Let's All Hate Now

While working on the LBJ Show list, I monitored the culture, as I'm wont to do, with the Twitter and the Facebook and all of the rest of it. Because, honestly, waiting 30 minutes for the man to say "Miami" wasn't exactly riveting television. So be it.

And, well, I get that James has irritated a lot of people here. If you are a Cleveland Fan, he's let you down more than any other athlete of his generation. But how many of us were Cleveland Fans before James? Um, not to be mean, but nearly no one. Not even Cleveland Fan, really. That franchise was a secret jewel back when a young Michael Jordan ended them, and then there was 10+ years of utterly forgettable ball. (How forgettable? I couldn't name a single guy from the era without going to the Web. And I *love* hoop. And just to save you the Web search, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Terrell Brandon, Fat Shawn Kemp, Carlos Boozer, Darius Miles and Ricky Davis. Yeah, they had no fans. On the merits.)

And as I'm writing this, Cavs owner Dan Gilbert writes a wildly over-the-top, "Network" style rebuttal. If this thing is real, good grief.

Look, there's no way that James was getting out of this with his relatively clean reputation intact. If he had stayed, everyone would have questioned his commitment to actually taking down championships, and given him grief for taking too much money to attract other premium free agents. Had he gone to New York, it would have been all about the money and the marketing. In Chicago, he would have been sucking on Michael Jordan's teaty legacy. New Jersey is strange Russian weirdness; the Clippers would have been rehabilitating the worst owner in the Association. Since only the Celtics and Lakers generally win titles, trying to win one of those without being a role player for either of those organizations isn't exactly an easy call.

Now, let's look at this at the end of the day.

1) James took a pay cut to leave town.

2) He signed on to a club with an established superstar and devoted fan base, where he will be a co-alpha dog, and take a great deal of crap over how he isn't good enough to lead a team.

3) He will now spend the rest of the summer, presumably, trying to convince people to take low money to fill in the holes on this roster, so that he doesn't have to spend 40+ minutes a game on the floor to make the playoffs with two similarly gassed co-stars.

Does this really equate to a guy I now have to hate?

OK, maybe he's not Kevin Durant pure anymore. Maybe you've got something against the Heat, or Pat Riley, or have an issue from the way Wade won his title against the Mavs. Or you are a Cavs Fan. In that case, hate for all that you are worth.

But otherwise, um, STFU. (And that includes disappointed Knicks, Nets or Bulls Fan. Your pain is paltry.) Besides James isn't all that different than he was last week, or last month, or last year. Come the fall, he'll still be playing some of the best ball on the planet, and his 2010 Heat team will be more intriguing than his 2009 Cavs club. And you'll forget how he irritated you with the way he handled his free agency, and instead, amaze you with the way he plays hoop.

And in five to ten years, when his knees start to fade and his legacy has been more or less cemented, Cleveland Fan will either regard him as the tragic figure of a generation, or as the superstar who didn't deliver and went away. It's not a new story.