New Article: The Lebron James Sound-Off

First let me start saying I'm not mad and I congratulate LeBron James's decision to go play for the Miami Heat. It was his choice and I feel he had the right to move on with his career because things were not going to improve for the Cavaliers in the immediate future. That being said the thing that bothered me the most is the manner in which he dealt with this whole free agency process, and the total lack of respect that he showed the fans of Cleveland. In a world where actions speak louder that words, his actions clearly let everyone know that he didn't care about anyone in his supposed hometown. If he knew he was going to leave several weeks ago, he should have spoken to the Cleveland Cavaliers and let them know privately that they were not going to be one of the teams he was interested in and gracefully thanked them. This circus stunt that he pulled on television leads me to believe that maybe he needs to surround himself with REAL management instead of letting the guys that he grew up with manage is career and brand (Whatever is left of it).

Being a fan of basketball I have to say that it will be fun watching the Miami Heat play games especially against teams like the Lakers, Magic, Celtics, & Chicago. Lebron will win a couple of championships with the Miami Heat because of their immense talent, but it won't feel the same as if he would have done it with the Cavaliers. A team that has never been good until he arrived to play there, and a city in dire need of something to cheer for. It won't be the same as watching Pierce, Allen, & Garnett win their first championship at the twilight of their careers. It won't be the same as Kobe winning another championship again after many believed he couldn't do it without Shaq. It won't be the same as watching Michael Jordan win his first championship after getting beat up by the Detroit Piston "Bad Boys" for three years. It's just won't be the same.....

There is something to be said for having class and perseverance, just look at Derek Jeter and that will say it all. He won the World Series once again after going 9 years without winning, and he is still the same classy player he was when he started. Maybe that's just not the type of player that LeBron is and maybe he was right in not coming to New York because like Jay-Z says on one of his songs "It's Not For Everybody".

LeBron is now playing for the Miami Heat but it will never be his team, that distinct honor belongs to Dwayne Wade who has already brought a championship to that city. I don't agree with the owner of the Cavaliers blasting LeBron in the media. As an owner you can't let your emotions take over without the benefit of intellect. I will however agree with him on one thing, LeBron QUIT on his team, coach, organization, and fans on the last game he played in that uniform against the Boston Celtics because I saw it with my own eyes. I have played and watched sports for a long time and his body language said it all. An athlete never quits playing until the game is over, and that's the rule on the streets, college, and professional level. Now he is surrounded by great talent and the pressure of the world is no longer on his shoulders maybe his days of quitting are behind him. Good luck to Lebron in Miami hopefully he has learned something from his mistakes in this process and let's see how this plays out.

Read this article by ESPN's Bill Simmons, pretty much on point.

Five thoughts and then we'll turn it over to my readers, because honestly, they did a better job of summing up last night's LeBacle than I ever could: (CLICK HERE TO READ READERS OPINIONS)

1. One of my first ESPN.com columns was titled, "Is Clemens the Antichrist?" It covered how my relationship changed with Roger Clemens as a Red Sox fan -- in five years, he went from my favorite baseball player to my least favorite athlete in any sport -- and how the turning point happened in 1996, when Clemens signed with Toronto and showed no remorse at the ensuing news conference.

I still remember seeing that Blue Jays cap squeezed on his fat stupid face for 45 solid minutes, waiting for him to throw Red Sox fans a bone, waiting for him to say anything that would make me think, "Regardless of how this turned out, the past 12 years meant something to me," or "Just know that this happened because of Boston's front office, not their great fans." He only threw us a couple of canned comments, the same way someone would throw table scraps to a dog. I remember how angry it made me. I remember wanting to whip my remote control through the television, then realizing that I couldn't afford a new one. I remember taking down my autographed photo of Clemens' 20th strikeout against Seattle and sticking it in a closet. I remember thinking that I would never like sports quite as much ever again.

So when Clemens went to Toronto, got in shape, won two straight Cy Youngs and forced a trade to the Yankees, really, a column called "Is Clemens the Antichrist?" became inevitable as soon as I found a bigger forum to write it. I hated that guy as much as you could hate a professional athlete without things getting creepy.

And you know what? What LeBron did to Cleveland last night was worse. Much worse.

It's one thing to leave. I get it. You're 25. You don't know any better. You're tired of carrying mediocre teams. You want help. You want the luxury of not having to play a remarkable game every single night for eight straight months. You want to live in South Beach. You want to play with your buddies. I get it. I get it. But turning that decision into a one-hour special, pretending that it hadn't been decided weeks ago, using a charity as your cover-up and ramming a pitchfork in Cleveland's back like you were at the end of a Friday the 13th movie and Cleveland was Jason ... there just had to be a better way.

I blame the people around him. I blame the lack of a father figure in his life. I blame us for feeding his narcissism to the point that he referred to himself in the third person five times in 45 minutes. I blame local and national writers (including myself) for apparently not doing a good enough job explaining to athletes like LeBron what sports mean to us, and how it IS a marriage, for better and worse, and that we're much more attached to these players and teams than they realize. I blame David Stern for not throwing his body in front of that show. I blame everyone.

We are already fools for caring about athletes considerably more than they care about us. We know this, and we do it anyway. We just like sports. We keep watching for moments like Donovan's goal against Algeria, and we keep caring through thick and thin for moments like Roberts' Steal and Tracy Porter's interception. We put up with all the sobering stuff because that's the price you pay -- for every Gordon Hayward half-court shot, or USA-Canada gold-medal game, there are 20 Michael Vicks and Ben Roethlisbergers. Last night didn't make me like sports any less -- my guard has been up since 1996 -- it just reinforced all the things I already didn't like.

For LeBron not to understand what he was doing -- or even worse, not to care -- made me quickly turn off the television, find my kids, give them their nightly bath and try to forget the sports atrocity that I had just witnessed. He just couldn't have handled it worse. Never in my life can I remember someone swinging from likable to unlikable that quickly. I will forgive him some day because I like watching him play basketball, and whether you're rooting for or against him, his alliance with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami created one the greatest "Holy s---, how is this going to play out?????" scenarios in recent sports history. Sports are supposed to be fun, and eventually, this will become fun -- for everyone but people in Cleveland -- because we finally have a Yankees of basketball.

But I will never, ever, not in a million years, understand why it had to play out that way. If LeBron James is the future of sports, then I shudder for the future.

2. One silver lining for LeBron: No other professional athlete in any team sport could have generated the interest that he generated last night. No baseball player, no football player, no basketball player, no hockey player. He truly is the King ... of something.

3. I posted this clip on Twitter last night, but it's worth posting again: the 1996 Bash on the Beach. I won't even tell you the context (a reader will explain in a few paragraphs). Just watch what happened, listen to the announcers and choke on the irony. (CLICK HERE FOR CLIP, MUST SEE. LOL)

4. Michael Jordan would have wanted to kick Dwyane Wade's butt every spring, not play with him. This should be mentioned every day for the rest of LeBron's career. It's also the kryptonite for any "Some day we'll remember LeBron James as the best basketball player ever" argument. We will not. Jordan and Russell were the greatest players of all time. Neither of them would have made the choice that LeBron did last night. That should tell you something.

5. Sports shouldn't mean this much.

I promise more thoughts later in the month. See, there's an incredible basketball story here that really has no precedent: Only when Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant played together in 2001 and 2002, after Kobe had ascended to top-three status and Shaq hadn't drifted out of that group yet, have two of the best three NBA players played on the same team. I have no idea how Miami will fill out the team, or whether you can win a championship by being so good offensively that defense, rebounding and role players don't matter. We're about to find out.