Written by Demetri Inembolidis

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LeBron James is going to win a few championships.  He is too talented and on too good of a team to not accomplish that.

Now that we have that out of the way, I feel that one of the worst things a Cavaliers fan can do is cite a positive side-effect of the lockout being that it is another year that LeBron James will not win a championship.  Much is spoken of his struggles down the stretch in the finals.  Jokes are made about his game of Hot Potato and disappearing act.  The narrative is that he will never win a championship because of these shortcomings.  I personally believe he is several great therapy sessions away from overcoming his issues and we will all look silly for laughing at him.

Do not get me wrong, this is the absolute last thing I want to see happen.  I kind of like living in a world where LeBron James, on a stacked team, fails to win that elusive championship.  It’s a comforting thought despite the fact that I do not expect it to last.

This sentiment is prevalent in Bob Finnan’s November 1, 2011 piece “NBA: Some Fans Apathetic, Others Show Disgust Toward Lockout.”  Of the five Cavaliers fans who were profiled in the article, two went out of their way to voice their opinion that a year lost equates to another year LeBron James will not win a championship.

Are we Cavaliers fans or LeBron James detractors?  I get that he is not a likable person and that what he did was humiliating to a city that didn’t deserve it, but Cavaliers fans should be more concerned with Cleveland sports than Miami.

During the 2010-2011 campaign, it was painfully obvious that the Cavaliers were going to be a bad basketball team.  The only positive things that could come of it were time to cure the LeBron James Decision hangover and the chance to do well in the NBA lottery.

After the Cavaliers traded Mo Williams and Jamario Moon to the Los Angeles Clippers for Baron Davis and an unprotected first round pick, the debate over how important a high pick is became prevalent.  There were two sides to the argument.  The first side is less emotional and was that of the games in the second half of the season are essentially meaningless and winning them at the expense of the lottery is detrimental to the team’s future.  The second perspective was more emotional and was less level-headed.  The aforementioned camp was interested in winning games despite what the stakes were.  Their mantra was “you play to win the games.”

Late in the season, the popular narrative was the latter even though the Cavaliers were not in the playoff hunt.  Cavaliers fans spent months arguing on Twitter and message boards about the importance of winning the late season games.  On the one hand, the Cavaliers had lost an NBA record 26 games in a row and looked helpless during the process.  The other side to the argument was that winning games is the goal and that should happen no matter what the stakes are.  Having a culture of losing is not good for a young team, but on the other hand missing out on the best player in the draft is worse.  This is an argument that carried on for what felt like an eternity.

The reason I bring up this polarizing issue is because it is contradictory to the sentiment that missing a season is a good thing because it is one less chance that LeBron James has at the Larry O’Brien trophy.  If James were as overrated as Cavaliers fans make him out to be, we wouldn’t be hoping for an entirely lost season so he cannot win a championship.  The fan base would simply want the 2011-2012 season to happen because James cannot win a championship.  When a Cavaliers fan actively wishes for a lost season so the Heat cannot win a championship, it goes against the good-natured spirit of winning meaningless games.  It makes the Cavaliers fan base appear to have a bad case of sour grapes.  If the Cavaliers couldn’t have a championship with LeBron James, then nobody else should and what better way to make it happen than to not have a season?

Another narrative which Cleveland fans like to progress is that the NBA system is “broken” and that the lockout will help fix it.  They are quick to point to multi-superstar teams in desirable markets.  The problem with this perspective is that none of the system issues being discussed will magically solve the parity problem.  The NBA and NBPA are arguing over revenue split and luxury tax.  If the Los Angeles Lakers want to pay a 300% tax to have a guy like Matt Barnes, then that is their decision.  It is a decision that does not affect teams like Minnesota and Milwaukee.  Is this something that is worth missing a season for?

The inlying issue is that most people who follow the NBA are casual fans.  This is even more true in a city like Cleveland where the Browns are the most-followed team.  There is a second set of unwritten fan rules.  If the NFL was currently locked-out, very few Browns fans would want to miss the season if it meant that the Pittsburgh Steelers would not win another Super Bowl.  Casual NBA fans have an easy time having an opinion on what is best for the Cavaliers when they have very little emotional attachment to the team.  It is the die-hard fans who have the future well-being of the team in mind.