Archrivals

Archrivals
I don’t know it he deserves full credit for it, but Bill Simmons is largely responsible for this ridiculous notion that LeBron James and Dwyane Wade were archrivals prior to their becoming teammates. In his most recent column, he wrote of Wade, “we’ll remember him forever as an evil genius who somehow convinced his biggest archrival to move to HIS city, play for HIS team, and become HIS sidekick.” Last November, it was, “Don’t forget that Wade convinced his biggest rival—a two-time MVP, the best player alive—to turn his back on his hometown and play for Dwyane Wade’s Miami Heat.” Even before The Decision, there was this passage: “Any super-competitive person would rather beat Dwyane Wade than play with him. Don’t you want to find the Ali to your Frazier and have that rival pull the greatness out of you?” Simmons is firmly entrenched in the Wade and James are rivals camp. And others in the media and American public have bought in. I’m on the outside wondering where this idea came from.

The concept of Wade and LeBron as rivals baffles me. Before becoming teammates this past offseason, each of them had spent 7 years in the league. Sure, they were from the same draft class, but Wade was a virtual afterthought at the top of the draft. LeBron & Carmelo—that was the rivalry (and I do find it ironic that LeBron and Wade now play with 3rd wheel Chris Bosh since you could say Wade was the Chris Bosh of the 2003 draft, the 3rd best wing player available, the one who wasn’t supposed to be quite as good as the other, more desired two).

There is nothing in Wade & LeBron’s past to suggest that a rivalry between them is anything other than a media creation. Despite playing in the same conference, not once did they ever face each other in the playoffs. Only once prior to this year did both make it out of the first round during the same postseason, and that was 2006, the first year LeBron took the Cavs into the playoffs. Cleveland and Miami were never contenders in the same seasons. Check it out:

• 2004—Miami makes second round, Cleveland no playoffs
  
• 2005—Miami makes conference finals, Cleveland no playoffs
  
• 2006—Miami wins championship, Cleveland makes second round
  
• 2007—Miami out in first round, Cleveland makes Finals
  
• 2008—Miami no playoffs, Cleveland makes second round
  
• 2009—Miami out in first round, Cleveland makes conference finals
  
• 2010—Miami out in first round, Cleveland makes second round

If you look closely, you’ll notice that the Heat did not get past the first round of the playoffs between 2006 and this year. In the four seasons between winning the championship and LeBron joining the team, Miami won exactly four playoff games. Four playoff wins in four seasons, and Dwyane Wade was LeBron James’ biggest rival? Come on, man. LeBron’s biggest rivals were and are Kobe Bryant and the Celtics’ Big 3. Isiah Thomas and Mark Aguirre were bigger rivals than LeBron and Wade.

Like I said, media creation, and the public continues to buy it.

With a Little Help from His Friends

I wonder what, if any, connection LeBron James has to his peers. When I say “peer,” I’m not referring to Dwyane Wade or Kobe Bryant or any other NBA superstar. By my count, LeBron only had 3 peers among “active” American athletes: Venus Williams, Serena Williams, and Tiger Woods. Among the not active, but living, I see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Whether it was a media creation, his own doing, or some combination thereof, LeBron James entered the NBA with an unenviable expectation. For him, anything less than becoming the best player in this history of the game would be viewed by many as a disappointment. Although it was a very different time when he entered the league, Kareem can relate to those expectations. Tiger can, too.

To a somewhat lesser degree, the Williams Sisters entered the professional tennis ranks with a need to be the greatest. While neither was expected to be great, greatness was required of both of them. Media hatred and disdain for their father was high. Both Venus and Serena faced “who do they think they are?” scrutiny. In a way, LeBron’s situation is most similar to their plight, especially Venus’. In 1999, Venus sat in the stands as the less heralded Serena won the family’s first Grand Slam championship. I remember watching her that day and wondering if she would ever recover, if she would ever become a great champion.

In the years that followed Serena’s breakthrough at the US Open, Venus proved that she could. I think it would be very difficult to overstate the amount of mental fortitude and self-confidence it took for Venus to become the world’s #1 player just a little more than a year later.

