LeBron Drops from 3rd fav player to 6th

[nime]

Can you meet the challenges in LeBron mode?

Blog entry: July 22, 2010, 10:32 am | Author: JOEL HAMMOND

I'll be buying NBA 2K11: “The game will have a mode called the ‘Jordan Challenge.' The mode allows fans to play with 10 different versions of Jordan that are authentic to that moment.”


Those moments include, according to CNBC, Jordan scoring 63 in the first round of the 1986 playoffs; Jordan scoring 69 against the Cavs in the 1990 regular season; Jordan scoring 55 at Madison Square Garden after taking a year off to play baseball. (According to that link, “The Shot” is not included.

This got me thinking: We should come up with LeBron mode, where you have to meet five challenges:


Walk off the court without shaking hands after being humiliated by Orlando in the 2009 playoffs;

Quit in Game 5 of the 2010 Eastern Conference semifinals against the Celtics;

Permanently ruin your image by conducting a nationally televised show to announce your free-agency intentions;

Cripple a franchise by forcing it to acquire certain players, then accept no blame for that team's hamstrung roster after you hold the aforementioned free-agency special; and

Fail to win any championships with your new crew, like LeBron will over the next six seasons. Believe it!

http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20100722/BLOGS04/100729949

 

[2 For The Brew]

The only reason I want to see this phony back in Cleveland is to watch the Cavaliers beat his wet dream team in the playoffs.

Raymone whored himself for rings. Let's not make that same mistake.

Overrated!!

 

[GreasySpread36]

I didn't want him back after Game 5 and I sure as hell don't want him back now.

 

[PistolPete]

You take him back for the same reason you signed and traded him : to get assets.

If you don't want him on your roster, just trade him and get pieces you'll use to build your championship team : if an unsigned James can get you 4 picks and a TE, what can you get for a signed James???

 

[Spencer Hawes]

You take him back for the same reason you signed and traded him : to get assets.

If you don't want him on your roster, just trade him and get pieces you'll use to build your championship team : if an unsigned James can get you 4 picks and a TE, what can you get for a signed James???

A knife in the back.

 

[AkronAction]

A knife in the back.

RLMAO ....damn

 

[Richfield Kid]

Wow. I just read the W&G post on page 1 just now.

This sounds exactly like I acted when I broke up with my girlfriend in college to start dating what would eventually be my wife. I kept saying things like, "maybe some day", "you never know", "let's stay friends", and other assorted bullshitery.

I was an ignorant douche then, and #6 is one now.

 

[dawgpound23]

I laugh at all the posters on here who say they wouldn't take Lebron back. Just wait until a couple of awful seasons of winning around 30-35 games, a half empty Q, and a general malaise about the Cavs.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, I heard the same rumblings when Boozer fucked us over and left us(in a far worse manner) yet everyone wanted to go after him this year in free agency. So i beg to differ with most posters on here and I think Cleveland would have their arms wide open for his return.

 

[MDLT]

I laugh at all the posters on here who say they wouldn't take Lebron back. Just wait until a couple of awful seasons of winning around 30-35 games, a half empty Q, and a general malaise about the Cavs.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, I heard the same rumblings when Boozer fucked us over and left us(in a far worse manner) yet everyone wanted to go after him this year in free agency. So i beg to differ with most posters on here and I think Cleveland would have their arms wide open for his return.

Yeah, it would be interesting if the situation were ever to arise (it won't). Wouldn't be surprised if fans didn't want him given the disastrous way that he bolted. He IS the biggest villain in Cleveland sports history now, IMO.

It would say alot about how far he's fallen if even a guy of his talents isn't welcome in a title starved city.

 

[CavsGirl]

I got word from someone close with Lebron that he's really had second thoughts, privately, about how everything rolled out, and even his decision to leave the team. The guy I talked to seemed to indeed express his opinion that he may eventually look to find his way back here at some point before his contract is even up in Miami. Just something I heard yesterday, actually...

He really doesn't believe that the final chapter has been written with him and the Cavaliers.

I really, really want to believe this is true. Not the coming back to the Cavs, but the part about having second thoughts.

I hope what he did haunts him every day and keeps him up at night and he never has a moment of true happiness in Miami.

 

[KU_216]

LeBron is nothing more then a fart in the wind to me. And even that, is a long shot. He's more like the turd I just flushed down the toilet. (Only had to wipe twice!)



True story.

 

[thegreatest]

For those that want him back, would you want the Cavs to start structuring their cap around it? 4 years of not using cap space.

