After LeBron James did what every single person in Cleveland would do, given a chance, Cleveland fans, and "Majority Owner, Cleveland Cavaliers Dan Gilbert," are displaying emotions ranging from "
badly spelled obscenities on Twitter" to
"extraneously-quotation marked open letters written at an eighth grade level."
"Owner" "Dan" "Gil"bert wrote to Cleveland fans: "
this national TV special of his "decision" [is] unlike anything ever "witnessed" in the history of sports..." before going on to guarantee that Cleveland would win an NBA championship before LeBron does -- as an example to "
our children... and "who" we would want them to be."
(Yesterday, I mentioned that
the hyphen was out of favor with today's poets; clearly, the quotatation mark is the new hyphen, at least in "Cleveland.")
Leave aside, for the moment, that "Dan" Gilbert promised Cleveland that today -- the Day After The Announcement -- would be a "new day," new in the sense that
beginning today the Cavaliers are committed to winning a championship -- and leave aside the fact that the Cleveland fans' outrage is less-than-eloquent (Noted Sports Website
The Huffington Post is running the top Twitter comments; number 7 is "
What a f**king assclown! Way to humiliate ur hometown on national tv!! F**k u lebron James!!! go browns!, and what I like about that, besides the fact that either the fan or Huffington felt the need to censor
fuck but not
assclown, is the fact that you can see the rise and fall of emotions, as measured by exclamation points:
assclown, one point.
Fuck u lebron, THREE.
go browns, back to two -- indicating, maybe, the resignation with which a weary Cleveland again pins its hopes on the ever-beleaguered football franchise?)
Like Packers fans before them, and like other sports fans who fall in sports-love with a sports-figure, Cleveland fans are hypocrites. Or, to put it in a way that Clevelandians will understand:
You, and "Owner" Dan Gil"bert", are a bunch of f**king assclowns, faulting LeBron for something you'd do yourself.
Green Bay fans, you'll remember, were so upset at Brett Favre's desire not to be screwed over by a shortsighted Packers' management more intent on stockpiling money than on winning games that they burnt Favre in effigy -- doing so just moments before Favre burnt their defense in Lambeau. In doing so,
they showed their stupidity, and their hypocrisy -- because they'd have done what Favre did, and Clevelanders would have done what LeBron did.
All of you -- all of them -- all of
us -- would do
every single thing LeBron did, given a chance.He had an hourlong special on TV celebrating his ability to have an hourlong special on TV? He
"agonized" for weeks about where to go, and ultimately went for the most money? He left his hometown to go to a place that made a particular push for him, offered him tons of dough, and set it up to make themselves, on paper, favorites to win a championship?
You'd have done it, too.
You'd do all that in a second, and so would I, and pretending that we wouldn't -- or claiming that LeBron shouldn't, is hypocritical.
Assclown hypocritical.
I am in the forefront of saying that
athletes care too much about money -- caring about money long after it's meaningless, since there's no
meaningful difference between $10 million and $20 million and $100 million; but that's not to say that athletes can't still take
more money for doing the same thing -- if LeBron was offered $10 million to play basketball
here and $100 million to play basketball
there, human nature says that all other things being equal, he'll take the $100 million.
And all other things are
not equal -- which is my real point about free agency and what athletes should be looking at when they decide where to play. If $9 million is the same as $90 million -- and it is, and especially in LeBron's case the money was entirely irrelevant, because he is already too rich for words (
even words like assclown) and will only get richer, regardless of where he went; if LeBron went to play in a rec league in Topeka, his endorsements alone would last him 30 lifetimes -- if the money's the same, the jock has to look at other goals: winning championships. His (or her) legacy. The post-athletic career, if he or she wants one.
Many athletes don't do that; many jocks simply look at the money, and decide to go where the higher paycheck is. The road to athletic glory is littered with rich jocks who would have been rich anyway, but never ended up being
famous --
Larry Brown, anybody? -- because they chose money over legacy/championships/post-athletic career. Maybe they were happy with their money, but I'm guessing not: who wants to be remembered as an Oakland has-been worth $30 million when he could be remembered as a Cowboys' superstar worth $20 million? Larry Brown, but not me.
That's my point about free agents -- that I think they're stupid for taking the money and not thinking about other things. Based on that criteria, though -- that the money isn't the thing, always -- LeBron's
not stupid. I don't know the dollar amounts offered to him to go to Miami; I don't know if it's more or less than the Cavs offered him. I know the dollar amounts offered by either are irrelevant, and I suspect that it wasn't the money,
alone, that LeBron was thinking about.
Look at what Cleveland has done for its best-loved athlete since Bernie Kosar. Count up the ways in which the Cavaliers showed,
before The Announcement, that they were directing their
"focus, capital, knowledge and experience" at winning a championship. Here they are, in numerical order:
1. Signing LeBron James.
2. Um....
Google
Cavaliers free agent moves, and the number 3 result on the list is a 2009 article headlined "
Cleveland Cavaliers, Free Agency Wasteland." The biggest move the Cavs put on in recent years was signing a broken-down Shaq, castoff from a couple teams and better known these days for for
x-rated raps than exciting wins. Before that, in 2008, the Cavs were over the salary cap and couldn't get big-time free agents to help out LeBron. When the Lakers lost to Boston in the finals, they signed Ron Artest to help out, and beat the Celtics the next time the two met in the championship round. When Cle
veland lost in the playoffs, they... pointed out their great training facilities, and lost the next year, too.