Venus’ September 1999 is where LeBron finds himself right now. I wonder if they’re friends. I wonder if they talk.

There are only a few who know the weight of the burden on his shoulders. I hope one or some of them are there to share the load.

History Remembers

On June 20, 2006, the Heat and Mavericks played Game 6 of the NBA Finals. The Heat led 3 games to 2, and with 10 seconds left in the game, led 95-92. Dwyane Wade was fouled and went to the line for two free throws. Making either of the pair would have given Miami a four-point lead and secured the championship. Wade missed them both. Fortunately for him, Jason Terry missed a three-pointer that could have tied the game. Still, history remembers Dwyane Wade being clutch throughout the 2006 Finals. They do not remember his Game 6 free throws. History will not remember his Game 4 free throws. Because of LeBron James, no one will lump Dwyane Wade in with Nick Anderson and Derrick Rose—and, boy, has history forgotten all about Chris Douglas-Roberts; Rose actually made one his foul shots.

History will remember Game 4 as the defining moment of LeBron James' career. Unless he has a legendary Michael Jordan in Game 6 of the 1998 Finals, there is no way of getting around that now. Where LeBron now stands is a place where it will no longer be enough to just have a monster game. He needs to have an all-time great game AND hit the winning basket in Game 5 or Game 7 (doing it in Game 6 will only make the doubters say that he is just a front-runner and that he would never have been in position for his Game 6 heroics without Wade’s brilliant leadership and clutch play). Otherwise, Game 4 will live forever.

History has a way of remembering things in a way in which they did not actually occur. History remembers Raghib Ismail as the 1990 Heisman winner. History remembers Mike Jones' tackle of Kevin Dyson as a play that kept the Titans from winning the Super Bowl. History remembers Hakeem Olajuwon dominating Shaquille O'Neal in the 1995 Finals. History remembers Kobe as a monster throughout the 2001 playoffs. History remembers Ronald Reagan bringing the hostages home. History remembers the stimulus & bailout as Obama's ideas. History remembers the Tea Party forming after Obama's started implementing his policies. None of these events happened exactly that way. Ty Detmer undeservedly won that Heisman Trophy. A Titan touchdown and extra point would only have tied Super Bowl XXXIV. Olajuwon and O’Neal played very evenly in 1995. Kobe dominated the Spurs, who were missing the player they had acquired specifically to guard him, but was up and down during the other series. Jimmy Carter had negotiated the hostages’ release, but George H. W. Bush held it up to help Reagan win the election. The stimulus & bailout plans began under George W. Bush. The Tea Party protests, while not fully formalized, began before Obama took office.

History has already been unkind to LeBron James.

• Before The Decision, people said he and Wade wouldn’t play together because their egos wouldn’t allow them to share the spotlight—history says he went to Miami so he could be a “Robin.”
  
• When he came out of high school, everyone said his skillset was the closest we’ve seen to Magic Johnson—history says he doesn’t have Michael Jordan’s killer instinct.
  
• In Game 2, pundits proclaimed that Miami lost because LeBron started playing “hero ball”—history says that he is a lesser player for deferring to the hot hand during the Game 3 victory.

I expect history will remember Greg Doyel's question as coming post-Game 4. It seems more timely, more poetic that way. Last night, LeBron James was the portrait of a superstar athlete at his absolute big-stage worst—at least, that is the perception. The Game 4 box score and the image of LeBron watching Mike Miller’s errant last-second shot will live on. In that fashion, history will remember Game 4 as the defining moment of LeBron James' career.

I wonder…if Wilt Chamberlain was still alive, would he reach out to LeBron today? He knows what it’s like. Chamberlain played on 2 NBA champions, one which had the best record in league history until 1996 and another which, through my childhood, was considered the best single season team ever. Still, he’s viewed as a loser and underachiever. Bill Simmons wrote a 700+ book that seems like nothing more than a literary way of taking potshots at Wilt and Kareem.

I hope LeBron has realized that he will never win in the eyes of the general public. If/When he comes to that realization, life should get a lot easier for him.

