Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Name the Asshat

So, this whole LeBron thing was kind of a big deal. You hear about it? Well, it really has been the gift that keeps on giving.

LeBron was a dick first. If I were any non-Jamesian actor in this whole fiasco, and we were actually a group of 5th graders, that would be my defense. So, look - can you hate James for going to Miami? I dunno. Not really. Personally, I think it's super-weak. I think a lot of people saw the LeBron free agency and hoped beyond hope that he would make a move that would give him the chance to create his legacy as one of the great players of all time (and at the same time make the Eastern Conference really interesting). Instead, he signed up to be the Scotty Pippen to someone else's MJ. No matter how good this team is, it will always be Wade's team. He robbed himself of a legacy, and robbed the league of some potentially awesome match-ups. But that doesn't make him an ass.

No, the hour-long special makes him an ass. He got some cash for a charity. A lot of cash. And I'll give him props for that. But that's the coldest moment of his life. Which is not a good thing (compare:


But yeah. He did Cleveland wrong with that whole thing. Not that they didn't deserve it. Just that it was a tough way to do it, busting them down on national TV like that.

So, now, let's talk about the city of Cleveland and Cavs owner Dan Gilbert.

So, Dan, Comic Sans, eh? Nothing says "I'm fucking pissed" like Comic Sans. But looking to the content of the letter, it's basically Dan Gilbert whining about how he's been "betrayed". What the letter really evidences, though, is the precise attitude that's keeping Cleveland down. The only good decision the Cavs have made in the last 10 years was to draft LeBron James, and there was really no choice there. Everything else, they fucked up. And now he's gone. And I can't blame him a bit, because if I'm that good a player, I don't want to entrust my fate to such a bunch of yutzes.

As for the city of Cleveland, get the fuck over it. You should have been pissed long ago that your owner and the management of your one modestly successful sports franchises was fucking things up so royally. You can be pissed, but can you really blame him for going? He didn't owe you anything, and if he did, he repaid it by sticking around that shitty franchise for 6 years.

But, worse still, we have Jesse Jackson.

So, is he really a reverend? Does it matter? Did you just insert the word "slave" into this whole discussion. Look, Dan Gilbert may be pathetic and whiner, but LeBron's skin color did have a fucking thing to do with how Gilbert felt. How does anyone care what this guy says anymore? The worst part is that I don't even think Jesse Jackson could think something that fucking stupid.

And that's when David Stern stepped in, to say that he thought everyone handled it poorly.

So, what does all this tell us? It tells us that everyone involved was dysfunctional. LeBron needs to mind himself a little bit better. Maybe he doesn't have the maturity to have his own team, which I would believe, after this past week's fiasco. Dan Gilbert, although perfectly willing to do things himself, appears to be incompetent and petty. You can pick which you'd rather be. Amongst all of this, David Stern has to wonder who was doing his job last week, because it's clear that it wasn't David Stern. He's the goddamn commissioner, and despite thinking that the LeBron "Decision" was not the right way to handle things, he did jack shit. Ultimately, it's his job to keep things like this from embarrassing the league, and he did nothing.

I know this probably wasn't my best piece, but I feel like I've been beaten over the head so thoroughly with all this shit, that I can't keep my thoughts straight while trying to write them down. So, with that, the dynasty is formed, Cleveland's resurgence is quelled, and Jesse Jackson showed he's more Rusch Limbaugh than anything else.

But maybe the LeBron-DWade pairing was a match made in heaven:

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