NBA fans
 

I know there's the World Cup going on but the best player in basketball just jumped ship from the Cleveland Cavaliers to form a super team in Miami. Lebron James plus Dwayne Wade plus Chris Bosh, three guys who started for team USA on one team. It's eventually going to be the new dynasty.

Re: NBA fans
 

Bollocks.

LeBron is punk.

ESPN and Wilbon are his bitches.

Dwayne Wade is glass - and dynasty's are built - not bought.

That is all.

Re: NBA fans
 

The Cavs' majority owner Dan Gilbert's open letter posted on the team website:

http://tinyurl.com/24f3uw6

Mr. Gilbert claims that James quit on the team the past two playoff runs:

http://tinyurl.com/2dtjmat

I think this happening to Cleveland's, given sports history of rotten luck, of all places gets to me more riled up than say if Dwyane Wade left Miami. I've seen Lebron James play nearly each time they've played at the Phoenix Suns, and yes he is a great talent, but this is just a low-class thing.

Give me people like Steve Nash, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, Derrick Rose, Rajon Rondo, and Kobe Bryant (even though he's on LA, but he delivers time after time after time).

BTW, I'm a Suns fan and Amar'e Stoudemire leaving for the Knicks is a big punk move, too.

Jason

Re: NBA fans
 

via Deadspin - with naughty words.

http://deadspin.com/5581889/lebron-j...s-a-cocksucker

Re: NBA fans
 

i don't get it. is this an American thing? sports stars change teams. for whatever reasons. so what.

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I live in Wisconsin, but most of my family is in Ohio, including my grandma (nearly 80!) who lived about two blocks away from where Lebron grew up in Akron. I mean let's not forget the amount of sports heartbreak Cleveland has been through in the last 50 years. The only thing that comes close is the Bills losing 4 straight Super Bowls. This is just too much to take...look, they had thought that he would probably leave, but the way it was done with the one-hour TV special was so incredibly bush league that the people of Ohio probably will never forgive him. This is almost like what we went through with Favre (obviously very different situations, but the same sense of betrayal). The Cavs (and Cavs fans) gave him everything they possibly could. The team wasn't just Lebron + a bunch of no-talent losers the way the KG-era T'wolves were. And I honestly do feel like Lebron straight up quit on the team during the 2010 playoffs. No fire at all. He looked as though he expected to lose and couldn't wait to be out of the building.

I do find Miami puzzling; first of all, I don't think they'll necessarily be a favorite to beat the Lakers next year, because James/Wade/Bosh are going to log so many minutes it'll be crazy - they need a Derek Fisher type guy and they don't have one. Secondly, it begs the question, would MJ ever do something like this? Essentially you got the best player in the NBA following Bosh, who the media is making out to be some kind of supermegastar player, when he's really only a third-tier star; not even really on the level of Nash/Rose/Nowitzski. That's just unheard of. Chicago would have made a lot more sense. So would staying in Cleveland.

Personally I hoped the man would come to Milwaukee...I honestly feel like the Bucks + LeBron would trump the Heat right now!!

Re: NBA fans
 

Ummm, I can't really think of one sports star changing teams that was even remotely like this...

Reigning 2-time MVPs in their prime do not just change teams. This is basically unheard of. The last MVP to leave their team was Moses Malone nearly 30 years ago. And he certainly didn't request a one-hour special to do it. He had to know all along that Cleveland fans were the ones who cared most about him and would be the most disappointed if they weren't picked by a HUGE margin. Don't want to make the Favre comparison but at least he didn't request a fucking prime-time special.

Re: NBA fans
 

or you could say, 'at least he didn't put it on twitter'

new times, innit? why do you care so much? i guess i've seen lots of people the last 24hrs who only casually follow basketball getting their panties in a bunch of this and it just seems like artificial anger. remember when arenas and stadiums were named after the city or team? don't like lebron? don't watch games where he's playing or root against him. he donated every penny of the proceeds to the boys and girls club. he's got managers/agents etc. i doubt he personally came up with the idea of the tv show to announce but even if he did, big fucking deal.

