A little more than a week ago Lebron James announced, in horrifically dramatic fashion, his "DECISION" to join Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, and Pat Riley in Miami. Sports fans around the country were horrified, Cleveland broke off from the rest of the United States and floated out to rest somewhere near the lost city of Atlantis (no small feat for a landlocked Midwestern city), and a cloud of righteous indignation hung over the sports world like a pending thunderstorm. Pundits from all sides crucified Lebron and his image went into a quasi-Tiger nosedive.
As a fan of an Eastern Conference team I hate that LBJ ended up in Miami forming a seemingly unbeatable triumvirate. The East is essentially theirs until someone takes it from them and my level of faith that the Celtics can do that is hovering around the mendoza line just a month after Boston was one game from banner 18.
That being said we as sports fans need to check our hypocrisy just a little bit when it comes to James' decision. In the past week I've heard numerous people lambasting Lebron as the archetype of all that is wrong with sports today. A typical athlete that has no loyalty to anything other than himself or his numerous bank accounts. A demon wresting the nobility and joy from sports and replacing it with a cold black heart to be found sitting in a corner booth at an ultra-exclusive South Beach club we as fans could never find nevermind enter. Truly the anti-Christ of basketball.
Some of those criticisms may very well be true, but unfortunately for those facing a precarious fall from the soap-box, they don't apply in this case. Was the self-promotion fest known as "The Decision" a truly skin crawling self aggrandizing nightmare to watch? Of course. (Sidenote: ESPN is far from blameless in this...) Has his callous departure from his hometown made the burning of his jersey and the removal of his likeness from anywhere in the city seem like an under-reaction? Sure.
But if you take the emotion out of it and look at what he actually decided to do it becomes clear that Lebron (along with Wade and Bosh) has taken the road less traveled. In reality he did something that we wish athletes would do more of, he chose winning over money. Cleveland could have paid him 30 million dollars more than any other team over the life of a maximum contract AND in Miami James will receive less than the max. Let me make sure that's clear. Lebron will get less money with the Heat than he would have with ANY OTHER TEAM. The Knicks could have paid him more, the Nets could have paid him more, the dreadful Clippers could have paid him more, everyone with the cap space for a max player could have paid him more. He turned that extra money down for a chance to play on what could be a historically good team. From what I've seen in sports that's pretty atypical. Do you think ARod would be a Yankee right now if they hadn't offered the biggest number? No chance.
Also, how many guys of Lebron's stature would be willing to go to another star's town and team? Miami belongs to Wade. He won them a championship in '06 and is still at the very least their co-top dog. Lebron didn't assemble this dynasty, he was added to it. That's a strange idea for perhaps the greatest basketball player (athlete?) in the world right now, but it's true. If he wins in Miami it won't be because he's the greatest of all time. It will be because they are a great team with three great (two great, one good?) players. He likely gave up his chance to be discussed in the same category as Russell and Jordan to chase championships and avoid being discussed in the Malone / Barkley category. Now whether he is aware of that probability is up for debate, but if he is (and I think he is) that's not a "typical athlete" decision.
Look, the way that Lebron delivered his decision was unacceptable. There is no question about that, especially given that he never told Cleveland that he was definitely leaving until just before the announcement. So he deserves to take heat from that and if I were him I'd avoid setting foot in Ohio for a while. But while we reserve the right to get on him for many aspects of his decision we can't call him the typical athlete and say he represents everything that's stereotypically wrong with sports. We can say he's taking the easy way out and leaving the chance to be Clevaland's Jordan on the table. We can say he's selfish and thoughtless for crushing his hometown in such a cold and deliberate way. We can even say he's making a bad decision, if it doesn't work his legacy won't be tarnished, it will be torched like his last number 23 jersey. But we can't say he represents all the things we hate about sports. We're still allowed to hate him, just not for that...
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