Why We Should Still Care About Loyalty in Sports
The man who has recently referred to himself as a “god” on social media shocked (kind of) the basketball world this summer by demanding trade from the Brooklyn Nets. If he gets his wish, Kevin Durant will be playing for yet another team by the start of next season, leaving fans and analysts asking a similar question: Does loyalty exist in sports anymore?
During Durant’s first interview after joining the Warriors, the New York Times observed that “Despite the depiction of Durant as a villain by some basketball fans, the first impression he made hardly fit that billing: he was plain-spoken and non-menacing, with no discernible swagger.”
But the positioning of Kevin Durant as the latest sports “villain” has nothing to do with the way he talks or carries himself or his off-court behavior.
Professional athletes—like the teams they play for—can do whatever they want. The point here isn’t to judge whether a particular athlete’s decision was right or wrong, but to consider that every choice has consequences. In this case, Durant’s choice exposed people’s expectations for a “hero” and the offense against something everyone intuitively desires called “loyalty.”
Both of these become more antiquated daily, but they are words worth remembering, both to understand why people have such a hard time when the words get trampled in front of them and to hold out hope for experiencing them in our own lives.
What Should We Expect from a Hero?
While we may not be able to collectively articulate it, we want our heroes to be, well, heroic.
Heroes are special.
Heroes do the extra-ordinary.
They stand out from the crowd by overcoming obstacles that others cannot. People want heroes who live differently from non-heroes.
Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised when a Durant-like decision has millions of people saying, “Something isn’t right. Something doesn’t line up with what I want from someone I thought was larger than life. How could he leave? Why does this feel so disorienting?”
Something isn’t right because he just did what any of us would probably do, and that doesn’t measure up to what we expect of those we think to be extraordinary. In short, you can’t be a hero if you just do what normal people would do—another reason why athletes make for lousy heroes. Elite athletes have extra-ordinary athletic ability, not necessarily heroic virtue.
But deep down, we want virtue. We want to experience extra-ordinary qualities like loyalty and faithfulness in the people we look up to and those around us.
Remembering a Virtue Called Loyalty
Ironically, in his 2014 MVP acceptance speech Kevin Durant stated that “the grass isn’t always greener somewhere else.”
A great proverb but certainly not literally true. There’s greener grass everywhere else and we can certainly find it if we’re looking.
But loyalty demands ignoring it.
The longer we stay put—in one place, in a relationship, with a body of believers in a local church, with a team—we can always expect a natural fading of freshness, of color, of excitement. When an experience becomes common and taken for granted, when it’s inherent brokenness finally becomes part of the experience, it’s remarkably easy to start thinking about starting over somewhere or with someone else. It really doesn’t need to be encouraged in us—our hearts are already prone to wander.
Against this backdrop loyalty becomes a real virtue. When staying put flies completely in the face of doing what’s best for me.
When returning to the same relationship means working through familiar challenges.
When boredom with my situation becomes an opportunity to serve someone else.
When the list of dislikes at church begins to exceed the list of likes.
When I begin to think, “I could have it better than this. Why don’t I do what’s best for me and leave ______ behind,” and instead move back into the situation resolved to go deeper instead of wider.
That’s loyalty, and it takes a person of character to live it out.
The High Cost of a Virtuous Life
Becoming a person rightly called “loyal” comes with a cost, the price being that they don’t always get what they want, don’t always get to feel good, don’t find their own desires and senses being satisfied or even pleased.
Loyalty is often at odds with “what’s best for me and my family.”
Loyalty means I remain faithful at some amount of cost to myself.
It means working through difficult stretches in marriage, friendship, church affiliation, team.
This is why loyalty and faithfulness are so hard to find today. Loyalty demands sacrifice, yet suggesting we deny ourselves any available gratification is essentially an offense.
Instead, selfishness gets promoted as a virtue while sacrifice is for suckers.
The measuring stick of a successful life at every high school reunion becomes simply, “Good for you—as long as you’re happy.” A culture steeped in satisfying itself as individuals will be hard pressed to find those same individuals sacrificing their own pleasures on behalf of others.
Something inside cries foul when promises get broken, when friends abandon us, when we’re left to fend for ourselves, but shouldn’t abandonment be exactly our expectation in a culture where everyone looks out only for their own personal interests?
