to give him the glory instead of taking it for himself.
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