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