LeBron James and all of his cute commercials and cool antics on the sidelines during the basketball season have all faded to black. Once the darling of the NBA, LeBron is now looked upon with disdain. ESPN's J.A. Adande gives us a summary of LeBron's summer. Quick summer summary for LeBron: creates a show to announce his free agent...
LeBron James LeBron James and all of his cute commercials and cool antics on the sidelines during the basketball season have all faded to black.
Once the darling of the NBA, LeBron is now looked upon with disdain. ESPN's J.A. Adande gives us a summary of LeBron's summer.
Quick summer summary for LeBron: creates a show to announce his free agent choice, gets roundly criticized for both the choice and the format; takes out an ad to thank his hometown of Akron and gets criticized for not mentioning Cleveland or Cavaliers fans; tweets his reaction to all of the criticism and gets criticized for that.
At this point there’s nothing he can say that will make it better, no way he can get back in the good graces of all of the fans he lost this summer. He should either keep quiet and stay off Twitter for the rest of the summer or just go all in and make as many antagonizing comments as he can.
Adande writes how he hopes LeBron is taking mental notes. He hopes he is storing it in a mental database and preparing a mental PowerPoint presentation for every pregame this season. Adande doesn't want LBJ to be nice and turn into Clint Eastwood at the end of “Unforgiven.”
If LeBron can live up to all of the additional pressure he created for himself than he will unleash one of the greatest campaigns in NBA history.
Radio Joe
Joe Tait will receive the Curt Gowdy Media Award on Thursday evening when he's inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
In a recent interview with Rick Noland of Medina-Gazette.com, Tait is pleased with the honor but he was surprised on how things transpired with LeBron James. Tait said part of James’ struggles in Cleveland’s Eastern Conference semifinal loss to Boston stemmed from the fact he already knew he was headed elsewhere.
“He knew what was going to happen,” Tait said. “He knew he was leaving. He knew for two years.”
The 73-year-old stopped short of saying the two-time league MVP quit, but added James was not himself in the series.
“The way Boston was playing, he may have awakened to the fact we weren’t going to beat them,” he said. “He lost the eye of the tiger, so to speak.”
Tait will retire after the 2010-11 season.
LeBron James hires rabbi
Miami Herald reporter Luisa Yanez and Jaweed Kaleem writes how LeBron James has hired a New York rabbi with South Florida ties for business and spiritual guidance, the entertainment website TMZ is reporting.
The site features a photo of James holding hands in what seems to be a prayer with Rabbi Yishayahu Yosef Pinto, ``a man known around New York as the rabbi to the business stars.''
The photo was snapped during a meeting Tuesday morning between James and business executives on a private yacht off New York, the site said.