James left without saying a word and his explanation a day later was more awkward still.“It’s hard for me to congratulate somebody after you just lose to them. I mean, I’m a winner. That’s not being a poor sport or anything like that,” he told reporters back at the team’s facility Sunday in Cleveland. “Somebody beat you up, you’re not going to congratulate them on beating you up.
“I’m a competitor,” he added. “That’s what I do. It don’t make sense to me to go up and shake somebody’s hand.”
The blogosphere then just opened up high hell on LeBron.
Adrian Wojnarowski on Yahoo! Sports on LeBron:
Nevertheless, James distanced himself in losing again, after a season in which he sold himself as all for one, and one for all. James had been an MVP until the very final moments of the basketball season, and then, he embarrassed himself and acted like a petulant kid. In a world where everyone in his life is too fearful or too dependent, LeBron James goes into the summer believing his own nonsense that he walked out of this season a winner.
(as a side note, I think he is probably the worst writer on Yahoo that I read because he covers a sport I love. I find his conclusions generally trite, uninsightful, and generally taking the self-righteous route whenever possible. This is in contrast to, say, Michael Silver, who's an arrogant son-of-a-gun, but at least he's good at this writing business.)
John Henderson at the Denver Post went as far as to say,
I will never again look at a LeBron James commercial and smile. He's no longer funny. He's no longer the face of the league. His news conference no-show after the Cavaliers' elimination loss represented another megastar who only wants the center stage, fame and ensuing coin when he is seen in the best light.
This nation's sports fans made you the corporate entity that you are, LeBron. They have a right to know what went wrong. Sit down and take the heat. Now it's too late. So get out of our sight.
This one I want to reply to in particular. And so yes, the nation's sports fans may have supported LeBron, but they're also the reason why people like John Henderson have a job. It's more than a little disingenuous to pretend that you're fighting for people's right to know when what you're really looking for is your meal ticket to tell you whether or not he's leaving Cleveland, whether or not he thinks Mo Williams is the Pippen to his Jordan after a string of terrible performances, whether or not he thinks Danny Ferry is actually doing a good job as GM, because you, as do the rest of us, know that if you don't get him with this while he's vulnerable and lashing out, all you're going to get the next day are the same PC quotes that praises everyone while revealing very little. As much as I am interested in this juicy gossip, I really do believe that trying to get sensational quotes from a guy who just saw his season go down the toilet is little more than bush league yellow journalism. The best journalists get their materials by building trust, not by exploiting vulnerabilities. You might say that no one else acted like LeBron did, and perhaps you would have an argument that his teammates were better sports than he, but I am not ready to just trash on LeBron for getting caught up on the emotions of a high stakes game, after he had put forth a superhuman performance in the series, for being some sort of petulant child that we need to now shun like those nonbelievers of Candy Mountain.
I think some journalists, such as Peter Vescey, do understand this point: at some level, LeBron is no different from the rest of us who lose a game, who lose their cool, who want to just walk away for a bit before coming back and shaking hands with the team that kicked their ass. I've definitely felt that way (although the IM post-game shake hands routine sort of has had that ingrained into me as habit, if nothing else)
However, as a final word, instead of someone telling us to give LeBron a break, I offer this from Mike Wilbon:
If boxers, after getting pummeled by an opponent, can get off the canvas and shake a man's hand, then so can a basketball player, no matter how famous. James, like so many others before him, is going to have to grow accustomed to crushing losses. Only the great Bill Russell, for the most part, avoided them. Wilt lost, Kareem lost, Magic and Bird lost, Jordan lost. But as far as I know, they maintained a level of sportsmanship that isn't optional.
The NBA has been in good hands the last couple of seasons with LeBron, young as he is (24), sharing the responsibility of leadership with Kobe Bryant. And from the way LeBron has conducted himself day-in, day-out, I suspect he'll find a way to make amends for what he didn't do Saturday night in Orlando, which begins with understanding why he was wrong not to shake hands and can never let it happen again. It might take a great player to lead his team to the NBA Finals, which LeBron has already done once. But it takes a responsible leader to consistently play at the championship level. And LeBron James has to know, from this point forward, it's hard to do one without being the other.
And maybe that might be the best response, far better than the screaming flamers in the blogs linked farther above. We're telling LeBron that, if nothing else, we're holding him to a higher standard that we even hold ourselves on the pickup court, even knowing that he's playing for far greater stakes in far greater arenas, that to be a legend, he has to be legendary in every aspect of the game, from on the court, to off of it.
Thoughts? Comments?
No comments:
Post a Comment