Re: NBA fans
 

Whats wrong with twittering it? I'm not upset really but the people of Ohio are and have every right to be. In the end it's just James making a spectacle of himself, a blantant ego move that none of the players he's often compared to would even consider. You know the way ESPN is going to be about this, the Heat is going to get the Laker treatment now for the next 5-10 years, barf.

But discounting that, the more I think about his decision to join the Heat, the less sense it makes. It's okay to have two superstars on your team like Kobe and Shaq, but one has to be a center!! What do the Heat have...two forwards and a shooting guard, with no money leftover to sign a decent center? Has this model ever worked? Yes they can have the Jordan/Pippen thing going but LEBRON WOULD HAVE TO BE PIPPEN!

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Okay: more accurately, the reason why this is so despicable is because he essentially destroyed the Cavs and the fans of Cleveland - he made up his mind and did not even let his former team know until his one hour special, and by many accounts it looks like he had his mind made up weeks ago, even as he was saying things like "Cleveland is the frontrunner" on national TV. By waiting until July 8 he basically hung Cleveland out to dry since they had no idea whether they should persue one of the other big free agents. You know, the city he said he will always love. Now all the good free agents are locked up and the Cavs didn't even get a chance. Sure he has the right to do it but it's pretty damn classless and you know damn well that Jordan would never pull anything remotely like this.

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btw I don't see how you can see the boys and girls club thing as anything more than a PR move...

Re: NBA fans
 

Let him do what he wants.... i think there will be too many egos at the Heat now that he is there... may not work.. though that is a long shot.

As far as the Cleaveland coach is concerned, shame on him for reacting like that - he is the worst loser I have ever seen and no better than the fans who need to get on with it and stop relying on one player to be successful - shit happens

Re: NBA fans
 

Bill Simmons had a great article on this yesterday. Please refer to that.

PR move or not, he donated the money to a good spot.

Re: NBA fans
 

You're right; sports stars do change teams. But basketball is a different animal than football. Basketball teams invest highly in their star player by building teams around them. Teams have to be careful and tend to stay away from ego-driven sidekicks because it can cause a lot of tension in the greedy me-first world of NBA basketball. Having two of the top 5 players choose to sign with the same team at the same time is unheard of in the NBA, even worse adding in another quality player who was also a free agent. Many view this as selling out. I kind of like the fact there will be a real "villain" team in the NBA to take some of the thunder away from the Los Angeles Lakers.

Cleveland was a sports wasteland, a city used to losing. Lebron is a hometown kid who brought a ton of promise to the team and the city. They won a lot of games in the regular season, sold out their arena every night, and James often talked about how loyal he is as a person.

Here's where it gets tricky, though. For all the moves Cleveland made trying to get players to compete for the title, none of them ever panned out. They all wilted under the pressure of the playoff spotlight. Lebron was sick of watching superior teams squeeze the life out of his Cavs and move on to titles. He was sick of watching Kobe Bryant hoist trophies while he ran a one-man show in Cleveland. The Cavaliers have $49M in salaries tied up this year, not counting Lebron and Shaquille O'Neal (whom Lebron did not like much, anyway). If Lebron stayed, they would have been the same team that would have been run out in the playoffs by Boston or Orlando the next year, and the year after, etc.

Another wrinkle is the fact Lebron, Bosh, and Wade played for team USA starting back in 2006. With the Americans starting to lose tournaments in global competitions, Team USA realized they had to really recruit the best of the best to take back the crown. That led to recruiting younger players entering their prime, who then (wouldn't you know) got really close as friends after spending entire summers together. The wheels for this move were set in motion several years ago.

Lebron, though, has shown he is a pretty big wet-flapping douchebag by having this 1 hour show dedicated to his worship. He never did get to have the recruiting experience in high school because everyone knew he was just going to end up with whatever team won the NBA lottery after his senior year. I don't know if it was him or if this was more his management team but drawing this whole process out on television instead of behind the scenes only served to twist the knife into whatever teams he spurned.

