Greetings readers,
Today will be my first
blog devoted entirely (at least meant to be devoted entirely) to sports, namely
Lebron James, and the aftermath of ‘the decision’.
Before I start talking
about the last two months of Lebron James, let me come out and admit my bias
here, I am not a Lebron James fan and while I can already see many of you
rolling your eyes at me not liking something or someone. Let me explain,
because unlike many things and people I don’t like, I have legitimate reasons
here.
Reason
1 (or should I say 23): I hated from the start, that he wore the number 23, I
get that he grew up a huge Jordan fan and was honoring him. I started wearing
the number 4 in honor of Shawn Kemp after he was traded to the Cleveland
Cavilers and started wearing the number 4, as opposed to the number 40 he wore
as the heart and soul of the Seattle Supersonics (RIP). I couldn’t wear 40 for
him, because none of the jerseys on the sports team I played on had numbers
that went up that high. That being said, very few people have ever been
associated with the number of their jersey the way Michael Jordan was with the
number 23. If you ever see a high school basketball game and see someone
wearing the number 23: I can promise you three things, one, that guy is not
nearly as good at basketball as he thinks he is. Two, he is going to drive to
the basket and take a very high number of shots. Three, he is an asshole on and
off the court. But back to my issue with Lebron wearing 23, Lebron James was
always going to be a NBA superstar; I think his first 7 years in the league may
be the best first 7 years of anyone in basketball history. He should carve out
his own number, or at least any other number than the number 23. Last
basketball season he finally decided he would change his number to number 6
(this up coming season), which has never been worn by an NBA great (except: 11
time NBA champ Bill Russell, ABA superstar and king of all Afros Dr. J, and
Temple standout and LA Lakers superstud Eddie Jones.) But at least 6 isn’t just
blatantly related to one NBA superstar and global icon the way 23 is. After
Lebron announced that he was changing his number, he said he thought the number
23 should be retired by the entire NBA in honor of Michael Jordan, and that to
me is really stupid too. The idea that the number 23 should be hanging from the
rafters of the Memphis Grizzlies or the Dallas Mavericks makes me roll my eyes
so hard I am afraid that they might get permanently stuck that way. However,
there should be an unwritten rule in the NBA that you don’t wear the number 23
(mostly, cause it’s cursed: isn’t that right, really bad looking Jim Carry
movie from 2007, that most of you probably forgot existed.)
If wearing the number 23 was my only problem with
Lebron, than I wouldn’t have an excuse for not liking or at least not with the
passion I have against liking him. In fact, for a while, I did kind of like
him, when he was hosting SNL and playing three or four different character in
those funny Nike commercials.
My second problem with him came after the 2008
NBA playoffs when his team was ousted from the playoffs by the Orlando Magic.
After the game, while everyone else was shaking hands with the opponents and
wishing them good luck in the finals, James was busy going to the locker room
and not showing good sportsmanship. I wouldn’t have that much of a problem with
this, Lebron almost averaged a triple-double that series, he deserves to sulk a
little bit and if he really couldn’t handle congratulating the other team that
night then so be it. My major problem with this happened the next day when a
reporter asked him about it. Here’s what he could have said that would have
made it ok. “I should have gone over and shaken the Magic player’s hands, but I
am really competitive and in the moment I couldn’t do it, I wish them the best
of luck against the Lakers, I am friends with some of them. I really hope they
do well in the finals, I am sorry to all the young kids who saw me walk out
yesterday without telling them good game. They played better as a team than we
did, they deserve to be in the finals.” Here is what he actually said verbatim:
"It's hard for me to congratulate somebody after you just lose to them,
I'm a winner. It's not being a poor sport or anything like that. If somebody
beats you up, you're not going to congratulate them. ... I'm a competitor.
That's what I do. It doesn't make sense for me to go over and shake somebody's
hand."[
Now, I know, Lebron didn’t go to college, and his
private high school education, was probably more based around learning a jump
shot than vocabulary words. But I am
pretty sure if all I had was my Meriwether Lewis Elementary education and someone asked me what the
definition of being a bad sport was I would say something along the lines of
“not shaking someone’s hand or congratulating them after they beat you (even if
you are a winner).” Although in fairness to Lebron, I probably wouldn’t know
the definition of a bad sport in elementary school, if I went to some hole in
the wall elementary school like, Virginia L. Murray.
My
third thing Lebron James did that I hated was also in 2009, this time at his
camp (ironically) for college kids. A college hoops player dunked on him, and
there was someone there filming the camp. Lebron went over to some people on
the sidelines right after the kid dunked on him, and two seconds later, the
guys he went over to talk to went over to the guy holding the video camera and
demanded that he give them the film he had just taken, saying no one was
allowed to film the camp. Although the guy had been obviously filming for a
while that day and no one had said anything to him before.
Those
are my three main gripes with LeBron leading up to ‘the decision’, although I
also don’t like that growing up he was a fan of the Yankees, Bulls, Cowboys and
Red Wings (the last one is just speculation on my part.) and even wearing a
Yankees hat to a Yankees-Indians playoff series in Cleveland.
Before
I start talking about ‘the decision’ let me just say, ESPN should be more
embarrassed by ‘the decision’ than Mel Gibson should be about anything he has
ever done in his entire life: including the film Air America. And while they
can talk about how great the rating were for it (higher than the NBA finals) I
would add that Two and a half Men also has really high ratings, in other words,
ratings don’t make it good.
There
are very few things I can say about ‘the decision’ that haven’t already been
said about Charles Manson, but I might just have to echo a few things. First, I
think Lebron should have stayed in Cleveland, I think he owed it to the city of
Cleveland (I’ll explain why in a second) as long as Lebron is on a team that
team is a contender, and maybe that was part of the problem to begin with.
