Written by Chris Hutchison

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I gave myself two weeks, and they're up.

Two weeks to calm down, to get it out of my system, to move on, to gain some perspective.

I'm honestly surprised that I got as upset as I was.  I never liked LeBron James as a person, and I was convinced that he would never bring a Championship to Cleveland even if he stayed.  His defection came as no major surprise.

So why was I so inconceivably angry at the guy?  Why was I so incensed that it seemed only fair if someone gave him a pair of cement shoes and introduced him to the bottom of Lake Erie?

There are several answers.

 

Answer One

The first is obvious - he rubbed our noses in it.  He knew how Northeast Ohio would feel, and he went ahead and made a spectacle of it anyway.

LeBron is not a traitor.  He had every right to leave.  I don't blame him for leaving.  I grew up in NEO just like he did, and when I turned 18 I got out as quickly as I could.  It wasn't that I disliked Ohio, it was that there were a lot of places - seemingly much more exciting places - to live and experience.  So if LeBron wanted to go and check out Miami for a while, I would be a selfish hypocrite to crucify him for doing it.

He didn't owe it to anybody to spend his entire career in Cleveland.

What he did owe us was respect.  What he did owe the organization that sold its soul to try and win a championship and please him was the courtesy of a heads up that he was leaving so that they could take steps to protect themselves.  What he did owe the fans was the decency to not stick them on a nationally televised cross just for the sake of manufactured drama.

No, LeBron had to fan the flames of his own ego and insatiable desire for attention with his Reality TV abomination.  He couldn't have cared less about the effect his actions would have on the team and the fans that loved him (to a fault), and it is this blatant disrespect that made lasers shoot from my eyes.

There's really only one sentiment a tool like that deserves:  F*** You.

But, come on... an egomaniac Pro Athlete is so spoiled that he makes moves that prove the depths of his cluelessness?  Hardly shocking.

You can hardly blame them for being this stupid.  Especially LeBron, a guy that's been surrounded by yes-men and ass-kissers since he first got hair on his peaches.  You've been told how great you are since your formative years, you become a multi-millionaire celebrity by the time you're 18, and there is no one in your life that will lend you even a shred of perspective.

I'm sure some of those Egyptian Pharaohs actually DID believe they were Gods.

We (fans, media, agents, entourage) are to blame for the pervading ignorance of pro athletes (and young actors and musicians).  We buy their clothes, their jerseys, their posters, their cereal.  We worship them for being young and good looking and talented and famous.  We feed into the whole ego trip.  They tell us they are Gods and we buy it.

Not that LeBron's absolved of blame.  Hardly.  Just because there are reasons that he pulled his asshole moves doesn't mean he doesn't have to deal with the consequences.  He deserves every shred of disdain that's come his way.  May he contract chlamydia from the bed he's chosen to sleep in.

So LeBron's a dick.  Go figure.  He's not "one of us".  He was never "one of us".  He will never be "one of us", because his world is so completely different than ours that he can't understand us just as much as we can't understand him.  In our world, his actions were that of a prima donna that needs a good ass-kicking.  In his world, his actions got him a lot of attention, and attention is good for marketing.

I mean, didn't you see the ratings on The Decision?

Answer Two

I live in Northeast Ohio.  I grew up in Northeast Ohio.  I did leave when I turned 18, and I lived in assorted places (including Miami, which sucks, but I'll save that for later) for 12 years before returning for various reasons.  I've been back for 7 years.

When the media runs through the endless Cleveland heartbreaks, it takes pity on us.  Either it takes pity on us, or revels in our struggles.  The rest of the country sees us as poor saps that live somewhere that they can't figure out for the life of them why anyone would remain.  We're lovable losers.

At least that's what we think they think.

Some of us revel in our "shame".  We embrace the "Curse" like it's one of us.  We resign ourselves to the probability that we'll never win, that we as a people are losers, and we whine and moan and engage in a circle jerk of self-pity.

I'm sick of it.

Yeah, I haven't seen a Championship in my lifetime.  Yeah, we get more than our share of bad breaks.  Yeah, our economy is depressed and our politicians are inept and our weather sometimes sucks and our best and brightest skip town for better opportunities with alarming frequency.

Boo-frickin'-hoo.

In general, life in Northeast Ohio isn't that much different than any other place in this country.  Some places are better.  Some places are worse.  But the national image doesn't fit the reality.  How many times have you seen the opinion "Cleveland sucks" from someone that's never been here?  Someone that knows nothing about what it is like to live here?

The national image is that we are all drooling morons for living here, and we let that get into our subconscious.  We as a people have an unlimited capacity for self-loathing.  Our collective insecurity level is at Level Red.  It pisses me off to no extent.