Runaway Slave

Did Jesse Jackson go too far in saying that Gilbert viewed LeBron as a “runaway slave?” Not at all. That’s exactly what I thought nearly twenty-four hours before Reverend Jackson said anything. How dare he turn us down? After all we did for him? Who does he think he is?

Fans complain that it’s only about money to the players, but the owners love it that way. As long as free agents go to the highest bidder, the owners still maintain a decent level of control. “If you pay him, he will come,” if you will. Gilbert was allowed to offer LeBron more money than any other owner, yet James still walked away. Gilbert could not deal with that. He had to have asked himself, “What more does he want?” Clearly, LeBron James wanted much more than just Cleveland’s dollars. Dan Gilbert was unable to buy LeBron off. Essentially, Gilbert offered the player the best he could give, and LeBron still chose to go elsewhere. Gilbert’s best was not good enough, and that, more than anything else, is what set him off.

Gilbert is delusional with power. Once the season was over, LeBron was no longer a Cavalier. Sure, he was technically under contract until July 1. But let’s be real here; LeBron became a free agent the moment the Celtics eliminated the Cavs in the second round of the playoffs. Yet in an interview, Gilbert cited LeBron not meeting with a prospective head coach as one of the things the Cavaliers “let him get away with.” How exactly did Gilbert let LeBron get away with anything when he was no longer part of the team, meaning no longer under his employ? That’s another example of entitlement. “Let him get away with?” Get out of here. If that’s not a statement of ownership, I don’t know what is.

Some people called Gilbert’s rant a case of sour grapes. Sure, that’s part of it. It was also a classic case of being upset that someone had the nerve to turn him down. The rich and powerful are not used to being turned down. They are used to people holding hands out willing to accept whatever scraps they are lucky to be offered. Like so many in the world, Dan Gilbert could not accept being told no.

If you’re one of those people who has a problem with Jackson’s use of the word “slavery,” think about this: if the statement was made in reference to a White player, would you have been upset? When that word is brought up in America, people automatically think in terms of Black & White. This is a shame, and it’s something of which we are all guilty. We are so conditioned to think Black people when we hear the word slavery, but any type of person can be a slave. The fact that everyone jumped took Gilbert being described as a slave owner as the equivalent of him being called a racist is another tragic effect of this country’s legacy of racism. Gilbert’s words exemplified feelings of ownership. It doesn’t have to be about color; it’s about one man trying to exert power over another—but you and I both know, this has a lot to do with color.

But it’s not just Dan Gilbert. It’s everyone else, too. I know it when I see it.

When I was a senior in high school, I applied to about twenty colleges. Among those twenty was an application I sent to Harvard. As part of the application process, I agreed to an interview. One Sunday afternoon in late Winter, my father drove me up to Trenton to my interviewers’ house. They were a married couple in their early-to-mid fifties. They were both Harvard alumni. And they were both psychiatrists. Harvard accepted me, but due to a number of factors, I decided not to accept. When they received word that I had decided to attend a different school, the man and woman who had interviewed me sent me a letter telling me to let them know if I was dealing with any emotional issues.

Even at the age of seventeen, I knew the deal. It was Harvard arrogance. These two people could not believe that I had the nerve to refuse admission to their prestigious university. No guy in his right mind would turn down Harvard, so obviously something must have been wrong with me. My decision could not possibly have been the result of sound reasoning and decision making.

As I see it, this was the case with Dan Gilbert and Cavalier fans’ hurt feelings regarding LeBron James’ decision to leave the Cavaliers. Because he grew up in Akron, the fans in Ohio feel as though they’ve raised LeBron from birth. Never mind that those people had nothing to do with his development as a man or basketball player. Never mind that ninety percent of them never saw LeBron play one game in high school. They’ve cheered for him his whole life and helped him become the player he is (yeah right), so they feel entitled to his loyalty. They gave him their adoration and cheers, and for that, they feel, LeBron James owes it to them to spend the rest of his career in Cleveland.

