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.
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