Lebron James signs with the Miami Heat!

[CatsCatsCats]

Bill Simmons today:

 

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/100709

 

It's one thing to leave. I get it. You're 25. You don't know any better. You're tired of carrying mediocre teams. You want help. You want the luxury of not having to play a remarkable game every single night for eight straight months. You want to live in South Beach. You want to play with your buddies. I get it. I get it. But turning that decision into a one-hour special, pretending that it hadn't been decided weeks ago, using a charity as your cover-up and ramming a pitchfork in Cleveland's back like you were at the end of a Friday the 13th movie and Cleveland was Jason ... there just had to be a better way.

 

I blame the people around him. I blame the lack of a father figure in his life. I blame us for feeding his narcissism to the point that he referred to himself in the third person five times in 45 minutes. I blame local and national writers (including myself) for apparently not doing a good enough job explaining to athletes like LeBron what sports mean to us, and how it IS a marriage, for better and worse, and that we're much more attached to these players and teams than they realize. I blame David Stern for not throwing his body in front of that show. I blame everyone.

 

For LeBron not to understand what he was doing -- or even worse, not to care -- made me quickly turn off the television, find my kids, give them their nightly bath and try to forget the sports atrocity that I had just witnessed. He just couldn't have handled it worse. Never in my life can I remember someone swinging from likable to unlikable that quickly. I will forgive him some day because I like watching him play basketball, and whether you're rooting for or against him, his alliance with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami created one the greatest "Holy crap, how is this going to play out?????" scenarios in recent sports history. Sports are supposed to be fun, and eventually, this will become fun -- for everyone but people in Cleveland -- because we finally have a Yankees of basketball. But I will never, ever, not in a million years, understand why it had to play out that way. If LeBron James is the future of sports, then I shudder for the future.

 

Michael Jordan would have wanted to kick Dwyane Wade's butt every spring, not play with him. This should be mentioned every day for the rest of LeBron's career. It's also the kryptonite for any "Some day we'll remember LeBron James as the best basketball player ever" argument. We will not. Jordan and Russell were the greatest players of all time. Neither of them would have made the choice that LeBron did last night. That should tell you something.

 

Some of the fan E-mails are crazy.

[dolamite]

So many sour grapes. Sure have made for a lot of wine.

[dolamite]

I know fans, GM, and sportswriters have to talk about something but it is selfish to let personal beliefs cause you to constantly trash and hate on somebody. Lebron did what he wanted to do, so if your a Lebron supporter at heart you should support that. Maybe he don't want to live up to some of the things some people feel he should try and live up too. At the end of the day, he's probably going to have some rings, and he's probably going to average close to a triple double for a career and be one of the best to have ever played.

[CatsCatsCats]

I know fans, GM, and sportswriters have to talk about something but it is selfish to let personal beliefs cause you to constantly trash and hate on somebody. Lebron did what he wanted to do, so if your a Lebron supporter at heart you should support that. Maybe he don't want to live up to some of the things some people feel he should try and live up too. At the end of the day, he's probably going to have some rings, and he's probably going to average close to a triple double for a career and be one of the best to have ever played.

 

Simmons has always been a LeBron guy. Or as much as he can be as a Celtics fan.

[nWo]

I can tell you I haven't been a fan of the NBA since the Bird, Magic era. I think this upcoming season can be pretty exciting. I just might have to get the NBA package from Directv. That is if the wife says it is ok!

[Pancake]

I can't blame the guy for leaving Cleveland. It's Cleveland!!! :lol: The town hasn't won crap in 40 years and no one wanted to join LBJ there. All suiters said thenks, but no thanks... It's cool to go to Chicago, New York and Miami on Vacation, but no one wants to go to Cleveland on vacation...

 

My prediction is the Cavs will look like the Bengals of the 90's for the next 10 years. :sssh:

[HammerTime]

Simmons hit that one out of the park.

[PurplePride92]

Simmons hit that one out of the park.

 

Yes he did.:thumb:

[SSC]

Simmons hit that one out of the park.

 

Agreed. The part that he was most right about is that fans worry way too much about sports. I'm as guilty of ot as anyone too. The fan that said players and coaches don't understand b/c they don't pay a month's salary was on point too. We as fans have way more emotion in winning and losing than most players. These guys have a maximum of 12-15 years of great play. We as fans are usually fans of our teams for life. Especially if you root for all hometown teams that you're dad and family taught you about that passion. I feel terrible for Cleveland fans, but I can't blame LBJ for doing what he did. He really did have nobody to tell him what a terrible idea it was to do that on TV.

[PurplePride92]

Agreed. The part that he was most right about is that fans worry way too much about sports. I'm as guilty of ot as anyone too. The fan that said players and coaches don't understand b/c they don't pay a month's salary was on point too. We as fans have way more emotion in winning and losing than most players. These guys have a maximum of 12-15 years of great play. We as fans are usually fans of our teams for life. Especially if you root for all hometown teams that you're dad and family taught you about that passion. I feel terrible for Cleveland fans, but I can't blame LBJ for doing what he did. He really did have nobody to tell him what a terrible idea it was to do that on TV.