Fans are fanatical. We expect this kind of irrationality from them. The team’s owner is a different story. LeBron was Dan Gilbert’s golden goose. Whatever millions LeBron earned from his contract with the team, he earned ten times that amount for Gilbert. In return, the owner catered to the player’s every whim…except providing him with a championship level supporting cast. Now that LeBron is gone, Gilbert feels left out in the cold. For all the money he spent on him, Gilbert feels entitled to James’ services. Entitled. That’s the only way to describe the language of the letter Gilbert wrote to Cavalier fans in the wake of LeBron’s leaving.

Furthermore, the rage expressed by fans toward James implies that they feel he should have never left Cleveland. As Henry Abbott wrote on ESPN.com ( http://es.pn/crHVmj ), these people seem to have an issue with free agency in general. Damn those players for having the right to play where they want to play.

What makes the bull’s eye on LeBron’s back so much larger than any other free agent I can remember is that he did not leave for more money. He left, in part, to play ball with his friends. Both owners and fans dislike this. LeBron took control of his situation. He did not let the desires and priorities of other people guide his choice. A friend of mine often quotes an old classmate of his: “Once you have enough money, going to work every day has to be about enjoying your job.” LeBron’s decision was to play with his friends on a team that has a chance to win championships. He did not take the most money. He did not choose to stay with the comfort of the status quo. No, he chose the path he wanted. I applaud the man for having the self-confidence and self-assuredness to follow his own mind. In Abbott’s column, the writer references a column by Ken Berger, who quotes an anonymous NBA executive as saying, “It’s an incestuous, friend-ridden business.” The statement was made in reference to players discussing their futures—and desires to play with each other—among themselves. Friend-ridden? Yeah, I think that says it all.

Ownership and, therefore, slavery are not about racism, per se. They are about control. Dan Gilbert, and anyone who is upset with LeBron, are expressing their frustrations that a young man dared to take control over his own life. I even heard one person say that he would have preferred to see LeBron stay in Cleveland and become a Charles Barkley-like player who never won a championship than to see him win one in Miami. See, everyone all over America is talking about what they wanted him to do or what they think he should have done. They talk about what he did to the people of Cleveland. As Jesse Jackson said, “LeBron honored his contract.” That’s right. He honored his contract. Fans complain all the time about players trying to renegotiate their contracts before they run out. LeBron James did not. He waited until his contract expired and then sought a new one, where he wanted and with whom he wanted. He followed the protocol and still draws ire. A Black man can’t win for losing, can he? Fuck yall.

The Chosen One

One of the recurring themes of Richard Russo’s Empire Falls is the idea that one must take advantages of opportunities when they are presented or else life gets in the way—life has a way of killing dreams before they ever get started. More than once, we are told that Miles Roby, the protagonist, makes his mother, Grace, furious because he drops out of college to care for her while she is terminally ill. Grace is emphatic about her desire for Miles to escape the small, formerly industry-filled succubus of a town in which he grew up; Grace wants Miles to get out, live life, and find happiness. He has dreams, and she is afraid that by staying and caring for her, Miles will lose his chance to fulfill them. She tells him that choosing to stay will get him trapped in the town forever, and that he will never get another chance to escape. The desire of the novel’s antagonist is to keep Miles from leaving home and chasing any of his dreams.

Who can’t relate to that story? Only a bad parent wants for his/her child to grow up and never leave home. Only the most selfish of parents want to keep their children from living out their dreams.

Similarly, it is only the bad and selfishness in humanity that allows people to be upset at LeBron James for leaving Cleveland. I’ve heard a few people say they aren’t upset that James left, but rather by how he left. These people are just ignorant to the reality that brought about the one-hour ESPN special that occurred last Thursday night in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Do you remember how hard it was to leave home the first time? It can be a frightening convergence of excitement, sadness, fear, and melancholy. It is an emotional event. Only in rare circumstances can it be called easy.

Have you not yet left home? Do you know someone who has never left? As each day passes by, it gets much more difficult to make yourself walk out the door. It is very much like trying to quit smoking. Or ending a bad relationship. Let’s ride with that metaphor for a minute. Who hasn’t been in a bad relationship? Sometimes they are easy to end. Others, not so much. We’ve all known that person who was in a situation everyone knew was damaging. Yet, that person stays. And stays. And eventually, that bad relationship just becomes part of who that person is. That relationship becomes his/her identity. We don’t know that person outside of it. If only he had gotten out of it early, we wish. She should have left him months ago, we lament.