We long to experience the power of loyalty, of someone choosing to maintain a commitment—especially on our behalf—more so when it goes against their own best interests.
Classic movies like Braveheart and Gladiator and Schindler’s List affect us for a reason. Their central characters all enact great sacrifices on behalf of another person, groups of people, or a specific cause.
They stand up against the villains they fight.
They resist the temptation to join the enemy when challenged to do so.
They sacrificially lose their lives on behalf of others so they can gain something more in return—a reputation grounded in character.
They are heroes because they remain loyal and faithful to the people they serve even when circumstances open doors for them to choose otherwise. We gravitate toward these acts of heroism and our souls are filled with hope by the rare men and women who live them out.
Stay Thirsty, But for the Right Things
The Dos Equis playboy pitchman—dubbed “The Most Interesting Man in the World”—used to encourage us to “stay thirsty my friends” as he sipped bottles of Mexican beer in a circle of beautiful women at the end of another sensuous experience.
It’s an easy sell. Who doesn’t naturally want to satisfy their own desires? But the constant pursuit of exciting experiences, exciting women, and cold beer doesn’t qualify a person as interesting—it identifies you as a 16-25 year old American male. We can find them anywhere. Quite boring actually.
Instead, “The Most Interesting Person in the World” is the man or woman who denies their own sensual pleasure-seeking long enough to help someone else. Interesting comes in the form of embracing virtues long ago abandoned by the cultural flow toward hedonism and instead of “doing what’s best for me and my family” laying both down on the altar of sacrifice.
The person who lives this way becomes supremely interesting if for no other reason than the extreme rarity of their choice to cut against the grain and to live differently. This person is interesting because in choosing loyalty and faithfulness, she carries the aroma of a God who not only promises to live these qualities toward us, but also to grow them in us.
The God Who Never Leaves You
What could be more scandalous about the gospel set against the backdrop of our current age than God saying “I will never leave you nor forsake you”? Strange as it may seem, when athletes that fans love make decisions they hate, it only makes it more difficult to believe that a gracious being like God exists. It makes the gospel even more ridiculous and strange to our ears.
God doesn’t leave us when a better offer comes along.
God doesn’t turn His back on us when our performance falters or when His supposed teammates don’t live out and execute the game plan well.
God isn’t trying to store up championships to validate Himself against the canvas of history.
Instead, God pursues us. He loves us in spite of ourselves. He remains steadfast and ever present and His loving-kindness toward us lasts forever. These are practically unfathomable to our minds since we rarely ever see qualities like these lived out in the flesh.
Do what’s best for He and His family? Hardly. While we were yet sinners He allowed His son to die on a cross for us.
Then, God even invites normal folks like us to become His peculiar people, followers characterized by words like loyalty, faithfulness, steadfastness, others-centeredness.
He invites us not only to taste and see that He is good but to become the pleasing aroma of Christ on behalf of others.
He invites us to genuinely live counter-culturally, to live out what people long for but can only experience through the transforming Spirit of God.
Loyalty Still Worth a Try
Regarding Durant choice to join the Warriors in 2017, CBS Sports Writer James Herbert made an excellent observation when he notes that “loyalty and relationships are often trumped by other factors when trying to build a team or a career.”
The idea that someone would remain faithful to me as an individual or to the communities we align ourselves with even at cost to themselves continues to appeal to something inside us. Something inside us longs for the idea of loyalty and a commitment to relationships even if we cannot find much evidence of them in either our own or other’s lives around us.
That’s part of the beauty found in the gospel. Let’s not forget what it means and looks like in an age where it’s harder than ever to experience.
This guest post was written by Ed Uszynski. Ed Uszynski (PhD, Bowling Green State University) has been working with collegiate and professional athletes in various roles with Athletes in Action since 1992. His writing includes contributions to DesiringGod.com and other online publications, along with a chapter in the four-volume C.S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy (Bruce Edwards, ed.) and most recently in Sports Chaplaincy: Trends, Issues and Debates (John White, ed.). He and his wife Amy live with their four children in Xenia, OH, and speak together nationally at the Family Life Weekend to Remember Conference. Ed can be reached at ed.uszynski@athletesinaction.org and you follow him on Twitter at @Uszynski32.