The Knicks spent two years dumping players to try and get him. Chicago has been dumping salary (along with a couple of good players). New Jersey jettisoned players who were making money and endured a 12 win season for a shot at Lebron. What makes this worse is that this really seems pre-meditated from several years back. Dan Gilbert, Cleveland's owner, never had a shot.

So now Lebron is in Miami, a team with exactly 4 players on the roster. 3 of them are going to make about $20M per year, the 4th guy is going to make $900,000. Beyond that, they are essentially going to have to pay every other player they sign to minimum contracts.

It's going to be a very strange year in the NBA. It's great for Miami and those nights around the league when Miami is the visiting team but parity in the league was just shown the door. It's not a whole lot of fun when there are only 5 or 6 teams who are going to be any good.

Re: NBA fans
 

I assume you're talking about the owner...yeah the way he reacted is classless, but let me just say that Gilbert did pretty much everything he could to help out Lebron and literally saw his franchise value drop hundreds of millions overnight. You'd be upset too. "Stop relying on one player to be successful"...welcome to the NBA. That is how it works.

Re: NBA fans
 

One last thing: if that bit between Delonte West and Gloria James (Lebron's mom) is, in fact, true...I wouldn't blame Lebron one bit for leaving :)

http://cache1.bigcartel.com/product_...531322/300.jpg

Re: NBA fans
 

Wouldn't be so quick though cured; I can't think of a single championship team that was built this way. I wouldn't concede them the title over the Lakers just yet. The truth is that Wade cannot fulfill his full potential when he has to share balls with Lebron and vice versa. I still wonder what kind of center they are going to pick up. Obviously everyone's going to want to play there but if you can only offer a minimum contract you're not exactly going to get Shaquille O'Neal.

BLD - I thought the Simmons article was really good too. I pretty much agree with him on everything.

Re: NBA fans
 

I'm not conceding the title to the Lakers. It could be Boston, Orlando, Chicago. It's just LA is the current champion and they are bringing just about everyone back.

Guys I would not be surprised to see in a Miami uniform this year: Shaquille O'Neal, Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady. All of them are desperate for a ring, on the far back end of their careers, and want to win. It would be absolutely toxic to have all of them on the same team but there will be guys out there who sign at the minimum for one year and hope Miami extends them (since they can go over the cap on with their own players).

Lebron talked yesterday about not having to play as many minutes with so much talent around but he's in for a rude awakening. They aren't going to go out and annihilate teams with a roster of also-rans. They are going to be logging a lot of 4th quarter minutes.

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http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=6859

Basketball reference seems to think these three alone should be able to win a ridiculous amount of games even if their supporting cast sucks; I don't know if the stats they pulled for these three guys are really accurate since they were all accrued as the alpha guys on their respective teams, but the math currently does predict them as breaking the Bulls '96 record...

I guess for Lebron's sake this better be true - his public image is at an all-time low now, but regardless of what he pulls winning titles speaks above everything else.

Re: NBA fans
 

The 1996 record will not be broken by Miami, write that in stone.

they did pick up Mike Miller for 5 years/$30M so someone must have taken a pay cut for this to work.

Bill Simmons has the fallout here:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...simmons/100709

Re: NBA fans
 

That Bill Simmons article and the comments after answer Eikman's question - about "why the bother" very well.

I kinda figured Wilbon and Gray were going to be pussies - but god, that was the most weak-assed interviewing I have seen in a long time. To the extent that Wilbon in particular needs to hand in his man-card, his balls and any semblance of sports integrity - and go work on the Living Channel.

Deadspin says it well.... again.

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Das Kraken Orakle has spoken again!!!

Re: NBA fans
 

Bill Simmons prediction: Lebron James - 2014 - New Jersey Nets.

Video here.