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this.
living in san antonio we also went through the anguish of maybe losing timmy to orlando when hill had already signed up. he realistically would have made more money and had better chances of more rings but he said, screw that, i’m sticking with the folks that raised me. in short, he basically said that relationships are more important than the other stuff.
lebron is nothing more than a self centered jackass.
For me it’s not really about the ultimate Look At Me! that his stupid special was, but his seeming lack of competitive spirit that so offends. Michael Jordan would never call up Bird and Magic and get them all on the same team to make it easier to win. Fuck that bullshit, he’d damn well roll right through them. Y’know?
I’m not sure anyone has put it the way you do there. I think it’s annoying/aggravating, and I hope he fails and will be pleased, as a sports fan, if he does. I would really hate for what he did to become a trend, because as a sports fan, I think it would make the game boring. If it works, it may become a trend. If LeBron James retires with zero (or even as many as one or two) rings, it probably won’t.
No one, that I have seen, has used anything like the phrase “horrible injustice against a glorious franchise.” What people are saying is more like “cowardly and kind of douchey.”
Dan Gilbert still needs to sell seats at his arena. He needs the fans to come, and he can no longer depend on 60 wins a year to get them there. His tirade was exactly this: an attempt to motivate Cleveland fans to come to that arena just to spite LeBron James, an attempt to get the fans angry enough at James that they are invested in NBA basketball for the coming season. It might not work… but it might. If Cleveland can pull even a playoff run out of that roster this year, and if James does anything less than win 60+ games and a title, it probably will.
You keep ignoring the fact that by stretching it into an hour, he intentionally and deliberately stuck it to the fans of Cleveland who were hoping he’d stay. He owes them nothing, of course… but they owe him nothing, either. He has every right to treat them like gum he finally scraped off his sneakers; they (and those sympathetic to their cause) have equal right to think he’s a putz and root against him in return.
You’re missing the point, kinda. Jordan, like Communism, is a red herring. First and foremost, you’re wrong. If LeBron James had won five or six titles with the Cavs, he’d have been placed next to Jordan in almost everyone’s list. If he’d won seven or eight titles with the Cavs, he’d have been placed above Jordan.
But equally important: it’s not just about Jordan. It’s also about Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Kareem, Wilt, Duncan, West, and Kobe. No matter what happens in Miami, LeBron has now sacrificed any hope of joining that group. Dwyane Wade has a better shot of it now. Every one of those players will forever be considered greater than LeBron, no matter what he does, what he accomplishes statistically, no matter how many titles his superteam wins (if his superteam fails to win at least three titles, LeBron won’t even make the Top 20 conversation).
That’s what bugs me, frankly. Forget Jordan. LeBron James had a chance to put his name among the all-time greats. You want to be one of the greatest, you have to be the Man. Period. Talk around it all you want. Sure, Magic had James Worthy. But Magic was the Man. Bird had Parrish, McHale, and for a while Bill Walton. But Bird was the Man. Duncan played with David Robinson, an all-timer, briefly - but he became the Man when Robinson retired and showed he could be the Man for a championship team. Kobe wasn’t the Man when he won with Shaq, but he most assuredly is now.
Thing is, if you take the responsibility of owning a team that way, you take the risk that you won’t ever win a championship, and then you get downgraded. Then you’re Karl Malone.
LeBron wasn’t convinced of his own ability to be the Man for a title team, so he ran and hid behind someone who definitively proved that he can be. He gave up a chance to be transcendant in order to assure that he would be “great.” Instead of saying, “fuck it, I’m better than anyone and I can beat anyone and I’m going to prove it,” he decided to defer to Dwyane Wade. That’s lame and pitiful and I don’t respect him for it.
