In 2008 Sports Illustrated writer Phil Taylor published the obituary of Cool. He insisted Cool, the once-envied swagger worn by athletes who let their performances do the talking, such as Michael Jordan, Joe Namath, and Bjorn Borg, had finally sucked in its last breath after an extended period on life support. So who finally pulled the plug? According to Taylor, it was Kevin Garnett.
After his Boston Celtics defeated the Los Angeles Lakers in June 2008, Garnett was asked how it felt to win his first NBA title after 13 years in the league. Taylor’s following explanation of Garnett’s response also summed up my take, which is basically that Garnett’s interview only furthered the stereotype that athletes are meatheads: “He threw his head back and bellowed, ‘Anything is possible!’ as though he had just accomplished something previously thought to be beyond human capability, like walking on the sun or deciphering the plot of ‘Lost.’ With Garnett’s scream, Cool took its dying breath.”
I agreed that Garnett’s words were among the most out of context I’d ever heard, and that they certainly weren’t Cool. After hearing them that night I remember waiting for Doc Rivers and some Jerry Maguire-looking agent to rush in and pull him away from the camera, both with “I thought it was your turn to watch him” looks on their faces. Still, Cool wasn’t dead, I thought. It couldn’t be. Of course it wasn’t with Garnett that night, because even after winning championships, Cool players keep things in perspective. Cool would have realized that Boston did have home-court advantage in the series, and Pau Gasol was playing more like one of Peter Griffin’s teammates on the London Silly Nannies football team on “Family Guy” than the best front-court scorer on an NBA Finals team.
But after reading Taylor’s description of the subtle way Cool’s identity has become unclear in American sports, I not only had to consider the possibility that the Cool of Jordan, Namath, and Borg was dead, but also the possibility that I was one of the millions of fans who watched athletes like Garnett coax it into its deathbed: “Authorities say that Garnett will not be held responsible for the demise of Cool, ruling that he was no more culpable than thousands of other modern-day athletes who have an overwhelming need for self-congratulation and a tendency to overdramatize. Those athletes avoided Cool like a subpoena during its final years, instead embracing midair chest bumps, primal yells, and the kind of elaborate, multistep hand jive that grade-school girls do on playgrounds.”
The testimony was chilling, not only because it pinpointed exactly how uncool Cool had actually become, but also because I realized I had sat naïvely on my couch while it happened. Didn’t I adopt a motherly smile when former Cavalier Queen Bee Lebron James orchestrated those girls-slumber-party, Are-you-sure-these-guys-are-straight? pregame rituals in Cleveland? Didn’t I salute players dancing to bad rap songs all over the world when John Wall broke out “The Dougie” during his introduction in his first Wizards home game this year? Didn’t I once mimic Chad Ochocinco’s pushup celebration after bowling a strike? I felt foolish that I didn’t realize Cool’s health was declining, and guilty because my blind acceptance helped it along. I was like the son who watches his dad smoke two packs of cigarettes a day, gives him money for cartons when he can’t afford them, but is surprised to find out he has cancer.
Just when I had given up hope—sometime after the Lebron sweepstakes concluded with “The Decision” and Brett Favre’s fifteenth “Will I, won’t I” saga—it happened. I was watching ESPN’s football pregame show just before the Packers-Falcons game Sunday when my hand brushed the remote, changing the channel to ESPN 2.
Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, the two best tennis players in the world, were volleying back and forth, warming each other up before the ATP World Tour Final. The football game had started, but I didn’t change the channel. I felt on the brink of realization while I watched them volley. The match started and both players immediately pelted balls into near-impossible corners of each other’s court but, strangely, only the crowd cried out. Federer and Nadal appeared uninterested in any type of self-aggrandizement—a striking abstinence during this Celtics/Lakers-caliber rivalry in which macho chest-pounding or any show of emotion might tip crowd support in either player’s direction. But when Federer creamed a cross-court backhand past Nadal to go up 5-3 in the first set, his only celebration was wiping sweat off his forehead. And when Nadal sliced a drop shot over the net to take the second set, he barely acknowledged the crowd, flashing the slightest fist pump toward the stands before stalking toward his bench, looking at his shoes.
As Nadal fell into his chair, totally unimpressed with himself for hanging with the best player of all time, it hit me: Cool is not dead. Cool’s in these two players who are so comfortable with their own greatness they don’t feel the need to riverdance after serving an ace. Cool’s alive and vigorous (perhaps too much so) in Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, whose life seems to be a balancing act between scoring goals and scoring women. Cool’s even alive in America, where Tom Brady is its poster boy. The Patriots quarterback has donned fur coats over his bare chest for perfume advertisements, married a supermodel, and is now growing his hair past the back of his helmet—all undertaken as a kind of nonviolent political statement in the name of the traditional Cool.
And when forced to choose, America seems to recognize that kind of Cool. After Sunday’s brawl between Andre Johnson and Cortland Finnegan, NFL analyst Trent Dilfer took sides with the player now widely believed to have instigated the fight on the previous play—Johnson. “Don’t start a fight with someone that can whoop you,” Dilfer said before adding that Johnson whooped Finnegan all day long by catching nine passes and a touchdown under Finnegan’s watch. Finnegan is considered a punk to anyone who saw the fight after clapping and smirking insanely after Johnson pummeled him. It was like the scene in “The Return of the Jedi” when the Emperor begs Luke Skywalker to kill him, and smiles when Luke finally gives in a takes a swing at him with his lightsaber. But people don’t hate Finnegan because his antics resembled those of a Sith Lord on Sunday, they hate him because Johnson is a better football player than him and he won’t admit it. It’s just not Cool. It’s the same reason fans love players like Johnson—because he knows he’s great but leaves the conversation to the fans. And that’s why when Federer and Nadal play fans cheer no matter what, and feel good that they’re the ones doing it.