And just when it seems that, slowly, here and there, people in general are beginning to heal their wounded psyches, along comes someone who grew up here - who, in many people's minds, should know how we feel - and he takes a huge dump on us too.  And not just in an ordinary way.  No, he makes it a nationally televised debacle, so everyone in America can help ease us back into our spiral of shame and self-pity.

And the longer that we hold on to LeBron and our anger and our sense of betrayal, the longer we'll stay there.

I'm done with it.  We're as good as any of you, so kiss our collective asses.

Answer Three

The Browns are the only viable hope for a Championship.

Everyone knows that baseball is set up to benefit the teams in major markets, to only give a few select franchises a chance at sustained success.

Without a salary cap and basically run by the players' union, baseball provides narrow windows for teams in smaller markets to succeed.  You have to have a brilliant front office in most towns to even compete.  You have to trade your big name, big money players for young talent and hope that you get lucky.  And even then, good luck sustaining your accomplishment.

And now the trend in the NBA is for players to band together into Superteams (preferably large market based), leaving all other franchises flailing about in the mud.  Let's take just any team... oh, I don't know, let's just use... ummmm.... the Cleveland Cavaliers.  You have a superstar and a bunch of pieces to surround him.  But you're viable only as long as that superstar's whim keeps him with your team.

When his whim takes him to... oh, I don't know, let's just say... South Beach, well, then you're completely intercoursed, and you have absolutely no recourse for recovery other than "let's hope our front office is really brilliant like a small market baseball team's".

In the Have And Have Not world of the NBA and MLB, there really isn't much to look forward to.

For instance, let's analyze what most pundits believe to be the Cavaliers best course of action:  Lose a whole lot so you can get into the draft lottery and maybe get lucky enough to draft another LeBron James so you can be viable for another 3 or 4 years.

That's it.  That's the plan.  Suck and hope.

Only the NFL provides an even playing field for all teams regardless of market size, and even that is a rusty peg to hang your sombrero on when you look at the squandered opportunities the Browns have had the last 11 years.

Every year, a team goes from worst to first.  Every year, a football team climbs out of the morass of mediocrity.  But here?  Well, most of those aforementioned self-loathing NEOians would call optimism loco.

Is that not why our youth don the yellow and black?  Is that not why an entire generation of Browns fans have fallen into despair?

In today's Professional Sports, we have only one legitimate sports franchise, and it already left us once.  46 years is a long time for a major city - a 3 team city - to go without a title.  But the citizens of NEO have already settled in for another 46.  Let's hope advances in medical science provide us all with expanded life spans.

Conclusion

LeBron James is but a chapter in the long long frickin' War and Peace that is Cleveland futility and despair.

We wanted him to be the answer.  We wanted him to be the cure.

Well, he ain't.  It was foolish of us to believe he would be.  Michael Jordans and Kobe Bryants come about only once every NBA generation, and LeBron isn't this generation's version.  He is a flawed and self-centered young man, and maybe what hurts us most is that we actually had the naïveté to think that he was "our turn".  We showered him with our desperation, and he said the water was too hot.

In the end, our sporting life goes on.  We had horrible disappointment in the past, and we'll have some more in the future.  LeBron James was nothing more than a blip on the screen of Cleveland sporting conscious, not even remotely the closest to bringing the area the Championship it so pitifully longs for.

I'm done with him.

I'm not going to watch the Heat and hope for him to blow an ACL.  I'll not burn his jersey (I don't own any jerseys) or smash his bobble-head (I don't own any bobble-heads) with a cinder block.  He's gone, and good riddance to him.  I know that his absence will hurt the Cavaliers in the short run, but, like I've said a million times, he was never gonna be the guy that got it done anyway. 

He was never going to be The King.  He was never going to be The Chosen One.

I obviously do not wish him success, but I'm done dwelling on his potential failure.  When I realized that my entire sporting existence is rooted around hoping that those who had left our teams behind would find nothing but misery and pain, it was time for me to take some stock.  LeBron James isn't my problem any more.  He's Miami's.

I'd like to say that Karma is a Bitch (much like LeBron).  But it isn't.  If Karma existed, Art Modell wouldn't fall asleep each night clutching a Lombardi.  Horrible people do horrible things all the time and profit from their horrible-osity.  LeBron might be the same. 

Whatever.  I am powerless in this situation, and I refuse to waste one more ounce of angst on that insecure, egotistical, stupid little man.

Goodbye, LeBron. 

And, for the last time, Go F*** Yourself.  I'm sure you wish you could.

(That was my last bit of pettiness.  I swear.)

_____________________

Regarding The Letter

I'm sure everyone here has read Dan Gilbert's open letter to the fans that he shot off the night of The Decision, so there's no need to rehash what it said.

When I first read it, I laughed and gave him an "Attaboy".  Of course, I was drunk and angry, so the owner showing the same kind of drunken anger was much appreciated.