 

The ironic part is that now that he is physically in Miami, no one will ever tell him it was a bad idea. Even though I loved the idea and still love it and really wanted a reality show, doesn't mean he should have done it.

 

It's expected to be the biggest audience ESPN has ever gotten for a news program. Money in the bank. That's why it happened.

[Zoot Soup]

I know fans, GM, and sportswriters have to talk about something but it is selfish to let personal beliefs cause you to constantly trash and hate on somebody. Lebron did what he wanted to do, so if your a Lebron supporter at heart you should support that. Maybe he don't want to live up to some of the things some people feel he should try and live up too. At the end of the day, he's probably going to have some rings, and he's probably going to average close to a triple double for a career and be one of the best to have ever played.

 

You're still not getting it. It's not the decision itself, but the way he went about it that disgusts everyone.

[Zoot Soup]

Simmons hit that one out of the park.

 

Agreed. Simmons has done some of his best work during this saga.

[tcjkbt]

Thank God the whole thing is over.

[HammerTime]

Agreed. Simmons has done some of his best work during this saga.

 

Which is shocking considering his past love affair with Lebron.

[dolamite]

You're still not getting it. It's not the decision itself, but the way he went about it that disgusts everyone.

 

Raising money for charity? Answering the questions everyone wanted to ask?

 

Look, I know its a bad way to go about it, especially to leave your hometown team in the dust like that. BUT, with all the media attention and speculation, people just had to know what Lebrons decision was and they wanted it straight from the horses mouth. They didn't want it via tiwtter, they didn't want it in a press release, they wanted to hear it straight from Lebron. With so much at stake for so many organizations, GMs, fans, etc. , most would not want to believe an initial announcement unless it came from Lebron, and would spend half the day trying to verify the decision because in most cases they wouldn't want it to be the case.

 

Like him or not, Lebron James is arguably the biggest name in sports today. Whether you think so or not, this whole free agent event will go down as one of the biggest sporting stories of this decade. With the above said, people demanded an announcement straight from Lebron himself. So okay, you give him a 5 minute spot on ESPN, sportscenter, or where ever. Then you are going to have people wanting to know a million questions as to what went into the decision, how it effects this, how it effects that, etc. So much would be left un answered in the eyes of most, and with the ratings prediction of such special, ESPN was all for having him announce his decision on their network and with as long as special as they could provide. Not only can you do the announcement, but you can have analysis, commentary, recapping everything. So people act like he went out and took a whole hour to rip the hearts out of the Cleveland faithful when in actuality he took five minutes, with a 10-15 minute interview session with Wilbon. ESPN created that monster not Lebron. The media and the ravid fan base caused this, not Lebron. Did he want to do it? Sure. Was it his or ESPN's idea? Was it his peoples idea? No one will ever know for certain. Point is, ESPN wanted this bad because it was the story of this summers free agency, and perhaps even the entire basketball season, perhaps even one of the biggest storys of the summer apart from the World Cup. The ratings scored a 7.8 which is crazy huge numbers. That is what is considered commercial gold in the industry, so obviously somebody had it right.

 

The thing is, people just want to hate on Lebron, and they will find anyway to do it to turn him into a the bad guy now. They'll point to do the show, a show in which offered to any other superstar of any other sport they would likely do. They'll point to him leaving Cleveland, and call him a sellout, even though its not for the money (and not for the fact he has been surrounded by a mediocre team). All the reasons people have to hate on Lebron are their own selfish and inter personal reasons. He did not shoot anybody. He did not slap any baby's around. He did not steal food from the poor. It was obvious he didn't have much fun doing that special and you can tell it ripped at him to leave Cleveland. Fact of the matter is you have a guy who is a free agent, who does what countless others have done before him, and that is go to greener pastures. While most greener pastures are for money, his is actually for winning purposes, the things we fans should value most in our athletes, and state that we do. However, all you hear is blasphemy on Lebron because everyone wants to feed their own personal agendas and curse Lebron because his agenda doesn't matchup for theirs. Why should he care what we think our what we think we should do? It is his decision. If we were as blessed to be in the situation as him we could do what we want as well. I can see former Lebron haters taking this opportunity to continue hating on him, because the time is obviously right. BUT, for true Lebron fans to turn their back on him (outside of those who are Cleveland fans before Lebron James fans) when all he has done is make the best decision for him and his family and by wanting to win, is just personal greed and for personal agenda fulfillment. I could really see people getting mad if he ran a Pay-Per-View special and charged people $49.99 to watch, but my lord, if you didn't want to watch it all you had to do is change the channel, simple as that. So people need to quit saying, oh he should have went about it this way, or he should of went about it that way. He made money for charity which is more than what any other free agent did this offseason after collecting a new payday, and lets face it, if given the opportunity most of us would have done the same exact thing. Jealousy is a horrible thing, and much of the Lebron hate comes from jealousy.