Okay, now that my fury at Lebron has subsided, here are a few ideas I've had since the whole "announcement" spectacle:
1. As the details of Dan Gilbert's offer are disclosed, I'm thinking that Gilbert really got owned on this one. He did offer LeBron $15 million more than Lebron took in Orlando. However, the first thing I thought when I saw that was that Gilbert was obviously trying to outbid all other parties, but not go overboard.
Lebron, I am guessing, wanted them to go overboard. League rules say you can play a home-town free-agent up to $30 million a year. Lebron was worth that much and more because he puts butts in the seats, sells jerseys and generates revenue in every conceivable way. Not just for himself and his team, but for the city.
Now, $15 million, to a guy like Lebron isn't the same as it is to a person like you and me. It's just a way of keeping score. Lebron is a kid from the bad parts of Akron who had more money than he could ever personally spend on the day he graduated from High School.
$15 million? It's just a number. In my opinion, the number he wanted was something along the lines of a 4 or 5 year contract at $120 million.
When he didn't get it, he probably thought, "well... heck, if that's all they're offerring, I can get almost the same money in Miami and win championships."
No, it doesn't make sense to you or me. If we had a chance to make 10% more at our jobs, that would be a lot of money. But money doesn't mean the same thing to Lebron. He has enough money that he and everyone he knows never has to work another day in their lives.
It's a method of keeping score. Gilbert gave him an unimpressive score.
2. I think this shows us an insight into Lebron's personality. He aspires to be "the greatest, ever", but no decision could possibly have shown how far he is from that title. He's not even close. This decision, more than anything, says, "I can't handle the pressure. I'm not the go-to guy. I'm not the guy who, when the game, or the series or the championship is on the line, wants the ball. Give me somebody else who can bear the load with me."
If he wanted to build his legacy, he would have taken the contract in Cleveland. The fact that he accepted the best, though not an exhorbitant contract would have spoken to his humility and lack of greed. And once he won a championship or two, he would be barking down Jordan's legacy. Jordan? In Chicago? Had competent bit players, but seriously, Scottie Pippen is perhaps the most overrated player in NBA history.
Lebron, though unselfish and obviously one of the most talented players in the league, was never able to make a Scottie Pippen out of the members of his supporting cast. And he had a supporting cast that consisted of 3 or 4 other all-stars for most of his later years in Cleveland.
3. Lebron would have, I think, chosen differently if he had been managed by competent management. However, he is managed by Maverick Carter, who is a childhood acquaintance. It's like those conversations you had when you were in your teens and early 20s. "We should start a company. And bob is good with numbers, so he can be CFO."
The difference here is that the teenager involved was a multi-million dollar business the moment he graduated High School. Maverick Carter is a two time college dropout who saw his meal ticket, and talked his friend into giving him management fees.
Lebron is managed by a dumbass. Which, frankly, makes Lebron a dumbass in my book. A smart man would have let professionals handle this.
4. In a wierd way, this whole effort speaks to Lebron's loyalty, not his disloyalty. Lebron had a terrible childhood by most accounts. His mom pretty much defines the word "shiftless" and it sounds like Lebron lived in a lot of places, just one step ahead of the bill collector, for most of his life. There's no discernable father. Yeah, it was that kind of childhood.
He is actually friends with Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade. Got to know them pretty well when he played with them on the Olympic team. I think his attachment to them and to his ignorant buddy, Maverick, show that Lebron really is looking for a sense of family and belonging.
The entire state of Ohio? That's an abstraction to him. But his buddies? They're real.
If you really want to understand the state of mind of Lebron James, just think about when you used to hang out with your buddies in High School and you thought that being surrounded with your friends 24 x 7 was the most important thing in the world. Now, throw in hundreds of millions of dollars and you get the sort of messed-up state of mind that Lebron makes his decisions from.
He's a man-child. Uneducated and from a heartbreaking background. Like a well-intentiond behemoth, he honestly doesn't understand his capacity for harm.
At least that's my take.
All in all, I still respect him as a player and wish he were still with the Cavs, but the next best thing to somebody to root for is somebody to root against, and right now, he's the Baltimore Ravens and New York Yankees all rolled into one.
No comments:
Post a Comment