Should Athletes Be Role Models?

Should Athletes Be Role Models?

Reese Guill, Messenger Reporter

For years, athletes have been adored and praised by hundreds of millions of children all over the world. For most kids that grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, they grew up idolizing athletes like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Jerry Rice and Ken Griffey Jr. Arguably the greatest athletes that ever played in their respective sports. But we are growing up in a very different time. The great athletes today are not great humans. DeMarcus Cousins automatically comes to my mind. DeMarcus is widely perceived by most as a big crybaby who has a bad temper. Most of you Kentucky fans will remember Cousins at his time at Kentucky. He was an amazing player at Kentucky and he was eventually drafted 5th to the Sacramento Kings in the 2010 NBA Draft. Cousins was most known for his passion that he played basketball with. It got him a trouble a lot when he was at Kentucky. His trouble on the court has haunted him all the way to the NBA. He basically gets a technical foul called on him every single game this season. In his career, he has not been to the playoffs. He is basically dubbed as the greatest loser of all the time because of the amazing stats he puts up every night but his team still loses. Many people see DeMarcus as a new version of what Charles Barkley used to be in the 90s. He had the worst temper of any NBA player at the time and the teams he played for suffered because of it. He ended his career never winning a championship. Just like many people believe will happen to Cousins if he doesn’t get his act together or if he doesn’t get traded to a better team with better players. Charles Barkley is now a media member for Turner Sports and he is an analyst for Inside The NBA, on TNT. Lately, Barkley has been in the news negatively just like he always is. He has badmouthed multiple current NBA players over his time of being an analyst. But this time, Sir Charles has gone after the wrong guy, The King, LeBron James. Barkley had said one night on Inside the NBA that LeBron has been a baby his whole career and that LeBron shouldn’t want the best players that he feels would help his team win another championship. Charles said that winning championships wasn’t even important to him as a player. Maybe that’s why he never won a championship…