So I've been thinking about this Lebron "decision" situation some more and it has occurred to me that there are some really interesting questions that we may never know the answers to. First and foremost who was pulling the puppet strings the ultimately led to Lebron choosing Miami? Does D-Wade have that much juice in the league right now? Have we underestimated him as the second-fiddle in this free agent class? Or was it Riley? Does the "Coolest White Man Alive" still wield the force it took to manage quite possibly the most ego-laden teams in NBA history in Los Angeles? Where does Worldwide Wes fit in? Call me naive but this move doesn't have his stamp on it to me. If LBJ had ended up in Chicago or New York I would buy it, but there are too many alphas in Dade county already for me to believe that Wes was able to throw whatever weight he has around.
Regardless of the answers to those questions (which, like I said, we'll probably never know) it seems clear to me that there is one winner here and that's Dwayne Wade if...
HE WOULD JUST SHUT THE F#!*% UP!
Seriously D-Wade, a World Trade Center reference? What's next calling the rest of the league a bunch of chrome-dome kids with leukemia? Is there a hotter button to push than 9/11? Oil spill jokes maybe? I don't care what he meant by it (and that fact that he's at least partially right doesn't matter). Just SHUT UP!
You won, you pulled off something that I and everyone else with an opinion thought was impossible. You took the biggest free agent in the history of sports and made him at worst your equal and at best your sidekick. Ride the wave, bask in the glory of your victory, buy another mansion or Lotus, but for the love of God stop talking about it.
It hasn't been discussed much but how could this have worked out any better for Wade? He gets to stay in South Beach where he is a king. He gets to play alongside what would have been the greatest player of all time and another one of his best friends who's no slouch. And the icing on the cake is that he will take none of the James-ian fallout from his former team or fans and comes out smelling like roses (especially in Miami) because he took a discount to stay home and try to win. AMAZING! Who hates Wade right now (assuming he SHUTS UP!)? Chicago maybe for not coming back to his roots? That's it, otherwise all he did was make himself a legend in Miami and probably to some degree change a lot of perceptions about him. Which brings me to...
If Miami rattles off three championships in a row is D-Wade the Jordan of this generation instead of Lebron? The conversation is over in Miami. After pulling this off James could reinvent the wheel and South Beach would still be Wade territory. But the credit and the legacy for any rings depends dramatically on how the championships are won. Say they split the workload 30,30,20,20 (Wade, Lebron, Bosh, supporting cast). Can we say those championships "belong" to Lebron when he joined Wade's team where he had already accomplished several things James couldn't? (Won a championship, attracted Bosh, leaned on the organization hard enough to get him help...) Unless LBJ goes for 40,17, and 11 through a playoff run the answer is no.
Let's go over it again. Wade, the alleged second prize in this free agent class managed to: 1. Attract a premier big man to his team; 2. Lead (not follow) the biggest free agent in sports history to his home team (where he will never be more than a 1A to Wade's 1); 3. Convince the organization to find a way to pay all three; 4. And keep his reputation relatively in tact or enhance it from some perspectives while the prince of basketball's image was going all "Mickelson at Wingfoot" for joining him. Unbelievable.
So maybe we underestimated you Mr. Wade... Maybe you are the big dog in the draft class of '03... Now please... PLEASE SHUT UP and make me believe it.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
The Lebron Conundrum
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...
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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