In the previous post, I covered the part about how LeBron mismanaged the decision making process. Now I want to talk about the decision itself. I hate it. I am one of those guys who never wanted him to leave Cleveland, but thats not the only problem with this decision. Miami to me was a head-scratcher. He is definitely diminishing his brand by joining forces with Wade - a top 5, if not a top-3 talent in the league and Bosh - a top-10 talent. I realize that he is doing this for winning championships, but winning with this group will not make him a "global icon". He will be lucky if he even becomes a bigger icon than Wade in Miami! Wade already has a ring and he will always have one more than LeBron in this setup.
I realize that our culture is really obsessed with winning and we rate people with championships much higher than the ones without. Dan Marino is probably the best quarterback ever, but he never gets the credit because he has ten fingers, but no rings. LeBron clearly thought about this and got intimidated by Kobe's 5 rings and MJ's 6. He looked at himself and his Cavs team and just could not imagine winning 4 or 5 or 6 championships, which is what he thinks he needs to do to be in that "best ever" discussion. But the part he missed is that having multiple rings is important, but how you win them matters too. MJ gets all that credit because he won those rings as the "alpha-dawg" in those Bulls team. Thats why the 2008 ring was so important for Kobe because Kobe's first 3 rings are not his, but Shaq's.
There is no question that LeBron is the better and the more popular player than Wade. I thought the news about how the Heat season tickets were flying off the shelf once the news of LeBron's arrival in Miami leaked was interesting. Wade and Bosh were already in town and I am sure they sold a lot of tickets too, but LeBron is just at a different level as a star. With all that said, Wade is no joke. He is no Pippen or even Pau Gasol. Plus LeBron is going to his town and Wade already has a ring. So LeBron has to share the limelight with Wade. There is no guarantee they win multiple championship, but if they do, LeBron has to share it with Wade. Wade always screamed "this is my house" whenever he hit buzzer beaters or made big plays at home in Miami. Thats exactly the point! LeBron is going to his house. They may be giving him the keys to the master bedroom, but it's still Wade's house.
LeBron's career averages are 27.8 points, 7.1 boards, 7.0 assists and Wade's are 25.4, 4.9 and 6.6. I can easily see Wade being the better scorer in this team give LeBron's tendency to give up the ball and be tentative in the clutch sometimes. LeBron might end up with better all-around numbers, but Wade could end up being the alpha-dawg. Thats not good for LeBron's brand. You could say that he is sacrificing his brand and salary for winning, but thats just a fake argument. To quote one of my friends - "taking less money to play with a bunch of elite players is a false positive for having heart". You can't go and team up with other super-stars , accumulate rings and claim I am better than MJ or Kobe. Ain't gonna happen. LeBron will never be better than MJ now. He could win 7 rings, but will still be ranked lower than MJ and may be even Kobe. I don't think there was ever a situation in any sport where pick numbers 1, 4 and 5 from a year's draft end up on the same team while they are still at their peak. He can never get away from that fact in any "legacy" discussions.
Even NY or Chicago would have made more sense to me than this. He would have been on a great team in Chicago and would have still been the alpha-dawg. It would have been his team, but Miami is not his. As a 25 year-old superstar, he should be working towards winning his championship for his team. Instead, he is joining forces with other stars in another city like older superstars do to get a ring before they retire. I feel like he could have given Cleveland some more time - may be another 3 year deal, and resorted to some mercenary tactics later. I think he seriously tried to convince Bosh to join him, but when he didn't, he didn't see any strong running mate left, panicked and ejected. He is not that far from a championship in Cleveland and the Cavs have been spending money. In fact, if he didn't have a gun to their head for the last several years with this impending free agency, they might have built a more viable team than go after quick fixes like Shaq and Jamison. But they did spend the money and I am sure they would have tried to build a winner for LeBron. And that championship would have meant a LOT more for his legacy than the Miami rings ever will. He might have even become a legend with just a single ring at Cleveland. Now, he needs at least 2 championships to even make a mark.
