How to Be Like Mike by Pat Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

two preludes and fugues of Bach, and let the music flood over him, a sort of benediction, a daily rediscovery, an ode to the brilliant hues of life.
    I imagine that, with the same feeling coursing through him each morning, Jordan picked up a basketball, spun it in his fingers, set his feet, dribbled two or three times and took his first shot.
    Meanwhile, amid joyous lives like Jordan’s, there are large portions of our society who toil in futility, long ago accepting of their own mediocrity. They accede to other’s wishes, barely twitching a finger to change things. They bury themselves in the boredom and monotony of the everyday with nothing but an ineffable vision of what might come next.
    You’ve achieved success in your field when you don’t know whether what you’re doing is work or play.
    —Warren Beatty
ACTOR
    Perhaps we know people like this. Perhaps we are people like this:devoid of the passion and energy that carries us from one moment to the next, unable to combat the intangible force that sets roadblocks in our minds. And then one lonesome afternoon in a corner office, it floods us: the pain, the anguish, the irreversible regret for what we should have done and never did, because we followed the path to comfort instead of the path to our yearnings.
    And we wind up lost, buried in our own remorse. But here’s the thing: It’s never too late for recovery.
    The Glow of Enthusiasm
    There is an energy that spills from the eyes of a joyous person, that emanates from their cheerful and exaggerated motion. But it’s more than just a surface energy that they’re revealing. What matters is what’s below, because the starriness of a person like this reveals so much about their potential for success. They are people doing what they want to do, living how they want to live, people who dictate their own actions, people who are immersed in their greatest pleasures: hitting a baseball, playing a trumpet, writing, drawing, painting, shooting a basketball.
    This was when I was with the Philadelphia 76ers. I was sitting on the bench and MJ came dribbling past us at full speed. Then he shifted into another gear and went to the hoop. I’ll never forget that fire in his eyes, that look of determination. It scared me to see that look. I’ve never seen it before. I’ve never seen it since.
    —Roy Hinson
FORMER NBA PLAYER
    Historian David McCullough observed, “I would pay to do what I do. People say, ‘Take a vaction, ’ How could I have a better time than what I am doing?”
    Author Laurence Sterne writes in A Sentimental Journey :“What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything.”
    “You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you,” said movie director George Lucas. “If you don’t have that kind of feeling for what it is you’re doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle.”
    Author Roger Kahn once called Willie Mays the most joyous ballplayer of his era, especially at the prime of his career, in 1954, his first year back from duty in the army, when the Giants won the pennant. Mays couldn’t wait to get to the ballpark. He had the same anxious feeling each day. “You got to love the game,” he said. “Else how you gonna play good?”
    And some years later, Willie Mays observed Michael Jordan, his serpentine creative moves in traffic, his relentless bursts of vigor, his eponymous grin. “I look at Michael and I see a player who loves basketball,” Mays said. “He loves playing it the way I loved playing baseball. Intelligence, sure, but love is a big reason Michael can play basketball the way he does.”
    Live with no time-out.
    —Simone de Beauvoir
WRITER
    Jordan is the only player I know of who had a“Love of the Game” clause inserted into his contract; it meant he could play in any