I’ve been watching The Last Dance and while I am firmly, and I mean firmly, a LeBron > Jordan guy, I have really been getting into this documentary and expect it to win an Emmy or two. Considering I wasn’t alive for any of Mike’s titles, this has opened my eyes to a lot. One of last night’s episodes retold the Flu/Food Poisoning/Hangover Game and MJ’s heroics after eating some poisoned pizza.

The pizza fiasco got me thinking about two things: (1) how the hell did a restaurant deduce that the pizza they were going to poison could be going to a Bulls player (much less Michael Jordan), and (2) what is in the same league as this in terms of facing adversity and putting on a performance for the ages? Regarding the first item, I’m sure his trainer Tim Grover botched something somehow. I mean would you trust this guy to do anything besides program a workout for you?

Tim Grover

This is probably exactly how the order went down now that I think about it.

As far as heroic performances go, here’s a list of some especially notable ones.

Tiger Woods At Torrey Pines in 2008

This was a legit fracture of his tibia that he was playing through, not some minor venereal disease contracted from slinging it around with too many trollops. Nevertheless, he still toughed it out and beat Rocco Mediate (the 158th ranked player in the world by the way) after an insane 91 hole tournament. That is a crazy amount of holes if you’re completely healthy, much less when you walk as if you belong in a nursing home like he did that weekend.

Kanye Recording “The College Dropout”

Those not as well-versed in Kanye’s story may not know that while recording his first studio album, Ye fell asleep at the wheel, hit an oncoming car head-on, and nearly died as a result of it. His jaw had to be wired shut, but he still found a way to record “Through the Wire” a mere two weeks post-accident. It’s actually nuts how much different he sounds on that track compared to the rest of the album. Thankfully he ended up being alright and just recently was officially named a billionaire in addition to the GOAT rapper (no I will not be accepting arguments on this).

Mike Krzyzewski While Suffering From Injury

We’ve seen this story a million times over. Duke loses a couple games in early December and Coach K pulls one of these:

How could anyone be as courageous as this man? The amount of times he’s had to fight through a debilitating back issue to coach his five stars against a much less talented team is hard to count at this point. I could go on all day about the farce that is the Duke brotherhood, but suffice it to say that I’m not their biggest fan.

Trebek From 2019 – Present

This one is simply paying respect to the best game show host of all time. He was unfortunately diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer in 2019, but you wouldn’t even know it looking at how he’s been hosting Jeopardy recently. He simply hasn’t missed a beat. Even though the odds of surviving this particular type of cancer are miniscule, Trebek has absolutely dominated his treatment so far and in March 2020 was cited as being confident that he would survive another year. We could only be so lucky that this (and more) is true.

Successful Opposing Pitchers In Minute Maid Park

Hand up, I was rooting for the Astros pretty hard in the 2017 World Series. I liked their energy and the fact that they were a younger team absolutely balling. What I didn’t know is that they had a full on spy setup rigged in The Juice Box. This makes what the Nats did last year in their four road WS wins even more remarkable. I hope that rat AJ Hinch never sees the inside of a dugout again and that “shy guy” Jose Altuve breaks the record for times being hit by a pitch whenever baseball resumes for a full season.

Manti Te’o After Lennay Kekua’s Death

Well, at least it would have been if any of it were true. He was duped into believing that his girlfriend (whom he never met) died at the beginning of the 2012 season. It’s incredible that this load of a guy was able to fake a woman’s voice so well (40 seconds in).

I mean this is an all-time catfish story here. Nev’s probably so pissed he didn’t hop on this as soon as it came out. This would have been a Netflix special that rivaled Tiger King in popularity. Nevertheless, he balled out in 2012 and was a Heisman finalist as a linebacker which is kind of nuts.

Gucci Mane Releasing Music From Prison

Gucci was in prison from late-2013 to mid-2016 and somehow released like thirty projects in that time while tweeting from @gucci1017 on a regular basis. This dude didn’t even have access to a full time phone and was dropping heat at a clip that would rival NBA Youngboy today. I have zero clue how he does it, and frankly I don’t want to; the mystery intrigues me. On a side note, this is one of the more incredible transformations in pop culture that gets slept on pretty heavy.

Gucci

Keith Richards’ Organs

I’m fully aware that a lot of you probably don’t know who Keith Richards even is (he’s the guitarist for the Rolling Stones). What we’re dealing with here is a man who has abused his body. The Rolling Stones have been at the absolute forefront of music for sixty years, and he’s been fully partaking in the culture of sex, drugs, and rock & roll the whole time. It got so bad that he had to get a full body blood transfusion in Switzerland just to get some drugs out of his system. Whenever this guy dies, which will probably never happen, they need to do a full investigation on his organs and find out exactly what the secret to immortality is, cause Keith has it in spades.

What are some insane individual displays I missed? Yell at me @jziller17.

 

Stevie J
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