Why should LeBron have stayed in Cleveland?
Loyalty? There's no loyalty in Cleveland. I understand that Clevelandites are feeling jilted and lashing out, wanting to stab LeBron with a fork because he "insulted" them -- but LeBron's not stabworthy, and calling him an
assclown shows that it wasn't
LeBron you loved, it was the
idea of LeBron -- parents don't call their daughters
assclowns when the daughters get married. Fathers don't call their sons
assclowns when the sons move out. Colleges don't call their students
assclowns when they graduate and go get jobs. But sports fans spew out vile soundbites whenever an athlete decides the grass really does look a little greener over there -- proving that sports fans are the jilted lover, more in love with the idea of the future and the comfort of the present than
in love with the person, because if you love someone you want what's best for them, and sometimes what's best for them is
not being with you. That's a hard pill to swallow -- especially if it means you might be further away from getting married or winning a championship than ever -- but grown-ups, and people who love people, can do it. They can say
I understand. I don't like the decision, but I understand.Cleveland fans aren't grown-ups, and they didn't love
LeBron. They loved that
LeBron might win Cleveland a title. If you love LeBron, you can still watch LeBron play high-caliber basketball -- higher-caliber basketball, now that he's got a team around him -- in Miami. But if, instead, you
loved that LeBron might win one for Cleveland, then you're mad today and twittering the word
assclown.
Or the word
hypocrit --
a word the twitterer applied to LeBron but which should be pointed more at Clevelanders, who are now faulting LeBron for wanting to win championships, and maybe for wanting to live in Miami. It's not LeBron's fault Miami is more attractive than Cleveland, anymore than it's my fault I'm more attractive than all the other guys Sweetie ever dated before marrying me. (Sweetie should've had an Announcement to jilt those guys; I'd have loved that.) It's
Cleveland's fault: They're the city that chose
not to be a glitzy entertainment and society mecca located on the ocean in fabulous weather. Miami boasts two Kardashians, and maybe they're not the good one, but that's still two more Kardashians than Cleveland ever had...and they're not trying.
More hypocritical, yet, is the fact that anyone in Cleveland would have made the choice LeBron did. Who out there can say that if offered a higher-paying job in a better location, a job that offers more of a chance for professional fulfillment and attaining one's goals, let alone a job that promises at least the chance of bumping into a Kardashian here and there, who can say that he or she would turn that job down?
None of you. All other things being equal,
we'd all go live in Miami and take that job. If a law firm called me up and said
You can do exactly what you're doing now, only you'll be in Miami, making more money, and you'll have a chance for more glory, by the way, I'd be on the plane before they could hang up the phone. (Well, I'd probably stop to call Sweetie and have her ship the kids, Fed-Ex; it's cheaper than paying carry-on fees.) And so would every Clevelandonian stuck in the city most famous for losing at sports and having burning rivers.
That's not to insult Cleveland; I'm sure there must be
something good about the city, but it's hard to say what it is, especially when the white-hot glare of Miami is overshadowing it. Regular girls are great and all, but it's hard to tell when they're standing next to Bridget Moynihan. (Notwithstanding that magazine cover above, I chose Bridget because,
Tom Brady, Bridget is
way hotter than Giselle.) Cleveland may have a great personality, but since when do guys in their 20s go for personality, anyway?
The point is, though, that Clevelandians are upset because LeBron left -- but they'd leave, too, given the chance. Cleveland would be packed with more moving vans than even Art Modell could imagine, if Miami made offers to all its residents:
Hey, Cavs fans: we'll take you
, too; come on down here, enjoy the sun, check out our Dolphins -- they win some, too -- and wave at the Kardashians. We'll pay you at least what you're getting paid now, so your life will be the same, only better. The resulting exodus to South Beach would put the former one led by a column of fire and smoke to shame.
So what are you so mad about, "Dan" Gilbert and "Cleveland fans?" LeBron did what you'd do-- and what could only be expected of him, given that not only was Cleveland's support of him halfhearted but also that Cleveland wasn't in love with
LeBron but with what
LeBron could bring them. LeBron may not have thought of any of this himself; his considerations may have amounted, in the end, to nothing more than "
Wow, that is a whopping big pile of money," but examined from the outside, his decision is justifiable: Cleveland was using him for its own ends, and LeBron used Cleveland to become the biggest free agent yet in NBA history. In doing so, each treated the other the way it deserved. And, in doing so, LeBron showed that he's human -- and Cleveland showed that it's populated by
hypocrits who hate LeBron for being human -- or, more likely, hate
themselves for not having the opportunities he's got, and so they lash out at him.
As for me, I'll continue not really paying attention to LeBron in Miami, the way I didn't really pay attention to him in Cleveland -- but when he does cross my mind, I'll be glad for him that he got a shot at something better than he had, and also, secretly, hoping that he'll show up as a guest star on that other Kardashian show.
Team: The Buffalo Bills.
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