"hoped at to lose"

[Victor Steinbok]

It sounds odd, but it's a very Zen comment. He is suggesting that people
were sending bad vibes at the Heat, wishing them to lose. Kind of
reminds me of Blazing Saddles ("Where's the white women at?") Maybe he
picked it up from one of his players.

I did raise an eyebrow over the framing--"legendary"? Really? I don't
think he's legendary--he's quite real and tangible and most of the
stories about him are either true or can be relatively easily verified.
Maybe in a decade or two after retirement--like his most famous player.
Is Bill Belichick a legendary coach? Is Kobe Bryant a legendary player?
In pro-baseball, the usual superlative is "future hall-of-famer", and
the same commentary has been making its way into professional football.
But not so much basketball (I guess, the Basketball Hall of Fame is not
as legendary). Once long retired and gone from the sport (or just plain
dead), you might hear "legendary" attached to players/coaches/owners who
are not hall-of-famers (and, occasionally, to those who are, and not
necessarily pros).

Maybe I am making a mountain out of a molehill, or, perhaps, I am in the
minority when bracketing the use of "legendary" and excluding current
stars from being legendary. Certainly a possibility.

This is not to say that other uses of "legendary" do not exist--they do.
But, at least on my planet, the restrictions on its use in /this/
context are fairly tight.

     VS-)

On 3/10/2011 12:06 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> Phil ("The Zen Master") Jackson, the legendary Los Angeles Lakers'
> coach who has won 6 championships with the Chicago Bulls and 5 with
> the Lakers and is a best-selling author (_Sacred Hoops: Spiritual
> Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior_ and other work), explaining tonight
> why the Miami Heat, for whom there were great expectations this year
> with some expecting them to challenge the all-time record of the
> Bulls or the current supremacy of the Lakers, have instead struggled
> this year:
>
> =============
> One of the reasons why the Bulls were very successful and the Lakers
> also is they engendered good feelings.  From what I've heard, this
> team (Miami Heat) feels like they've been looked at to lose, or
> they've been hoped at to lose.  If that's the case, it's a burden to
> carry.
> =============
>
> LH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org