Lifestyle > Sports & Entertainment
I wish I wrote this... LeBron hardly a king
Bch:
You cant blame ppl for upgrading
Lebrons tired of playing with a bunch of community college players trying to compete for a championship... he's even leaving 30 million on the table in order to go compete for a championship.
7even:
LOL @ people acting as if Kobe was any different than LeBron.
When he was drafted he demanded a trade to the Lakers.
He had Shaq in his prime there.
When the Lakers sucked he demanded to be traded.
He got Gasol for Kwame and Crittenton.
James stuck with a shit coach and shit GM in a boring city for 7 years, and now you torch him for joining a talented team? hahaha get over yourself, I know you're depressed by always getting owned by James for the next 4 Finals, but still, you need to accept that it was a logical move from him
Halu Sination:
--- Quote from: 7even on July 09, 2010, 02:51:28 AM ---LOL @ people acting as if Kobe was any different than LeBron.
When he was drafted he demanded a trade to the Lakers.
He had Shaq in his prime there.
--- End quote ---
The hell? No he didnt. First of all, I don't even care for these Kobe arguments, but Shaq didn't even get signed until AFTER the draft, lol. Secondly, it was Jerry West who conned the dumbass Hornets into sending Kobe to LA, you think Kobe WANTED to play on a team, filled with a bunch of veteran All-Stars (thus limiting his playing time), where he would have to be a back-up to Eddie Jones? Taking away the glamor of LA, does that honestly sound like something that somebody with a personality of Kobe's would remotely be interested in doing?
--- Quote ---When the Lakers sucked he demanded to be traded.
He got Gasol for Kwame and Crittenton.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, and Kobe got GRILLED for that. But that said... Kobe, aka the man who already had a ring, wanted to be traded to a young team that had no clear-cut leader (Bulls) where he would clearly still be captain. Now I personally always thought that was a punk-ass move, and if we did trade him, I probably would've never cared about him again. But at least I would have respected the killer instinct and obsession to define his own legacy as a leader. Now if Kobe ever asked to be traded to Dwyane Wade's Miami Heat after they had already signed another All-Star? I would have fucking laughed at Kobe, regardless of how many rings he won out there, just for reverting into someone else's bitch. Like I said, it doesn't matter who's the best player on that team, we all know its Wade's team and the ball will be going in his hands when the game is on the line.
--- Quote ---James stuck with a shit coach and shit GM in a boring city for 7 years, and now you torch him for joining a talented team? hahaha get over yourself, I know you're depressed by always getting owned by James for the next 4 Finals, but still, you need to accept that it was a logical move from him
--- End quote ---
I'll agree with you here, though. I could care less that he's leaving Cleveland, I'm actually cracking the fuck up. This shit is amusing to me, LeBron just made the league that much more interesting for yall. People wanted a reason to hate LeBron, now they're getting that reason on a silver platter. But just for your information, until LeBron actually wins a ring, they're not going to be hating on him for making a team dominant, they're hating on him for the fact that he was supposed to be "The Chosen One" and now "chose" to become someone else's sidekick.
Watch any of those videos on NBA.com or ESPN.com. You think those analysts are "afraid" of Miami? Why would they be? None of them are affiliated with any teams, they just get paid to report. So why are they saying the exact same disappointment that people at this board are saying? Just some food for thought.
M Dogg™:
I wish I wrote this too...
LeBron is now the king of what, exactly?
By JIM LITKE, AP Sports Columnist
Fri Jul 9, 12:07 am ET
The King?
Of what, exactly?
Hype? Wasting time? Stacking the deck?
Check, check and double-check.
So LeBron James is going to Miami. Man, did he ever pick the right place to win. Just don't forget why people say to be careful what you wish for.
Because when James finally does win it all, chances are good he will be as much a follower as a leader, a bigger, better, badder version of Scottie Pippen, another prince who collected a fistful of rings yet was never really cut out to be king.
He could do worse, of course. The shame is James could have done better.
