LeBron James will finally make his decision public tonight and Justice B. Hill of RealClearSports.com writes how crazy this LeBron mania has been over the past week. Hill, like many of us, has grown tired of all of the hoopla. All the false prophets, the unidentified sources and the unnamed NBA insiders who peddled bogus stories to newspapers, talk...
LeBron James LeBron James will finally make his decision public tonight and Justice B. Hill of RealClearSports.com writes how crazy this LeBron mania has been over the past week.
Hill, like many of us, has grown tired of all of the hoopla.
All the false prophets, the unidentified sources and the unnamed NBA insiders who peddled bogus stories to newspapers, talk shows and gossip magazines from Cleveland to California and across the coastal waters have turned this into the "Summer of LeBron." If anything has grown more tiresome than listening to them, I don't know what it would be. OK, maybe mindless talk about the BP oil spill would belong ahead of it, but if it is, at least it's a topic that matters.
But Hill is really bothered with the fans here in Cleveland. The city has bigger issues to worry about instead of where LeBron James will play this fall.
But their obsession with LeBron underscores society's misplaced values - or, at least, Cleveland's misplaced values. Cleveland has never been a city confident in itself. It has always been a city trying to find itself, a city trying to clean up an image that has been kicked around like a soccer ball. It is a city that has never been good enough or proud enough or resilient enough to be a destination.
So it wants to pin whatever it is on LeBron James. It has pleaded for him to stay home. It has promised him its undying love, if only he can show the city a little love of his own.
Free agency and LBJ
Blogger Michael Tillery of The Starting Five writes how different this LeBron James free agency thing has been. He also defends LeBron's decision to do things his way.
Yes, it’s different. Yes, this is something we have never before seen. Yes, LeBron James is making teams come to him.
Why not take control of his future? Corporations do it. Sports franchise owners do it. Why not LeBron?
Remember, Barack Obama has weighed in. Despite the World Cup being the preeminent sports story across the globe, anyone within sports earshot has said LeBron’s name at least once.
Tillery writes LeBron will be viewed as an egomaniac by a society kissing themselves whenever they see a pretentious mirror. He will be viewed as an egomaniac by a society hoping when the phone rings it’s another HR department on the line offering more money than they currently earn with their present employer.
Just win
No matter which team LeBron announces tonight, the bottom line is the bottom line. And the bottom line is that LeBron James needs to win, or forever be linked to the all-time greats that could not win a title.
NBA.com reporter Steve Aschburner writes:
LeBron should do what is rightGames. Accolades. Trophies. Dollars. Instant Twitter hordes. Probably the ratings battle in his personal TV time slot for the second Thursday in July.
Those are things LeBron James has won.
Championships. Rings. New fans. Renewed fans. Admiration. Hearts. Minds. Respect.
Those are things LeBron James still needs to win, or win back, if he's going to come out of this with more than a guaranteed contract to play basketball for the next five or six seasons for $99 million or $128 million, respectively.
While New Jersey Star-Ledger columnist Dave D'Alessandro cover the Nets, he thinks LeBron James should do the right thing and stay in Cleveland. D'Alessandro writes,
So now he’s ready to announce his decision. The free agent market in any sport is always a shameless function of ego, and one week of this was enough. Now the grand prize, a young man who refers to himself as The King, has concluded his vainglorious quest to keep our attention as he decides that he is either going to take one billionaire’s money or another billionaire’s money.
Instead of doing what he — as a native Ohioan — should know is right.
Or maybe that is giving him too much credit, because we’ve been confused by his priorities in the past