Because they were always making the playoffs with Lebron, they never had a
chance to get another good draft pick to help him out, not even the great
Michael Jordon won without another great basketball player on his team (Scottie
Pippen, who is, in fact the best second banana in basketball history and one of
the top 8 players of his era, and why no one mentions that Michael Jordan went
to exactly 0 finals without Pippen makes my head explode), and it’s very hard
to convince a good basketball player free-agent to willingly move to Cleveland
(see Chris Bosh).
A quick rant on Chris
Bosh, the fact that Chris Bosh’s name is in the same sentence as Lebron and
Dwayne Wade is pretty ridiculous to me. Chris Bosh is so lucky, four-leaf clovers
pick him. Chris Bosh being part of the main members of the Heats big three is
like Ringo Star being part of The Beatles, except if you replaced Ringo Star
with me. Chris Bosh can’t even take a team to the playoffs (there are 8 teams
that make the NBA playoffs in each league, and unlike other sports, since there
are only 5 guys on the basketball court per team, if one person is a star,
especially being held in the same breath as Lebron James and Dwayne Wade, they
should be able to make the playoffs every year. It’s not like the Raptors were
that bad of a team, especially in the East where the bottom 5 NBA playoff teams
are garbage.(The Atlanta Hawks made the second round this year, enough said.)
Alright, my Chris Bosh Tangent is over.
Lebron
James grew up in Akron, Ohio a small town 39 miles away from Cleveland. Most
sports fans from Akron are fans of the Cleveland sports franchises (maybe the
most unlucky in all of sports…I’ll get to that later). The Cleveland Cavaliers
getting the number 1 pick, the year that the local basketball prodigy that
graced the cover of Sports Illustrated in 11th grade with the
headline “the chosen one” should have been a sign that Lebron was meant to be
the biggest star the city of Cleveland ever saw. I am not sure in the history
of sports that a kid with that much potential was given the chance to be
drafted by his hometown team. And for a city like Cleveland whose fans cared
and give so much to their sports team, while getting very little in return. The
last time a Cleveland sports franchise won a championship was in the NFL in
2001. The only problem with that was that at the time the team won Super Bowl,
they were called the Baltimore Ravens. The Indians made the world series a
couple of times in the 90’s but never won and in 95 they gave the Atlanta
Braves their only World Series win in their 13 year playoff run. Then, as if to
pour salt on their wounds, several players that made up the core of the mid
90’s Indians went on to win World Series rings with other teams. Most notably
Manny Ramirez with the Boston Red Sox in 2004 (ending an 86 year drought.) The
first incarnation of the Cleveland Browns featured one of only two hall of fame
running backs to retire in their prime (Jim Brown). A little research into Cleveland’s championships
shows the last one they won was the Browns in 1964 (however, that was before
the Super Bowl. So, it’s not as big of a deal) before that was the Cleveland
Indians in 1948. And the only reason the city doesn’t get more coverage of
being an unlucky sports city is because it doesn’t have a hockey team. Cause,
let’s be honest, why should a city like Cleveland have an NHL franchise,
clearly NHL franchises are better suited in cities like Tampa Bay, Dallas, LA,
and Phoenix. But, back to Lebron, not only did Lebron leave Cleveland, the way
he did it was so cold and calculated, in front of a live national audience and
creating a new phrase into our lexicon
“I am taking my talents to south beach” in the process. It’s almost like he
gave the city of Cleveland a giant, unwanted Cleveland Steamer. Few players
will feel the wrath of a former fan base like Lebron James is going to feel in
the coming seasons. If he had done this to a city like Philadelphia, there is a
good chance the next time he went there, there would be batteries thrown at
him, if not worse. And there is a large part of me that wants the people to do
that to him on Dec. 2nd, Lebron James’s first venture back to the
city that he spurned. Any proof you need that the fans absolutely hate him now;
can be seen in the video footage of the fans burning Lebron Jersey’s, the
letter that Dan Gilber (the Cavs owner) wrote to the fan base blasting Lebron,
that Jesse “I do so much more harm than good in race relations these day”
Jackson tried to insinuate was a slave master/slave, mindset based letter. The
fact that the poor people of Cleveland were willing to Pay the 100k fined that
David Stern issued to Gilbert after the publication of the letter shows just
how much they agreed with him. And the incident of the asshole who wore a
Lebron James, Miami Heat jersey to a baseball game in Cleveland was escorted
out of the park, for trying to instigate a riot, simply for wearing the jersey.
Personally, I want to see Lebron fail at the highest level, I want him to miss
open shots in big games, I want him to feel the full burden of what he did to
the city of Cleveland not just as an athlete but as an ambassador and former
resident of that city, in my view he is no better than Benedict Arnold.
All,
that being said, I don’t blame him for going to South Beach. Given the choice
of spending the winter in Cleveland on an otherwise terrible team or in Miami with
two of your best friends, one of which also happens to one of the best
basketball players in the league, you’d be foolish to chose Cleveland: unless you
really love cold weather, rereading about the history of rock n’ roll, and watching
really bad football; or were the cities chosen one, who at one point in your career promised to bring a
championship to the people of your hometown.
On an
slightly unrelated note, Pat Riley, the GM of the Heat, is kind of like the
best used car salesmen in the world, if that person were also Satan (especially
in the looks department). And I think there is a 2% he won’t be taking over the
coaching duties of the team by the middle of the year.
At the
end of the day, there is a very good chance this team is going to be winning
multiple championships in the coming years. And most people that think like
Lebron James when it comes to the sports franchises they root for will be huge
Heat fans, they’ll also probably be big New York Yankee fans, Washington
Capitals fans, and change their favorite football team from year to year. I
just pray they don’t become New York Jet fans (which is kind of my current
fear).
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