Michael Showalter » Thoughts & Observations

Shame on Lebron James for wanting good teammates! The nerve of this guy! Speaking personally I want to work with all of the most mediocre people I can find. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do! It’s the only thing to do! Why is it the right thing to do? Uh…I don’t know! Leave me alone! It just is!

If given the choice between working with the best people or working with mediocre people I will always chose to work with mediocre people because then I will be way less successful at doing the thing I love the most and have worked my whole life to succeed at! It’s such a no-brainer!
“Hey Mike, you can either have the best co-workers ever, or slightly lame co-workers. What do you chose?” Duh! I chose the slightly lame co-workers! Why would I possibly want the best co-workers? In what way would I benefit from that? Does having the best possible co-workers allow me flourish? Allow my business to flourish? Of course not! It’s absurd! How can Lebron James not see the error in this decision he’s made to work with the best possible colleagues?! It makes absolutely no sense! It is a farce and an outrage!!!
If everyone did what he’s done we’d have successful, happy people everywhere! What a travesty this would be.
I mean could you imagine if great actors chose to work with great directors? What’s next Leonardo DeCaprio making movies with Martin Scorcese? (Editor’s Note: Yes.) Or even worse if great actors actually had the audacity to choose to work with other great actors?! A movie like “Wedding Crashers” could never have worked if the both of the leads had been big movie stars! (Editor’s note: they were.) Or what about politics? Try to imagine if President Obama chose someone like Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State?! It would be crazy!!! (Editor’s note: he did.)

I’m an astronaut. I need a really good engineer to fly to the moon with me in case something goes wrong. Give me the worst guy! I don’t want the guy who knows what he’s doing?! It would be an insult to all of the crappy engineers of the world to chose the best engineer. It’s painfully obvious and Lebron should be embarrassed.

I’m a really good schoolteacher. I want to prove how good I am by surrounding myself with less good teachers. It’s good for me. It’s good for my students. It’s wimpy to be like, “I’m a good school teacher and I want to work with other good school teachers.” Any schoolteacher that doesn’t have the guts to want to be at a school where there are no other good teachers is a coward!!!

Furthermore, Lebron should be embarrassed for wanting to live in Miami and not Cleveland! Why anybody would choose to live in a tropical climate where the weather is nice all the time versus a city that is grey, freezing cold and slushy most of the year!

MIAMI

CLEVELAND

Who, given the choice, would ever make such a short-sighted, selfish decision!? Not me! If you said, “Michael, you can either live in Cleveland where it’s grey, cold and slushy, and work with crappy co-workers, or, you can move to Miami where it’s beautiful all the time and work with the best co-workers.” I would, without hesitation, chose to live in the cold, grey, slushy city with the crappy co-workers. Most people would and Lebron James is a terrible person for choosing to live in the city with the perfect weather and the great co-workers. It’s an outrage!!!

Ultimately, I think Lebron will learn the error of his ways. One day he will regret having chosen to live in a city with a beautiful climate, with great co-workers. And we who have vilified him will rejoice! Because none of us would ever make such a foolish decision.