A real king would have dug in his heels in Cleveland and redoubled his effort to patch the cracks in the foundation of a franchise that's already spent more than seven seasons and hundreds of millions trying to build him a throne. That's what Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant did. Maybe even give the Cavs a hometown discount, taking less money than he was worth to free up cap space down the road, the way Tim Duncan did.
Not LeBron.
He's lighting out for South Beach to hang with superfriends Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, while the rest of us recover from an hour-long infomercial that was conceived and choreographed by his advisers, then aided and abetted by ESPN. The announcement was expected to draw in audiences rivaling Tiger Woods' apology and the O.J. verdict — the two biggest non-sports sports stories ever. And just like those two, James is probably the only guy coming out of it who actually believed what he was saying.
Even the kids from the local Boys & Girls Club stuck in the background as props — who would have guessed that wealthy Greenwich, Conn., even had a chapter? — knew that just because James has a tattoo that says "Loyalty" doesn't make it so.
The most telling moment came when he was asked whether it would have been "sweeter" winning a championship in Cleveland, just down the interstate from Akron, the town James grew up in.
"I think championships are championships, and you can't look at it as saying, 'Well, if I would have did it somewhere else, it would have been sweeter,'" he replied. "Because, I mean, it's a championship. A lot of people don't get there.
"When you get to that point and you win a championship, you can't say, 'Wow, I wish I would have did it somewhere else.' That makes no sense to me, because you put a lot of hard work into it to get to that point and I have not got there yet.
"But I'm going to do everything in my power," he added, "to lead that Miami franchise to a second one."
If nothing about the announcement surprised Wade, that last part should qualify as news. He'd never admit viewing Bosh and even James as sidekicks — officially they're equals, for the moment anyway — but it's telling that they wound up coming to him. Plus, Wade was the man in Miami when the Heat won their first title, although he had plenty of help from Shaquille O'Neal.
Yet that arrangement worked precisely because Shaq had already won three championships in Los Angeles. Deferring to Wade at crunch time was not only smart — the kid was just hitting his stride — it made Shaq look like an even bigger man. Contrast that with James, who brings the same outsized ego but zero championships to the table. There will never be enough credit to go around.
Russian billionaire and new Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov may not be an NBA insider yet, but he already knows how the game is played off the court. Getting in what is among the first of a thousand expected digs at the move, he predicted even before the announcement that joining the bona fide All-Stars awaiting James in Miami would "diminish his brand."
Orlando Magic coach Stan Van Gundy was even more pointed.
"Come on, an hour long? OK, it takes 15 seconds to say, 'I've decided to stay in Cleveland.' But we've got another 59 minutes and 45 seconds to, what, promote LeBron James? As if," Van Gundy told the local newspaper, "we don't do that enough"
Frankly, that's about all anybody remotely connected to the NBA did for the last two years. Attention hound that he's become, James milked every last drop. He wore a New York Yankees hat to a playoff game against the Indians in Cleveland and a Dallas Cowboys cap to a Browns' season opener.
James said that he'll always consider Akron home, which is convenient, since he also has it's area code, 330, tattooed on another part of his hide. But outside his house, he's likely to be viewed with the same kind of disdain that northeast Ohioans reserved for Art Modell, the NFL owner who ripped the Browns franchise out of Cleveland and ran all the way to Baltimore with it.
"You simply don't deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal," Cavs owner Dan Gilbert said in an open letter to fans on the team's website. He went on to guarantee the Cavaliers would win a championship before James did: "You can take it to the bank."
Maybe it hurts more because James is one of their own, maybe the best athlete most of them will ever see, and now even he doesn't want to be there.
Some king he turned out to be.
___
Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke@ap.org
theremedy360:
LMAO @ alll the Cavs fans crying over this shit, and all the sympathy they're being given by the media. Man up you fucking pussies. Yeah it sucks that LeBron left his home town,but they sure as hell didn't get their franchise STOLEN by a market that's worse than theirs. The NBA and the media fuckin disgust me.
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