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Curious why the article's title is "The LeBron James of Weightlifting" when the USA Weightlifting Exec was quoted as saying "The Michael Jordan of Weightlifting
by balls187 11y ago
Curious why the article's title is "The LeBron James of Weightlifting" when the USA Weightlifting Exec was quoted as saying "The Michael Jordan of Weightlifting?"
- zedder 11y agoIt's like the debate has settled. Lebron James equals Michael Jordan. Practically interchangeable...
- differentView 11y agoThe 50-something coach said Michael Jordan, meaning the best. The writer just updated it to the best basketball player right now, same meaning.
- bostonpete 11y agoI don't think story writers typically write the headline but maybe the online version of WSJ is different from the print version...
- Steko 11y agoLebron also broke onto the scene as a 16 year old -- high school all american as a sophomore, lots of other media attention and coverage (edit: SI cover was a couple months after 17th birthday apparently).
- e40 11y agoThere's a scene, one of my favorites, in The Wire, where a gang member goes into a hardware store to buy a nail gun. He asks an older, white sales dude to give him the skinny on the nail guns on display. The sales guy picks up one and says it's the Cadillac of nail guns. He buys it and goes out to the SUV where his compatriot is waiting, where he tells his co-worker that he got the Lexus of nail guns. Here's the scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDpvkwBBu6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDpvkwBBu6U
- heyheyhey 11y agoThey aren't the same meaning though. The writer's analogy is much more accurate. MJ is widely considered the greatest basketball player of all time. To say someone is the MJ in a sport is saying that someone is the best in history for that particular sport. This kid doesn't even have a single gold medal. Lebron James, on the other hand, was extremely hyped up as a high schooler. Everyone pretty much said he was going to be the next MJ. The potential for LBJ was limitless; same goes for the weightlifter.
- balls187 11y agoThat is what I suspected was the case, but I'm curious if young people who are familiar with LeBron James but aren't familiar with Michael Jordan. Also one has to point out, this is an article on the WSJ, whose majority of readership would likely know who Michael Jordan was.
- dang 11y agoBoth of those titles are rather baity, so we changed it to language from the subtitle. Happy to change it again if someone suggests something better.
- balls187 11y agoI disagree that the title was click bait. It's a common occurrence in sports to reference athletes against well known popular athletes--especially when it comes to how extraordinarily dominant certain athletes were in their sport. These sorts of comparisons have happened long before "click baiting" was a thing. In this case, I believe the original title should be restored to it's original, even if it is premature. My questioning the title was specific to mentioning Lebron, while the article mentions Michael Jordan instead.