Winning will solve a lot of problems, but LeBron has a boatload of work to do to fix and rebuild his brand.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
LeBron part 1 - Image tarnished
I can go in a hundred different directions with this whole LeBron James saga and I may do just that over the next couple of days on this blog. Simply put, he has tarnished his image and diminished his brand significantly over the last few months and finally with his decision to "take his talents to South Beach". Yes, I always called him "The King", but not anymore. It was indeed one of the most anticipated, hyped up and fascinating free-agency and off-season in the NBA and LeBron and his people deserve a lot of credit for the sheer entertainment. But all the hype and shenanigans had one big collateral damage - the image of LeBron himself. You could tell that he was enjoying every second of the attention and he looked more and more self-obsessed with each passing day. The charade culminated with a show on ESPN called "The Decision". The announcement of the plans for that show almost convinced me that he is going to stay in Cleveland. Is he going to put himself out there with such a level of self-promotional hype and actually turn back on his hometown? I guess he did, but that was shocking to me. It was one thing for him to goto Miami, but I can't believe his handlers let him walk out on Cleveland with such fanfare and hype. I thought the only way he gets away with the unprecedented stupidity of a prime-time TV show to announce his free agent signing is, if he comes out humbly and says "I am staying in Cleveland. This has always been my home. I love these fans blah blah blah". Even Art Modell sneaked his team out in the middle of the night, not in prime time. He should have totally kept it low key if he was going to walk out on Cleveland. Thats just common sense. Of course there doesn't seem to be a lot of common sense in LeBron's home-grown posse.
The show itself got amazing ratings and out-drew a lot of actual NBA games. Goes to show how big LeBron is and how much interest there was in his signing. But thats good news for ESPN, not LeBron. He just put the spotlight on himself while he was going to make an unpopular decision. It's never going to be a popular decision when stars walk away from their current team to another team because, in most circumstances, stars move from the Clevelands and the Kansas Cities of the world to New York and LA. It's just how the economics of the sports world works. Free agent superstars rarely leave the New York Yankees to sign with the Kansas City Royals. It's almost always the other way around. And when that happens, most people except the Yankee fan is unhappy and bitter and angry about it. Most fans like to root for the underdog and hate the rich dog. Also, there is something romantic about a player staying with the same team his entire career and do well for them. This is becoming rarer and rarer these days and Derek Jeter, Kobe Bryant, Peyton Manning and Tim Duncan may be some of the few guys with a realistic shot of doing this in all of sports today. And all of these feelings were 10 times more amplified with LeBron because he was playing for his home-town team and there was so much attention on his free agency since day 1 because of the New York angle. So LeBron was never going to be embraced for leaving Cleveland. So whose idea was it to do it under the bright lights?
Not only was the show a bad idea, the words that he used to relay the message was even worse - "I have decided to take my talents to South Beach". That doesn't sound humble and the reference to South Beach - the party capital of the World doesn't help either. The contrast between South Beach and Cleveland couldn't be starker. Immediately Cleveland started burning his jersey and the cute girl in that Cleveland bar started crying. It's great theater for sure, but is LeBron gaining anything out of all this? Obviously no because 80% of the people in a poll say they think less of LeBron today than they did before. Totally understandable. He has had a horrible few months PR wise since that game 5 against Boston. ESPN has been milking this free agency big-time since last year and even the NBA should be loving this as this has clearly been the top news this summer ahead of the MLB season, but LeBron's image is a casualty in all this. With all that said, the most shocking thing of this probably happened after LeBron's announcement. Cavs owner Dan Gilbert came out and absolutely killed LeBron in a an open-letter to the Cavs fans. I am shocked he did it, but I am glad he did it. Of course, he is not entirely on the high-ground here as LeBron could have done everything the same way and if only he had decided to stay in Cleveland, Dan would have hailed him as the next coming of Jesus, Allah and Vishnu combined. No moral high-ground for Dan here, but I am just glad he said the things he did - somebody had to say it. Somebody had to vent on behalf of the Cleveland fans. The national media and the NBA isn't going to do it (except for Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski) and Cleveland's local media is just not loud enough for all of us to hear. So I like the fact that Gilbert came out like that and is being heard everywhere.
That covers the way the decision was managed and announced. I will continue my thoughts tomorrow and focus more on the decision itself.
