I unequivocally have to side with Gilbert and Cleveland here. Not because leaving Cleveland was a jerk move or any of that, but because the way LeBron decided to do this was so incredibly awful that he forced my hand. I've never understood the level of reality detachment that some Kobe-haters needed to have in order to embrace LeBron. Even before last night, fans of LeBron who hated Kobe had no leg to stand on when it came to Kobe manufacturing his image. Kobe's not the guy who had his family manage him. Kobe's not the guy who turned Eddie Murphy's egomaniacal Nutty Professor movies into an ad campaign. Kobe's not the guy who came out before he'd even played a game and declared himself King, complete with "Reverend" Bernie Mac and a gospel choir. Kobe's got his faults, no argument, but nothing he'd ever done even began to approach what happened last night.
What happened last night was LeBron going full Palin. (I don't plan on getting politics in my sports very often, they're not 2 great tastes that taste great together, but hear me out.) Palin's accomplished nothing. Literally nothing. And yet, the mainstream media picks her comments up and runs with them, even though her two biggest accomplishments are derailing McCain's campaign and quitting on the job her home state elected her to do. Yet instead of being contrite, humble and devoted to becoming better at her job, she's devoted herself to declaring that she's awesome, despite all the facts to the contrary, and somehow this gets picked up and run without being contested in the slightest.
And that's precisely what LeBron did last night. LeBron claimed to be a loyal guy, claimed that somehow going on TV and having a 60-minute special all dedicated to himself was a "humbling" experience, and instead of calling him on it, ESPN just talked about how fortunate they were to have LeBron there with them as he tossed lighter fluid on the last shreds of their journalistic integrity and lit them on fire. They just sat there and accepted it. "Of course LeBron's loyal, did you not just hear him say he was!? Sheesh."
ESPN's obviously going to claim that the "E" in "ESPN" stands for "entertainment" as they always do. They're also likely going to claim that the articles they posted by Bill Simmons and Gene Wojciechowski are more than other channels would have provided in the counter-point department, but I gotta call bullshit on that. You had an unprecedented one-hour train-wreck devoted to one man's ego, and you put up two internet columns to counter-balance that? That's as pathetic a counter as British Petroleum provided for their oil fiasco.
The puzzling thing for me is that it had to take the single most self-serving sports spectacle (even further than Eli Manning and Elway refusing to play for teams in the NFL Draft, even more self-serving than the all the Brett Favre circuses combined, even more attention-whoring than anything Jose Canseco has done) for people to realize that Pretty Pretty Princess LeBron, and the way the media was handling him, was more sham than it is wow.
The player that people claimed would average a triple-double for a season, and that the aforementioned Bill Simmons said was impossible to overrate, was and is, overrated. This is NOT a knock on LeBron, it's a knock on the way the entirety of sports media has been carrying his bags for the past 7+ years. Nobody has backed off of any of the grandiose claims they made about LeBron, yet they still act as if he has met those marks. Kobe wins 3 rings, and the storyline surronding him is, "He can't win one without Shaq." LeBron wins 0 rings, and pulls down a bronze medal with Team USA, and the rap around him was, "Well, he's going to get 4 or 5 rings eventually."
Name me another player in history that has ever gotten the, "Well, he's going to get his championship eventually" coddling? Did people say that about Jordan? No. They said he wasn't anything until he could get past the Celtics, and then later the Pistons. People still want to deny Kobe's greatness. Nobody ever said Clyde was guaranteed a ring. Patrick Ewing, 'Nique, Chuckster, the Iceman, and Reggie Miller are all wondering why this double-standard got erected for LeBron.
Maybe in way last night was a good thing. Maybe by the sports media hitting rock bottom, we've ensured that they will never sink this low again? We have hope. The results of a Sports Illustrated poll indicate that most people were turned off by LeBron's actions last night. However, the cynic in me foresees that it's only a matter of time before this is de rigeur for every high profile free agent across all sports. If that comes to pass, there should be a LeBron James jersey burning at each and every one, regardless of sport.
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