Heck, you aren't even sure that he will opt out. 4yrs might be possible with a slow rebuild. If the Cavs get lucky in the draft, would you really want Lebron coming in to lead the young guys?

 

[rusty 2]

Jangul Powell - Jul 24, 2010 2:41 am (#2270 of 2276) Reply


So now Lebron apologists are selling him as a business man who made the coolheaded professional decision to move himself into the best career situation? You know I'm not buying it.

Most CEOs would define the best situation as the one where he gets the most money and the longest term commitment. That situation for Lebron was in Cleveland, who had the most money and the most years to offer. A CEO doesn't take a job to enrich a company, A CEO takes a job to enrich himrself. When a company goes bad because of bad corporate leadership, corporate leaders don't give back a dime of the money they got for their bad decisons. That's why people don't root for business management. Sports athletes are not CEOs and it's a ridiculous comparison.

People who work for Microsoft don't wear Bill Gates jerseys, even though maybe they should, since he actually signs their paychecks. A sports athlete does nothing for the fan financially but drain them of wealth and yet they cheer and howl and fork over fists full of dollars for anything bearing their superstar's image, no matter how intrinsically worthless. Sports is not a business. It's a kids game, an entertainment where fans get an emotional outlet they can't have in real life situations. You don't get to boo bad quarterly earning statements at a board meeting or to get drunk and cheer for a merger in a crowd of 20,000 likeminded people.

These guys make their millions of dollars in salary and endorsements because they play a kids game at a high level. They don't make this money becasue what they do is important; literally billions of people do more important work every day. They make this insane money because of the irrational, emotional investment fans make in a silly ass game. If any sports star wants to turn their back on the obvious emotional component that the entire billion dollar sports ecosystem is based on, then he's not only tone deaf, entitled, and gutless, he's also completely fricking stupid.

Fans have to believe that a guy wearing their uniform loves their city and loves their fans or they won't pay for their jersey and they won't buy tickets to see them play. If the self-styled CEO athlete can't recirpocate, then they at least owe it to their balance sheet as a rational CEO to sure as hell pretend like they do. If sports is just a business, then I can't think of a worse business decison than a fan putting one dollar of coin into a player's portfolio who doesn't ultimately want a championship for the franchise as much as the fan does. You think Cavs fans bought Lebron Jerseys, bobbleheads, pendants, and condoms by the truckload anticipating their opportunity to burn them last month?

Lebron did what was best for his family in his mind. Fine. Then he has no reason to cry about fans doing what's best for their family. And sometimes that means saying fuck Lebron and any other turncoat who walks away from the adulation and adoration that didn't make him the athlete he is, but certainly made him the millionaire he is.

There is no separating the business of sports from the emotion of sports, because you don't have one without the other. The relationship between a fan and athlete is not a financial one, at least not for the fan, because the finances flow in only one direction. For the fans it's an emotional relationship with almost the exact same parameters as a romantic one. If you want out of a relationship on anything resembling good terms then you have to be man or woman enough to tell the person you're breaking up with why and act like you give a fuck about their wellbeing. Just like there's good breakups and bad breakups between lovers, there are good and bad breakups in sports.

If a chick ran up your credit cards, accepted a big ass engagement ring from you, set a wedding date, helped you send out invitations, went to the rehearsal dinner, and then sent a text message while you were standing at the altar that she had decided 2 years ago she was marrying somebody else, you wouldn't give a damn about whether it was the best move for her and her family. Nobody who attended the wedding is going to sympathize with the runaway bride. What she did to you was a dick move emotionally and financially. At any time in the last two years, no matter how much you loved her, you would have rather heard the news she was leaving than to get smacked down publicly on a day you and her spent the last year preparing for throwing away money you'll never get back.

If the situation was untenable in Cleveland for Lebron, then like Garnett, he could have demanded a trade last summer and avoided this whole fiasco. He didn't, and so obviously the fans in Cleveland feel betrayed. And all the Wedding attendees Lebron invited to watch on ESPN are almost equally aghast out of sympathy for those fans.

 

[DougHeil]

Here's another one. The articles coming out about LeFraud are numerous and seem like daily. I only remember about one in the last week that was all for James... just one.

Retire LeBron James' No. 23? No way, writes Bill Livingston

Published: Saturday, July 24, 2010, 6:41 PM Updated: Saturday, July 24, 2010, 6:59 PM
Bill Livingston, The Plain Dealer

Tyler Gast, 8, left, and brother Carter, 6, would seem to agree that the Cavaliers should not honor LeBron James by retiring his No. 23 jersey.

