Last night I received a text alert from ESPN that read "LeBron James plans to announce decision of free agency Thursday at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN." Right off the bat I thought, "you have got to be kidding me." ESPN, The Worldwide Leader in LeBron, was all over this, setting aside all and clearing way for the King.
How much of a joke has ESPN become with the NBA? Sure, there are a good handful of great NBA free agents, but most of the leading stories every morning are about Dwayne Wade in the back of a car in Chicago and which teams visited LeBron today. They push the NBA so hard because they host the NBA playoffs and finals on their own networks. FOX has baseball and the NFL while NBC and VERSUS host the NHL playoffs. The NBA playoffs were driven into viewers corneas and highlights of the NHL playoffs were kicked to the third tier of Sportscenter stories. To raise their ratings, they overhype the whole Association and its' stars (i.e James). I'm suprised they let Skip Bayless rip LeBron every 1st and 10 episode.
Other than ESPN, who crowned LeBron the greatest player ever? He's a heck of an athlete and an exceptional basketball player. I know a lot of it goes towards what the media has become with Twitter, 'round the clock coverage, etc. But there comes a point when you have to look at what he has won. Oh, nothing.
I am not trying to be too critical here, at this point in Michael Jordan's career, he had only won his first title (FYI: Jordan is the greatest ever in my opinion). But once Jordan entered the league, the Bulls never missed the playoffs while Jordan was with them for a full season, and don't forget about the six championships. LeBron and the Cavaliers missed the playoffs his first two years in the league and still haven't won anything. Even when the Cavs front office went out and got some help for LeBron, he still failed to bring a championship to the poor city of Cleveland.
That's poor in more ways than one. A city which is struggling with both their unemployment rate and their sports championship drought, needs LeBron--and LeBron needs them too.
If he goes on to walk away from the Cavs, he would break the hearts of the Cleveland fans, and leave some unfinished business behind. His job when brought to the Cavs was to win the city a championship. It seemed so fitting that LeBron was drafted to the closest NBA city to his hometown. It has been expected of LeBron to win it and if he went on, left the city this summer, and didn't finish his job in Cleveland, a lot of respect would be lost for the man.
Say LeBron were to team up with another/other top tier free agent(s) and win it all, it would not be his championship like Jordan had won his six or like Kobe Bryant had won his past two. Basketball is the only sport in which you can succeed with one superstar and a plethera of decent players. Championships in basketball can reasonably be viewed just as much as an individual feat when there is a superstar on the team rather than a team feat.
If LeBron joins Amar'e Staudemire at Madison Square Garden with the Knicks or migrates south to Miami to play with Wade and Chris Bosh and then wins a championship, he didn't do it by himself.
--Dan
image courtesy: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/21359161
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