Well, that’s what LeBron did. He got out. The Cavaliers were a bad situation for him. Seven years was long enough for us to see that team management could not build a team that was going to win a championship with him. At the end of each postseason, though, all he hears is how Jordan would have won with that roster. That franchise—more specifically, that city—could not attract high quality free agents. Really, how many of you would choose Cleveland when more attractive destinations are on the table? As far as basketball goes, Cleveland was a losing proposition for LeBron. Why wouldn’t he leave?

Cavalier owner Dan Gilbert said to Sports Illustrated’s Ian Thomsen, “For him, I think he does not like that burden, that pressure…” To quote Thomsen: “Now he wonders if the burden of leading his hometown franchise was too much to ask of James.” Of course it was. The man was a boy when he was drafted first overall by his hometown team. From the moment the Cavaliers won the draft lottery in 2003, the burden placed upon James was to (a) revitalize Cleveland’s economy, (b) stimulate the downtown area around the arena, (c) resurrect interest in the failing basketball team, (d) lead the Cavs to NBA championships, and (e) be the bright and shining face of Cleveland for the whole world to see. That is a lot to ask of anyone, especially a teenager. To his credit, LeBron embraced it all, though.

As the years went by and the playoff losses mounted, it had to wear on him. Optimistic as he may have been three years ago, the past two seasons had to have taught him the reality. His team’s management wasn’t doing a good enough job of building a champion. He had to wonder if they ever would.

After Game 4 of the Celtics series, I believe he knew his chances to win in Cleveland were over. Do you realize how heartbreaking that had to be? I do not at all excuse his listless performance in Game 5, but I most definitely understand it. He had to be asking himself, “What more can I do?”

Meanwhile, the city put together a video begging him to stay. For me, that would have been the final straw. At 25 years old, could I have forced myself to remain in a situation that led me to lose at my job with little to no hope for winning while being held responsible for the economic fortunes of so many people?

LeBron wants to become a global icon. How exactly was Cleveland helping him achieve that goal?

He had to go. If he didn’t leave now, when was he going to? In 2013, when he was 28 and even more firmly entrenched in the community? He never got to leave the area. Not for college, like Derrick Rose. Not for a stint in the minor leagues like Joe Mauer. If LeBron James did not walk away from Cleveland in the summer of 2010, he was never going to leave. Never. You know I’m right.

The decision to leave Cleveland, I imagine, was one of the most difficult of his life. Frankly, I did not think he would have the balls to go through with it. That is why I always thought he would go back to the Cavs. I applaud him for joining the Heat. I have a lot more respect for him now than I did this time a week ago.

Once he made that decision, he had to deliver the news in a cold, calculated manner. There could be no press conference in Cleveland or Akron. That could have made it impossible for him to walk away. Just as Miles’ mother told him to stay at school and not come visit her, I would have advised LeBron to make his announcement as far away from Ohio as possible. The smallest measure of emotion may have been too much for LeBron for him to allow himself to go through with leaving. He knew he was creating ill will. But he had to do it. That slight moment of emotion when the fans burned his jersey looked like a slip-up to me. He expected it to be bad. He had practiced his stone face. But when the moment arrived, he lost control for the briefest of moments. It meant something to him. If that event took place in Ohio, I don’t believe for a moment he could have spoken any team’s name other than Cleveland. He did what he had to do to preserve his dream for his life.

By choosing Greenwich, Connecticut, LeBron made a statement. Greenwich has the highest per capita income of any American city with at least 50,000 residents. LeBron had given his all to Cleveland, but it was time for him to move on to bigger and better things.

Maybe people are upset because they know they are neither bigger nor better. Perhaps they are just jealous that he was able to get out and chase his dreams while they never had the opportunity. Do these people really feel justified in trying the lock a young man into a bad situation just because he happened to grow up there? How un-American is that?

Like many of us, Miles Roby was never able to live the life he wanted. LeBron James has the chance. I know I’m rooting for him.