The show itself got amazing ratings and out-drew a lot of actual NBA games. Goes to show how big LeBron is and how much interest there was in his signing. But thats good news for ESPN, not LeBron. He just put the spotlight on himself while he was going to make an unpopular decision. It's never going to be a popular decision when stars walk away from their current team to another team because, in most circumstances, stars move from the Clevelands and the Kansas Cities of the world to New York and LA. It's just how the economics of the sports world works. Free agent superstars rarely leave the New York Yankees to sign with the Kansas City Royals. It's almost always the other way around. And when that happens, most people except the Yankee fan is unhappy and bitter and angry about it. Most fans like to root for the underdog and hate the rich dog. Also, there is something romantic about a player staying with the same team his entire career and do well for them. This is becoming rarer and rarer these days and Derek Jeter, Kobe Bryant, Peyton Manning and Tim Duncan may be some of the few guys with a realistic shot of doing this in all of sports today. And all of these feelings were 10 times more amplified with LeBron because he was playing for his home-town team and there was so much attention on his free agency since day 1 because of the New York angle. So LeBron was never going to be embraced for leaving Cleveland. So whose idea was it to do it under the bright lights?
Not only was the show a bad idea, the words that he used to relay the message was even worse - "I have decided to take my talents to South Beach". That doesn't sound humble and the reference to South Beach - the party capital of the World doesn't help either. The contrast between South Beach and Cleveland couldn't be starker. Immediately Cleveland started burning his jersey and the cute girl in that Cleveland bar started crying. It's great theater for sure, but is LeBron gaining anything out of all this? Obviously no because 80% of the people in a poll say they think less of LeBron today than they did before. Totally understandable. He has had a horrible few months PR wise since that game 5 against Boston. ESPN has been milking this free agency big-time since last year and even the NBA should be loving this as this has clearly been the top news this summer ahead of the MLB season, but LeBron's image is a casualty in all this. With all that said, the most shocking thing of this probably happened after LeBron's announcement. Cavs owner Dan Gilbert came out and absolutely killed LeBron in a an open-letter to the Cavs fans. I am shocked he did it, but I am glad he did it. Of course, he is not entirely on the high-ground here as LeBron could have done everything the same way and if only he had decided to stay in Cleveland, Dan would have hailed him as the next coming of Jesus, Allah and Vishnu combined. No moral high-ground for Dan here, but I am just glad he said the things he did - somebody had to say it. Somebody had to vent on behalf of the Cleveland fans. The national media and the NBA isn't going to do it (except for Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski) and Cleveland's local media is just not loud enough for all of us to hear. So I like the fact that Gilbert came out like that and is being heard everywhere.
That covers the way the decision was managed and announced. I will continue my thoughts tomorrow and focus more on the decision itself.
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Freaky free agency
The sports world is obsessed this summer with the NBA free agency. It is the biggest news story around and ESPN is going nuts and getting freaky with it's coverage. But I guess now we can all relax since the big domino has fallen. Timberwolves president David Kahn said signing Milicic was his first priority of the summer and locked him up with a 4 year 20 million dollar deal! Who needs LeBron James when you can overpay one of the biggest draft busts in recent history! Who exactly was Kahn competing against anyways? May be a couple of teams from Turkey and Greece? God help the Twolves. Despite all the big names in the NBA free agency, what we have so far for headlines are a bunch of bad signings. Milicic's contract is not that bad if you stack it up against Rudy Gay's five year, $82 million deal and Joe Johnson's ridiculous $119 million over six seasons.
Both players are decent and I actually like them, but neither of them is a true superstar who can be a number one guy in a championship team. NBA salaries are such that you gotta overpay at times for talent and both these guys can be legit number 2 guys and sometimes this is the going rate for such guys. But the problem is, it's OK to pay them if you already have a stud on your roster. Example - Orlando paid a ridiculous amount for Rashard Lewis, but they had Dwight Howard on the roster and as long as they could afford to sign both, it was OK. If you don't have that number one on the roster, the problem with these contracts is that it cripples the team's ability to get those number ones and these teams are basically now stuck with what they have and have hit their ceiling and the ceiling is not that high. May be Memphis can sign another big contract, but the Hawks are pretty much stuck where they are if Joe Johnson accepts this. The shocking part of this is, Joe Johnson has not accepted this offer and is apparently even tempted to play for less at Chicago or NY.
