Posted by Travis Rodgers on Jul 8, 2010

LeBron, What’s Left To Say? #NBA

I wish I had insight. I wish I had something unique or original to say. Fact of the matter is, I don’t.

With the amount of coverage, with the nearly universal consensus that Lebron James is only a few porn-stars short of Tiger Woods, there is really very little left to be said.

Bad guy. Selfish. Narcissist. Mean. Empty. Scared. Scottie Pippen.

OK, maybe I am the only one calling him the 21st century ‘No-Tippin’ Pippen’, but everything else has been said.

It was, more or less, exactly what we thought it would be, if perhaps a little worse. ESPN had anyone with even a moderate interest in sports tuned to their network (brilliant on their part, if a bit unseemly), and LeBron James proved to the world that he cares about himself and, essentially, nothing else. He’s an empty vessel. An other-worldly athlete without a soul. A spectacular performer without any connection to the audience he amazes. A bad guy.

Sure, there might have been a surprise or two. As bad as we all imagined the interaction between Lebron and Jim Gray would be, it was much, much worse. Jim, for the love of all things decent, stop trying to be cute. You are as funny as LeBron is sincere. Stu Scott sucked even more than we knew. At least we got that.

After all the hype, after all the ‘80%’ reporting, and all of the absurdity surrounding the hysteria of where a man will play basketball, I am left with one lasting image. One memory. One thought.

That thought being, Cleveland got screwed. I like Cleveland. Cleveland deserved better. They worshipped LeBron James. He was one of their own, or so they thought, so they were told by LeBron and his high school sycophants. Simply, they loved him.

For a moment, put aside the very reasonable question of what that tells you about a city and their fascination with a basketball player. Fact of the matter is, they got screwed. They cared, they loved, and for this they got done on national TV by a very bad guy who simply didn’t give a damn. Their priorities may be questionable, but their passion isn’t. They gave and got nothing in return.

Cleveland, you deserved better. LeBron, you deserve whatever the universe can come up with. I hope it is something bad.