Now, I just shrug.  Sure, it was fun.  Harmless fun, in my estimation.  Interesting to hear an owner actually come out and say what he's thinking rather than hide behind typical media clichés.

But it was childish.  There's no doubt about that.

I can appreciate childishness.  I am childish quite often, and I am unapologetic about it.  But in my quest for unabated childishness, I often find myself writing/e-mailing/publicly posting something that I will later go back and read and say "Good lord!  What an ass I made of myself!"

Hopefully, that is what Dan Gilbert is doing now.  As a man, he's entitled to feel pissed because he was bent over a log (and rich and powerful men especially don't like that).  But as an owner, he needs to maintain more control and grace.  He needs to not make ridiculous proclamations or name call.  He needs to take the high road.

But the thing that upsets me most about the letter at this juncture isn't that it will "keep Free Agents from wanting to come to Cleveland."  It won't make a difference in that area.  Free Agents follow one of two things:  Money and a chance to win.  As long as the Cavaliers can provide one or the other (or both), they will come.  It won't matter in the least that Gilbert is a "big meanie".

No, the thing that upsets me most about the letter was that it somewhat let LeBron off the hook.  Instead of him receiving the full brunt of the national scorn for The Decision, a large chunk of the public was distracted by the scorn it had to give The Letter.  I'm sure a few even felt that maybe LeBron was now justified because Gilbert was a "bully".

In the end, it's much ado about nothing.  The fallout from The Letter will pass, and as long as Dan Gilbert is still filthy rich (and, at last check, he was) it will soon be like it was never written.

_____________________

Regarding The Race Card

It was inevitable, I suppose (although I didn't see it coming), that someone would take Dan Gilbert's letter and lay the race card on it.  You see, it just so happens that Dan Gilbert is white and LeBron James is black.  Thus, even if the reason that Mr. Gilbert is angry at Mr. James has absolutely nothing to do with race, someone will inevitably turn it that way.

Jesse Jackson was that someone, intimating that Gilbert was acting like a "slave owner" and referring to a book called Forty Million Dollar Slaves about the hardships of the modern athlete.  He played the race card.

Sadly, he plays that card a lot.  Jackson was once an important civil rights activist, but these days seems more like an attention whore that cannot keep his name in print unless he takes his agendas further and further towards idiocy.

Gilbert's letter could be seen in many negative lights, but "slave owner" is a real stretch.

However, the race card has been played so many times at this point that it has begun to lose its meaning.  It's the little boy crying "wolf".  It's manufactured disharmony.

The old rule of thumb is that we must learn to respect the sensitivities of other racial/gender/religious groups because we don't know what it feels like to be them.  And I agree with that.

But there comes a point in time where one has seen sensitivities incensed by things that should not conceivably have incensed them, and one starts to believe that there is nothing one can say/do that won't offend someone somewhere for some reason. 

If I write "Babies are cute", then I'll get an angry letter from Harvey Asshat from the Society For the Humanization and Empowerment of Infant Americans criticizing my opinion as "demeaning" and "belittling".

The only options left are to either never say/do anything ever again, or to just stop caring about who might be offended by what and how so-and-so might interpret what you say/do.

Either live in a shell or just stop giving a flock.

Personally, I'm choosing the latter.  Take your sensitivities and shove 'em.  That means you, Harvey.  Tell your babies I don't give a good goddam about their feelings.

Racism certainly still exists, and it goes both ways, back and forth, up and down, and in many different shades.  Regardless, unless a person demonstrates blatant racism, I will ignore the race card (and those who play it) from now on. 

Don't feed the machine.

_____________________

Regarding Forty Million Dollar Slaves

The entire concept is ludicrous, yet another example of the disconnect between the reality of the average American and the reality of the professional athlete (and those who enable them).

People that have been entitled and worshipped for all of their adult lives are upset because they get treated like what they are:  Employees. 

They hate being told what to do by anyone, so, to them, Employee = Slave.

In this example, basketball is the profession, and the NBA is the company they work for.  The NBA has branches all over the country, but the company tells the player which branch they need to work for when they do the hiring.  "We have an opening in Cleveland.  Take it or leave it."

Eventually, the player might be able to get a transfer, but the Company is going to do what's best for it's bottom line.  If the player doesn't like those terms, he is welcome to try and find gainful employment with another employer.  There are companies in Russia, Spain, China, etc.

Don't want to leave the country?  Fine.  Start your own Company then.  No one's stopping you.

Some argue that the NBA would be nothing without its players.  Well, no shit.  Taco Bell would be nothing without its employees either.  Those tasty taco treats aren't going to make themselves and walk themselves out to my car. 

If Player X feels he's going to stop playing basketball to teach everyone a lesson, then the NBA will just bring in slightly-less-talented Player Y to replace him and the game will go on.  Someone out there won't have a problem with getting paid millions of dollars to play a game.