Kobe Bryant was not a megastar. Kobe Bryant was a rookie. A highly regarded rookie, but it is only with the magic of hindsight that you can characterize him as a megastar. In '96-'97 he scored less than eight points a game. Shaq’s first title came in a season where Kobe, while a good player, was not yet the monster he would become. Of course Shaq wanted to play with a good player, but this wasn’t LeBron running to hide behind the skirt of an established superstar with a borderline Hall of Fame resume. This was Shaq going to be the undenied Number One Guy on a team otherwise led by Eddie Jones and Nick Van Exel, that happened to have a promising rookie at the end of the bench.
See above. It’s not about doing it All By Himself. It’s about being the star.
Again, in his first year with the Lakers, the leading non-Shaq scorer was Eddie Jones. He outscored Kobe on a per game basis for each of their first three shared championship seasons. That was Shaq’s team. It was precisely because it was time for it to become Kobe’s team that the two players started to clash and Shaq eventually departed.
Unless I missed the hourlong prime-time fuck you to the city of Orlando, then yes.
This is part of what surprised people, I think. We thought LeBron was the new Jordan, but now it looks like he’s the new Pippen instead.
Lakers fan here so maybe I can chime in with my point of view
I don’t really remember the circumstances surrounding Shaq leaving the Magic. I’m sure he was hated in Orlando and continues to be now that he insults Dwight Howard whenever he gets the chance. But Shaq wasn’t an Orlando guy, he wasn’t a homegrown product like Lebron was. Add to that, Orlando sports doesn’t have the sordid and miserable history as Cleveland does. Being in southern Florida, the city is also not seen as a kind of snowy hellhole that is unattractive to free agents either
When Shaq left, it was simply because he wanted to be in a different place, have more money, and maybe do it in LA. Lebron, on the other hand, coined the summer of 2010 to be the biggest one in NBA history 2 years ago! Add that to the whole “making your hometown wait on your decision” and all of the rumors that he had this planned out weeks if not months ago, then you start to see the difference between the way Shaq left and the way Lebron left. Lebron didn’t give his town the courtesy of a warning either. He strung them along until the last possible moment, making Cleveland unable to participate in the free agent feeding frenzy that other teams took advantage of. Also, during his special, he never once thanks his town or his team or the fans. Why not? If players are only looking out for themselves and their money, then they should at least show some appreciation for the fans who paid his salary.
Also, Shaq didn’t go join a megastar in Kobe. Kobe was only a rookie the year that Shaq came over. And the 13th pick at that, and straight out of high school. Nobody knew he was going to be as good as he is now except maybe Jerry West. Shaq came to LA not to join forces but to establish his own legacy.
I think you’re overstating this somewhat. People want someone to come along and be as great or greater than Jordan. Why do you think every time some phenom is up and coming, the comparisons to Jordan start anew? Like storyteller0910 said, if Lebron won a few rings in Cleveland, I think there’d be plenty of people ready to anoint him the new GOAT.
As much as I think he could have handled the situation better, I think it’s important to note that his special raised $2.5 million for the Boys & Girls Club.
Also, assuming he doesn’t want to be “the man”, what is wrong with that? Does everyone here aspire to be the CEO of their company, or the best in their entire profession? People often make calculations like this based on a lot of things, and usually, it doesn’t reflect negatively on them.
Bah humbug. The Boys & Girls Clubs were used as a fig leaf. The fact that LeBron did a rotten thing, and charity benefited, doesn’t mean that LeBron didn’t do a rotten thing.
That’s true. Such people trade off increased pay for the decreased workplace pressure. Here though, James instead takes the high pay the CEO would make, without the CEO’s high pressure job and responsibilities, which is hardly an example of exemplary conduct.
(Whether CEOs deserve all that pay is a different argument of course. (They don’t BTW))
In Greenwich, CT, one of the richest towns in the country? Bully for him.
I’d say another reason is that it seems to add to the image that NBA teams half ass it through the regular season and then try to turn it on once the playoffs start. It makes it seem like Lebron and the others care more about getting to the nightclubs on South Beach than actually trying to win.
I hate any sports figure who gets referred to by his first name more than his last name. Yes, that includes that sellout wife-beater MICHAEL.