Before the Cavaliers retire LeBron James' number 23, they will win that championship owner Dan Gilbert promised would arrive before James' first one in Miami.

The number 23 will never hang in the rafters on Gilbert's watch. It is entirely appropriate that it never hangs there at all.

Certainly, there will be a national media claque that will fall in love with what is obviously a loaded Miami team, to which James skittered as a free agent.
ESPN's suck-up brigades will be out in force in that event, accusing Cleveland of eating its young by vowing not to retire James' number. They will say we let 28 minutes of that dreadful, self-serving "The Decision" show, courtesy of the Lapdog Network, erase seven years of excellence.

It seems harsh, admittedly. But that is the way of sports.

The shorthand for every player's name in the list below is a moment of failure:
Bill Buckner? Groundball through the wickets.
Chris Webber? Timeout.
Brian Sipe? Red Right 88.
Jose Mesa? Game 7.
Craig Ehlo? The Shot.
Earnest Byner? The Fumble.

Most of these men made physical mistakes. People are human. Mistakes happen in sports.
Webber's error was mental, but it was a heat-of-the-moment error, nothing premeditated.
The four Cleveland players on the list deserve special commentary.

Ehlo was beaten by the best basketball player ever, Michael Jordan. There is disappointment, but no shame there.
Sipe was the mainspring for an entire, giddy "Kardiac Kids" season. He provided many more thrills than his one gargantuan mistake.

The Browns were never in the conference championship game after the 1987 season without Byner.
Mesa was different. His was a failure of nerve in refusing to throw his best pitch, the fastball. You might remember that, dominant as Mesa often was, he never called himself "The Chosen One" and never dubbed himself the "King." He proved too frail a vessel into which to pour so many hopes.

He certainly did not quit, however.

James would have been excused his defection on the grounds of his body of work had he left in a less mean-spirited way. He was the most visible symbol of the Cavaliers and nearly of the entire NBA for seven years. It took a lot to turn such gold into lead, but he managed it.
James ran away from his struggles. We may never know all the reasons why he quit in Game 5 against the Celtics, but he was such a megalomaniac it could hardly have been a crisis of confidence, as with Mesa.

Gus Chan / The Plain Dealer
While some Cavs fans had fun destroying LeBron James' jerseys, the Akron native's departure cut deep into the heart of sports fans in Northeast Ohio.

It hardly sprang from a single instance of panic in a critical moment of the game, as with Webber. It was by all indications a deliberate pattern of passivity and lack of urgency throughout the second half as the season began to go gurgling down the drain.
Their mistakes ate away at the other players. James sloughed them off, making the monumentally stupid observation that he spoiled the fans and then adding that he felt bad for himself.

People make a big thing of first impressions, but often it is the last one that endures.
Will we remember the giddiness of Lottery Night and the 25 points James scored in Sacramento in his NBA debut? Or will we remember his self-diminution in the Boston series and his deliberate attempt to humiliate us in "The Decision"?

Will we remember Byner's fumble after Denver's Jeremiah Castille ripped the ball loose? Or will we remember that he led the only victory after the Browns' move to Baltimore was announced? Will we remember that he took a "victory lap" after the last home game of the original Browns, shaking hands with the fans he had disappointed years earlier, the same fans who had forgiven him?

I believe we will want to remember the final game by Byner, not the championship game.
I believe we will want to remember the six good players (Austin Carr, Bingo Smith, Nate Thurmond, Mark Price, Brad Daugherty, Larry Nance) whose numbers hang in the rafters, not the indisputably great player who left in a manner designed to inflict the most emotional pain on the fans and do the most harm to the franchise.

James simply does not belong with men who took pride in the jersey and played to honor the city and its fans.

http://www.cleveland.com/livingston/index.ssf/2010/07/post_4.html

How much further will he drop from 6th?

 

[KilgoreTrout]

I got word from someone close with Lebron that he's really had second thoughts, privately, about how everything rolled out, and even his decision to leave the team. The guy I talked to seemed to indeed express his opinion that he may eventually look to find his way back here at some point before his contract is even up in Miami. Just something I heard yesterday, actually...

He really doesn't believe that the final chapter has been written with him and the Cavaliers.

I have no idea how he would ever make things right again. He spent much time of the last year burning bridges to Cleveland.

This is not an easy-come, easy-go kind of town like LA or Miami. People in NE Ohio have a sense of pride and defiance and righteousness. We live through our sports. LeBron didn't just leave - he violated the code.