Honestly, what are the major Pro Athlete beefs?  Don't like having to go to college and play for "free" for x number of years?  There are ton of companies out there that won't hire you without a degree, much less having to have gone to college for one year.  And most college students don't have their tuitions paid for while they work on their "majors".

Don't like not getting to dictate where you work?  Most of us don't get to do that either.

You see, that's the way the world of employment works.  The Employees don't get to walk in the door and make the Company rules.

Is this not the way it is for anyone?  Let's say I went to college and graduated with a degree in Head Lice Aeronautics.  Now, there are a few Head Lice Aerospace companies out there, but the biggest one - the one that pays the best, that has the most opportunities - only has one opening.  Sadly, it's in Bismarck.

My choices are this - 1) Go with another company, 2) Go into another line of work, 3) Move my ass to North Dakota.

How are Professional Athletes any less free than any other employee?  Sure, some guy that works at McDonald's is free to go to whatever city he wants to whenever he wants to (provided there's a job open).

So quit the NBA and go to work for Mickey D's.  No one's stopping you.

But in your highly specialized and consumer-driven field, the reality of your Company is that employees are transferred where they are needed when they are needed there.

Just like anyone else.

In the end, the Company is concerned with providing a profitable product.  Employees come and go.  That's just the nature of employment.  The NBA/NFL/MLB/etc. does what it thinks it has to in order to make money to keep paying the employees and keep itself from bankruptcy.

Just like any other Company.

If the players got to do just whatever they wanted to, such as all join forces in glamorous locations to create a handful of Superteams, then the branches in the less glamorous locations would begin to fail.  And if they fail, the company as a whole will eventually follow.

And then there's no one around to pay that exorbitant salary that you have to suffer through.

So if you, the Professional Athlete, really feel that you are somehow "slaves" to the system, then I beg you to look around.

Almost every fan you see in those seats at those stadiums is a "slave" to the system, and for a helluva lot less than what you make.  And most of them don't get to just up and transfer wherever they want when their contract with their current branch is up.

You are not a slave.  A slave has no choices.  You are an employee.  You may not always like your choices, but you have them.  And you can always walk away if you simply cannot endure your employer any longer.  You don't HAVE to do anything.

In the end, I have trouble feeling sorry for anyone making $40 million.  Now, for the love of Monte Cristo, stop feeling sorry for yourselves.  We should all be so put-upon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVqyBeFFBRw

(Note: This here YouTube is Not Safe For Work Or Little Children Or Stuffy Parents) 

_____________________

Regarding Miami

One thing that has irked me is the concept that LeBron left Cleveland to go to a major market.

Miami is not a major market.

Miami/Ft. Lauderdale (ranked 16) is roughly exactly the same sized market as Cleveland/Akron (ranked 17).  The number of households is almost identical at just over 1.5 mil.

Sure, they have a few more TV shows set there.  And South Beach... oooooo... it's so trendy.  If you're rich and pretty.  If not, well, the line's over there.

So if you're not a celebrity, what's the attraction?  The weather?

Hey, I lived in Miami, and summer in Miami is where Hell sends people that misbehave.  I'll take a miserable gray Ohio winter over an unbearably hot and humid Miami summer any lifetime.

In fact, my 3 years in South Florida led me to believe that Miami just blows.  I couldn't wait to get out.  Here's how I always described it to my friends:  Flat, hot, and the traffic sucks.  The only good thing about SoFla is the Keys. 

Sure, winter in Miami is pleasant, but the lack of real seasonal change is lame.  And who doesn't want a little snow around the end of football season and the holidays?  Pussies, that's who.

Did I mention the traffic in Miami?  No one there can drive.  Either you have old people going 10 miles an hour, or all the people from Europe, the Caribbean, or South America who have come into town and brought their own individual driving laws with them.  But that's only if you can actually get up to a speed where the idiots can demonstrate their idiocy.  It's difficult, because almost every freeway is jam-packed to a standstill 12 hours a day.

But at least they have great sports fans.  When I lived there in 1997, I got to watch the celebrations of the people as the Marlins won the World Series, the same fans that didn't sell out a game until the 2nd Round of the playoffs.

Oh wait, I'm sorry, they DID sell out some games before that.  If the Mets or Yankees were in town.  It was a home crowd for the New York teams.

Yes, that Game 7 was especially torturous, because no fanbase in America is less deserving of Championships than the notoriously awful fanbase of Miami.  I actually went to work the next day and had two separate people say to me: "Isn't it great about the Marlins?  I didn't even know we had a baseball team!"  I should've punched them.

Imagine someone in Cleveland saying that about the Indians, Browns, or Cavs.  You can't.  It wouldn't happen.

Yes, LeBron, you and Miami deserve each other.  All glitter, no heart.

And to all my friends in Miami that might be upset that I disparaged their fine city (as if any of them would think twice about disparaging mine):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzPsdkTCufs