LeBron Watch 2010 – T Minus 14 Days and Counting…

So here we all are.  Waiting. Watching. Listening. Crying. Blaming. Screaming. Where’s the King going to play next season?  Is he staying? Is he going? If the entire city of Cleveland doesn’t end up on a heavy daily dose of valium after this, I will fall down dead.

But uhhhh hey? uhhhh……Cleveland?  LBJ can’t even start talking to teams before July 1, so please try to spend some time with your families and friends instead of fretting over what can’t even begin for a few more weeks.  Please.  Why are we hanging on every word of the media when they know the same as the rest of us?  Nothing.  And you know how I know that they have nothing? Because right after the news reporters spill their *stories* on the daily events of LBJ, they turn around and say that LBJ hasn’t talked to the media. He hasn’t talked to anyone. I haven’t even heard one report of a sighting except when he appeared at the House of Blues recently. I highly doubt that he got on the stage there and announced his intentions.  What I get out of all of it is that nobody knows anything more today than they did 352 days ago.  It’s all SPEC-U-LATION based on LBJ’s actions –  or lack thereof. I feel like everyone has turned into the National Enquirer with this story.

I can’t be the only one in town that thinks that this circus is crazy?  At no time in history has anyone received this type of attention when seeking out a job – with the exception of Barack Obama when he was running for President.  My God, LBJ has entire cities and states putting together huge campaigns to lure him to their city – billboards, newspaper ads, TV spots and (ugh) even songs set to “We Are The World” (really, Cleveland, what were you thinking?  How embarrassing was it to watch our Governor pleading with a guy that plays basketball through a badly written song?  If we lose LBJ, I’m blaming it on that stupid video.)  They have their politicians speaking out to the media that they want him here, there and everywhere. Even the President of the United States weighed in on his desire to pull LBJ to Chicago. Honestly,Obama, shouldn’t you be concentrating on things like, oh I don’t know…jobs?  terrorism? a couple of wars?  And what about that little mess that BP made down in the Gulf?  Don’t get me wrong, I know that the President needs a little bit of *downtime* outside of the astronomical problems that hit his desk everyday in order to stay sane and I know that Obama loves basketball.  But Really? Can’t he stay out of the bedlam surrounding LBJ?  After all, how is Cleveland going to compete with the President of the United States when all we have is Dennis Kucinich to counter the POTUS request? If that’s how this free agency is going to roll, Cleveland is doomed.

Every day, we can open up either of the main stream media newspapers in the Cleveland area and find multiple articles on the LeBron drama.  We turn on the televison and ESPN has story after story.  Our local news has all the rumors, the sightings and the sounds that is LBJ. We know where he is, who he’s meeting with, what he’s had for breakfast and what hat he has on today.   I fully expect that, come July 1st, all normal programming will be pre-empted and replaced with 24 hour coverage on all 500 of my TV stations. I expect there to be a “Day 24 of LeBron Watch 2010” scrolling across my screen.    I expect there to be crowds of reporters sitting in the trees outside of the offices of all of the NBA teams offices with a great, big long lens on their cameras waiting for the LeBron entourage to roll in. I expect millions of reporters to be on the streets of Cleveland waiting for the collective heads of this city to explode in the event that he doesn’t sign here. Are you kidding me with all of this?  If we put as much effort into cleaning up that mess in the Gulf, we’d have had it all contained, cleaned up and be back to normal right now.

Just like every passionate Cleveland sports fan, I have an opinion about this entire thing and I am going to express it in my next post here.  But unlike everyone else and their stories, it’s just my opinion on what he should do. I’m not important enough to have *sources* although I have gotten a few calls from friends that live in other cities to ask after Mr. James.  I guess since I live in the same city, go to the games on a regular basis and watched him pull down a backboard in high school, that gives me the edge.  Alas, all I have is opinions. I just wish the real media would admit to the same.

Will He Stay Or Will He Go?

So it’s the day after Cleveland sports meltdown number five thousand two hundred and eighty. The entire city is in mourning, the morning radio shows are full of angry callers and even Mother Nature cried out her disappointment on our region with an angry thunderstorm at 4 this morning.  We’re a city of miserable, bitter and just plain pissed off fans.  If you’re not a Cleveland sports fan, it’s probably a pretty good day to catch up on your sleep, keep the TV and radio turned off and just generally avoid people.

I am just as angry as the rest of you.  I have had season tickets for the Cavs now for about 6 or 7 years, although admittingly, I am not as big of a Cavs fan as I am a Tribe fan.  My heart still bleeds baseball but that doesn’t mean that I am any less upset by the outcome of this last series.  It drives me absolutely nuts that it was Boston, yet again, that deprived this city of a championship and made my team quit. I hate the Celtics with almost as much passion as I hate the Yankees but that’s a story for another day because is it really the Celtics fault that they saw an open door and walked through it?

Anybody who watched that game – CAVS fan or not – could see that this team quit on the game, this series, on themselves and, most of all, this city. This was not the team that danced together, celebrated together and won together. So what happened? I guess we’ll continue to hear the rumors of a fall out between Mike Brown and LeBron James.  We will continue to point fingers toward LeBron and his elbow.  We’ll blame it on Mo and his lack of presence in game 5.  We’ll blame it on Shaq being too old and unable to keep up. And we’ll blame it on Mike Brown for changing up the rotation that worked through the whole season.  There’s a whole lot of blame games that will be played but we are forgetting one key piece:  The fans.

I totally get that we are all worried that LBJ is going to leave us because doesn’t everyone?  We are a city that has experienced athlete flight in every sport we have. They leave for money and fame and endorsements and on and on and on.  It’s happened before so why not LeBron?

But why would he stay?  I mean really, people?  Who would want to stick with us when we have rode this man hard about every move he has made for the last 7 years?  We get angry when he wears a Yankees hat and our heads explode when he is shown standing on the sidelines of the Dallas Cowboys.  We had to hear how he didn’t give enough money to Haiti when they had the devastating earthquake and gave him a beating about not marrying his girlfriend when his kids were born. He doesn’t pay enough attention to Cleveland, instead of showering his love on Akron and how he is a terrible tipper when he dines in restaurants. We hear about the parties he throws and wonder why he was driving down a highway at 110 mph in the middle of the night. On. And. On. And. On.  And now we had to hear that in game 5, he didn’t give a hard enough performance.  Sure, he had a bad game – and I dont think he’s going to deny that. I dont think anyone will deny that.  He sucked – but he sucked for LeBron James.  We are so used to his MVP caliber play: scoring 40 point games, back to back triple doubles and his over the top dunks that when the guy plays like a *normal* player in a handful of games, we scream out heads off and accuse him of doing it on purpose.  So I ask you, Cleveland sports fans, why WOULD he stay knowing that he’s going to have to endure that kind of crap for the next 5 years?  Would you stay in a job where your every move was questioned in the media day after day after day? Would you stay in a job that even your off the court life is analyzed?  Would you stay with those fans? I wouldn’t.

Sure, I am mad that we have to endure the taunts from half the nation because Cleveland can never quite close the deal. I hate it.  My Facebook is taking a big bad beating today and my Twitter has not stopped since the final whistle blew last night.  I get it. But what I don’t like is that while we are yelling about our team quitting on the entire City of Cleveland, why are we not yelling about our fans quitting on LBJ and this team?  LBJ is a child of Akron. He grew up with the rest of us hating our place in United States sports history and I guarantee, this morning, he still does. I firmly believe that he would have liked nothing more than to be the one to bring this city and region a championship.  He has a big ego and that ego wanted him to be the one to break the cycle.  And I think we all (myself included) should be ashamed of ourselves for letting him down.

So this is where I go back to being the great Cleveland sports fan that I am and thank him for bringing a level of excitement to Cleveland sports that I have never experienced in my lifetime.  Because of LBJ, I have watched MVP caliber play every night for seven years. I’ve watched him accept his MVP award not once but twice.  I’ve sat at NBA finals games and watched my CAVS team sing Rasheed Wallace off the court in the Eastern Conference finals (my own personal moment that you’ll have to scroll back to read about). I’ve watched an all star like Shaq play nightly in a city that I doubt he would have signed with had LBJ not been here. I discovered a player named Mo Williams that can shoot the lights out on any given night. And I have had more fun in the last seven years cheering and hoping right along with an entire city that will fight City Council and the Ohio Department of Transportation just to have his big, obnoxious billboard and banners displayed in the most prominent locations in our city even if it does violate a hundred regulations. Would we have had it without LBJ?  I don’t know but I am pretty sure that he had something to do with it.

So thank you to LBJ and the rest of the Cleveland Cavaliers.  No matter what his decision , he has given us a hell of a ride. And CAVS fans? We’ve been here before.  Stop your whining, strap on your balls and go support that other team that plays across the concourse from the Q at the Jake. They desperately need your love, too.