I tried to tell my daughter that failure is not a bad thing because Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. She told me that it wasn’t true and that I should check Snopes. I did:
Even though Snopes rates it as “false” the citation shows it to be true. Jordan was sent to the JV team as a 10th grader, even though the citation admits that his school kept a 10th grader on the varsity team.
That rings to me as Jordan definitely being cut from the varsity team in favor of another kid that almost certainly didn’t become the greatest NBA player of all time. Is Snopes wrong on this or am I?
Is there an official Snopes judgement on it,or just the message board post?
But it seems like disingenuous semantics to me. “He wasn’t cut from the varsity team, he just wasn’t allowed to play on the varsity team, while another player with more apparent utility was allowed to” is pure bullshit by someone who desperately wants to believe he didn’t cut Jordan.
Based on the article, everyone was trying out for the team. He was never on varsity so he wasn’t cut from varsity.
Now if the coach had named 20 players to varsity with the understanding that only 15 would be the Opening Day team, that would be getting cut.
Again, that’s never been my understanding of the term. Say there are 20 spots on the high school baseball team and 50 boys show up to try out. On the “cut day” the names of 20 boys are posted outside the coach’s office (nowadays probably an email or tweet). If you were one of the 30 names not on that list you were “cut” without ever having been a member of the baseball team.
Now, if there were enough boys that showed up, maybe those 30 would be a JV team, or organize a team for a different league. Of those 30, 20 made the new team and 10 were cut.
However, from my understanding of the term, all 30 could say that they were cut from the high school team and 10 could say that they were cut twice, despite those boys having never been a member of either team.
Maybe this is the source of mine and Wolfman’s confusion with the Snopes piece.
In what scenario would a person ever be cut under your definition? Even if the coach in your example has multiple rounds of cuts and winnows it down to 20 players but cuts the final 5 before the opening game, those 5 were never on the team, correct?
I’ve seen that done as well. In my example you would start with 50 boys and cut 20 of them who were hopeless. Then you are left with 30 players and 20 slots. Then you can more closely evaluate the closer calls to finalize the team.
By not being good enough to make it, just like the other millions of high school players, thousands of college athletes, and hundreds of players drafted by pro team who never made the roster.
I would use it the way Running Coach does. To be cut from a team you must already be on the team. So you join a team, you play a few games, then they decide to cut you. I’m not saying that’s right, but that is how I interpret the term with no other context, and presumably that is why some people interpret the story to be false vs true.
To expand a bit: There really needs to be more information. Just how much of a tryout did he do? If he turned up to one session, shot a few hoops, and was told “no”, I wouldn’t say he was “cut”. On the other hand, if went to numerous training sessions in pre-season and was ultimately left off the team then I would say he was “cut”, as he participated fully as a member of the team up to the point they decided who was going to playing the games.
It means trying out and not being chosen among those trying out. It’s not synonymous with being “fired” or “released” from a team you are a member of. See Wiktionary for “make the cut”:
To succeed at something or meet a requirement; to be chosen out of a field of candidates or possibilities.
If Jordan tried out for a team and they decided he didn’t rank among those good enough to play, he was cut. It helps to understand the process a bit. Say 50 players try out but you only have room for 15. You can’t have all 50. So you “cut” down to 15. Those who fail are “cut”.
Think of it like a huge plank of wood that you want to turn into a door. It’s way too big. So you cut off the excess until it’s the right size. That extra wood was never part of the door, the plank didn’t become a door until after it was trimmed, but that excess wood was still cut.
Sorry if that was wordy but hopefully that helps explain the use of the term in sports, and why Snopes is incorrect.
If the statement was that “Michael Jordan didn’t make the cut for the varsity team” then I think everyone would be in agreement. It’s the “cut from the team” bit where the sports usage seems to differ from normal english.
In the UK, we wouldn’t use the word “cut” in either scenario.
If you didn’t make the team in the first place we’d probably say “not selected”.
If you get in and aren’t good enough and get dropped to a lower team we’d say “dropped”
So in this case it seems like Jordan was “not selected” rather than “dropped”