Perspective: Fridays with Doug

I can remember holding a grudge when I was a young athlete.

Seniors would pick on incoming freshmen on the football team, either to toughen them up or just to be mean.

I didn't care about the reason, I just used the indignation of getting a swirly in the locker room as fuel to work so hard in practice that I didn't have the energy to be mad about it.

Jerry Seinfeld said, 'You believe this guy? He holds a grudge like Khomeini,” when talking about George Costanza in the episode called ‘The Baby Shower' on the TV series Seinfeld.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was the leader of the Iranian Revolution and was responsible for turning Iran into the world's first Islamic Republic. Khomeini denounced the United States for providing sanctuary for the exiled Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and supported the students who stormed the American Embassy in Tehran in November 1979. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage in Iran for a total of 444 days.

George Costanza held his grudge over a date that had gone bad. George is excited about the baby shower as an opportunity to confront the woman who gave him the worst date of his life by pouring Bosco chocolate sauce on his red collared shirt while doing performance art.

If you know Seinfeld, you know George wimped out at the chance to confront the girl about the date gone bad.

In watching Episode 3 and 4 of ESPN's 'The Last Dance,” a documentary about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls of the 1980s and 19990s, I saw a grudge that still is alive almost 30 years later.

There have been few rivalries as vitriolic and hate-filled as the late 1980s Bulls teams and the 'Bad Boy” Detroit Pistons teams. If Jordan's demeanor and responses in 'The Last Dance,” that bad blood still is boiling, at least in Jordan.

'I hated them, and the hate carries to this day,” Jordan said. ”You can show me anything you want. There's no way you're gonna convince me he wasn't an a-hole,” Jordan said of Pistons guard Isiah Thomas.

The quote came after the analysis of the Pistons walking off the court without shaking hands with Bulls players following their loss in the 1990 Eastern Conference Finals.

Thomas, meanwhile, has pulled a Costanza and wimped out. He blamed Piston center Bill Laimbeer for the decision to snub the Bulls and walk off the court.

When interviewed Monday morning on the ESPN show 'Get Up” Thomas whined about the repercussions of his lack of sportsmanship, about not being selected for the 1992 Olympic ‘Dream Team.'

'Looking back, if I'm not a part of the Dream Team because a lapse in emotion in terms of not shaking someone's hand ... then I am more disappointed today than I was back then.”

Thomas bragged about how he was the Male Athlete of 1980 as part of that Olympic team, then said there was a hole in his resume by not being on the Dream Team. How is it a hole when you were already on an Olympic team?

'I know it's all bull,” Jordan said in the fourth episode of the 10-part documentary. 'Whatever he says now, you know it wasn't his true actions then. He has time left to think about it, or the reaction from the public has changed his perspective.”

I will admit a bias against Thomas because he played college ball for Indiana at the same time Ronnie Lester played for the Iowa Hawkeyes.

While I am admitting bias, I also did not like Jordan because I am a Phoenix Suns fan, having lived in the Phoenix area from 1985-1991.

Thomas and the Pistons were the defending champions when they walked off the court with time remaining so they should have felt an added responsibility to display sportsmanship instead of acting like complete and total jerks.

Contrast how Los Angeles Laker great Magic Johnson reacted to losing to the Bulls in the NBA Finals to how Thomas reacted.

Johnson said, 'If I'm gonna lose, I'm happy to lose to them.”

A grudge can be motivation. Did Jordan need the Pistons to drive him the be the GOAT - the greatest of all time?

Former Iowa Hawkeye guard BJ Armstrong was on that Bulls team and said that many members stayed and worked out the previous summer and Jordan especially hit the weight room. after losing to the Pistons.

'When you see your leader working extremely hard in practice, you feel like ‘Man if I don't give it my all, I shouldn't be here,” Bulls forward Horace Grant said.

Jordan spent a lot of time in the gym building up his teammates' confidence whereas when he started, he wanted to belittle teammates and beat them into submission. It took time for him to mature into the more complete player he became.

One thing I always admired about Jordan was the way he played defense. Jordan is one of four players to have won both an MVP and a Defensive Player of the Year award in their career. Jordan is the player with the most combinations of scoring titles and All-Defensive First Team honors with nine. He's also the only player to win the scoring title and the Defensive Player of the Year award in the same season.

You have show sportsmanship no matter what.

'No matter how much it hurt,” Jordan said, 'and it --ing hurt.”

Jordan said he wouldn't be where he is today if he hadn't learned the lessons he did playing basketball. From the time he was a kid, competition drove him.

Competition is what the world is missing right now. Please stay safe and healthy so we can get back to watching our youth learn the lessons that competition teaches.

And maybe use a grudge to make themselves better.