By Tom Dening February 9th 2012 10:48 AM EST
I was listening to Mike and Mike this morning and they were going on about how a week after LeBron tweeted about Blake Griffin’s dunk which Posterized (Mosgov’d) Kendrick Perkins, and how Perkins was apparently now upset about it a week after the tweet. It got me thinking, why are we really so mad at LeBron?
Now clearly any Miami Heat fan more than likely isn’t mad at LeBron at all, they may have been a little pissed off how he completely vanished in the Finals last year against Dallas, but need I remind you he has done this before. All you need to do is go back one year prior in the playoffs to realize he basically gave up on a Cleveland team against Boston which many favored to get to the NBA Finals and possibly win it. So let’s move into why everyone else in the world or at least most NBA fans are completely disgusted with the NBA star formerly known as “The King.”
Let’s start with the easy part, Cleveland fans. Nothing needs to be said here, he took complete advantage of the situation, gave them some false hope, and then threw it right back in their face. Not even in a one-on-one situation but by doing it on ESPN in front of everyone that sat there watching that night and making the organization he helped re-build find out that same exact way. Leaving that night, and the awful series against Boston the last memory of LeBron as part of the Cavs organization, they have every right in the world to be angry.
Moving on with the rest of the world, or at least the part of it that cares about the NBA or currently pretends to care about LeBron, why do we hate LeBron so much? Usually it comes down to a handful of things, the most I hear about are: they don’t like him (and never did), ‘The Decision,’ the actual decision he made, and in Kendrick Perkin’s case “Superstars shouldn’t act like that.”
To get the whole Perkin’s business out of the way, man up, you’re a talented NBA player that is getting butt hurt over something that LeBron was acknowledging to his fans, he in no way disrespected you...let’s be honest, you disrespected yourself trying to block that dunk.
General consensus on why most people don’t like LeBron seems to come down to the decision, whether it was why he did it, how he did it, or what he ended up deciding. Without actually being LeBron we will never truly know why he decided on “The Decision” to be his forum for his selection. It may not have been the best way to make his selection, however he did try to save face by donating to kids through anything he made off of that show that night. How he made his decision disgusted most people, he sat there and made everyone wait and watch him decide where he was officially going including his old team and organization where only his closest circle of friends and family knew ahead of time.
This brings us to the last point, as LeBron is quoted and made fun of for his statement, “I’m taking my talents to South Beach!” Clearly there are a lot of reasons, the big one yet to be determined (NBA Championship) for LeBron to go to Miami. Florida income tax is a great reason in itself, playing with one of the best players in the NBA in Wade, and a solid PF in Chris Bosh who is starting to look more like the Bosh from Toronto…when LeBron and/or Wade were out with injuries at least. Just based on these two justifications it’s awfully hard to blame LeBron for wanting to go to Miami. If he would have chosen Chicago and teamed up with Rose would we have been as disgusted, how about the Cavs, Knicks or Nets where he could have been “The King” still. The greater question is if the same thing happened on that summer night and LeBron doesn’t take the easy out and go to Miami, do we hate ‘The Decision’ as much as we all do today?
In my opinion, I don’t think we do. I think if he holds his 1 hour segment of TV on ESPN and tells us all he is going to NY, or possibly NJ, which leads to Brooklyn next year, I think he would be celebrated (sorry Cavs fans once the show was announced you knew he wasn’t coming back). How sad is that, one little difference in his decision making and he goes from NBA villain to reigning supreme. Now obviously we will never know for sure if this would be the case, but I almost guarantee that night would have been a completely different story and for the last year and a half we wouldn’t be talking about this topic, instead we would be cherishing how LeBron is willing to take on the role of the next NBA icon and work towards carving his legacy, rather than being seen as a piece of a dominant NBA team.
In the end I almost think most our hatred, anger, and dislike of LeBron isn’t that at all. I think it’s more of a feeling of dissatisfaction that he took the easier road, the fact that he had a chance to make himself into the next Kobe, or Jordan. But instead decided to choose Championships (at least he hopes) over his personal legacy. So in his most selfish act, he almost acted selfless. He gave up being not just an icon, but The Icon, the Face of the League for the next 10 years, all for ‘in his mind’ a better shot at what any player on a team strives for, a Championship. This will never change some of our minds on LeBron, he made his decision, and now most people wait and hope his plan doesn’t work out.