Now on to the real big names. The only thing that sounds concrete right now is Amare to NY. I am disappointed as a Suns fan, but I like the Suns signings of Hakim Warrick and Frye. They overpaid a little for Frye, but not too bad. I have always liked Warrick since college and it should be interesting to see him play with Nash. I just hope the Suns pick one more mid-level talent with some of the money they saved with Amare. The penny-pinching owner is going to lose one of his best players and the least he could do is bring somebody to fill some of the gaps. He already lost Steve Kerr as the GM because he tried to cut his pay after one of the best seasons the Suns have had in a few years. Amare may or may not be worth the max, but you gotta pay him, period. He will get 100 over 5 years from New York and I wish him good luck. He is now saying Melo and Parker will join him in 2011. Interesting!
We are still waiting for the top 3 free-agents to make up their mind - LeBron, Wade and Bosh. Many teams have already visited Cleveland to court LeBron including the paper clips. Now it's time for LeBron to make up his mind. He has more talent in Chicago, but he still can make the most in Cleveland. So it will be interesting to see what he does. There are also several crazy scenarios involving Miami and Chicago where all 3 will end up in the same team. I don't think that will happen. I don't think it even makes sense for LeBron to join Wade. LeBron needs his own championship and can't be a co-winner with Wade. Bosh is a big guy and he can join either one of them to help out, but looks like he is more likely to join Wade may be in Miami. Toronto refuses to sign and trade him and I think that makes it interesting. All said and done, LeBron is the king of this free agency period and he will get this thing really moving when he makes his call. There is a lot of second and third level talent in this free agency including Carlon Boozer and Tracy McGrady that nobody is even talking about. I liked the Lakers picking up Steve Blake. Smart move.
Both players are decent and I actually like them, but neither of them is a true superstar who can be a number one guy in a championship team. NBA salaries are such that you gotta overpay at times for talent and both these guys can be legit number 2 guys and sometimes this is the going rate for such guys. But the problem is, it's OK to pay them if you already have a stud on your roster. Example - Orlando paid a ridiculous amount for Rashard Lewis, but they had Dwight Howard on the roster and as long as they could afford to sign both, it was OK. If you don't have that number one on the roster, the problem with these contracts is that it cripples the team's ability to get those number ones and these teams are basically now stuck with what they have and have hit their ceiling and the ceiling is not that high. May be Memphis can sign another big contract, but the Hawks are pretty much stuck where they are if Joe Johnson accepts this. The shocking part of this is, Joe Johnson has not accepted this offer and is apparently even tempted to play for less at Chicago or NY.
Now on to the real big names. The only thing that sounds concrete right now is Amare to NY. I am disappointed as a Suns fan, but I like the Suns signings of Hakim Warrick and Frye. They overpaid a little for Frye, but not too bad. I have always liked Warrick since college and it should be interesting to see him play with Nash. I just hope the Suns pick one more mid-level talent with some of the money they saved with Amare. The penny-pinching owner is going to lose one of his best players and the least he could do is bring somebody to fill some of the gaps. He already lost Steve Kerr as the GM because he tried to cut his pay after one of the best seasons the Suns have had in a few years. Amare may or may not be worth the max, but you gotta pay him, period. He will get 100 over 5 years from New York and I wish him good luck. He is now saying Melo and Parker will join him in 2011. Interesting!
We are still waiting for the top 3 free-agents to make up their mind - LeBron, Wade and Bosh. Many teams have already visited Cleveland to court LeBron including the paper clips. Now it's time for LeBron to make up his mind. He has more talent in Chicago, but he still can make the most in Cleveland. So it will be interesting to see what he does. There are also several crazy scenarios involving Miami and Chicago where all 3 will end up in the same team. I don't think that will happen. I don't think it even makes sense for LeBron to join Wade. LeBron needs his own championship and can't be a co-winner with Wade. Bosh is a big guy and he can join either one of them to help out, but looks like he is more likely to join Wade may be in Miami. Toronto refuses to sign and trade him and I think that makes it interesting. All said and done, LeBron is the king of this free agency period and he will get this thing really moving when he makes his call. There is a lot of second and third level talent in this free agency including Carlon Boozer and Tracy McGrady that nobody is even talking about. I liked the Lakers picking up Steve Blake. Smart move.
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