Sports are fundamentally social. In fact, without other people – opponents, teammates, fans- there’s no such thing as sport. You’re not playing a game anymore if it’s just you. You’re just running around in goofy clothes and bouncing a ball.

So other people are necessary. And when you’ve got more than one person, it’s by definition a social activity.

Now obviously, we treat opponents differently than teammates, but at the end of the day, your opponent is not an obstacle to your pleasure, he’s required for your pleasure. Because if he wasn’t there to compete against you, you wouldn’t, in any reasonable sense, be a “winner” of anything. It means something to dunk on Patrick Ewing because he was a hell of a player.

And while there’s no obvious line, I guess, between heat of the moment exaltation at victory and just being a turd, I’d qualify MJ as generally a willing sportsman who understood that his opponents drove his success. He’s the greatest of all time because he beat the greatest of all time. He acknowledged as much in his poorly received, but surprisingly deep hall of fame acceptance speech. People didn’t get it, but he was saying, in his messed up way, that he respected his opponents and was driven to beat them.

On the other hand, if you treat your opponents like garbage by mocking them, I think you’re ultimately selling yourself pretty short. Because what are you saying? That you’re great enough to beat a guy who’s not any good in the first place? Well, that’s not saying much about you.

So yeah, you’re just plain old wrong. If you make a living based on a game, and you want to be great, yes, you define your greatness by winning the game. But if you define everyone else as a loser, and you trivialize the game you play, you trivialize your own greatness in winning it.