Final Thoughts on Lebron James

If there is one thing I've never about that Lebron, its that he's bad in the clutch. In 2006 (I think) I watched him score 25 points in a fourth quarter comeback against the defending NBA champion Pistons. In 2009 I saw him nail a three-pointer at the buzzer in game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Magic. I've seen him takeover games and single-handedly win them for the Cavs. (With the Cavaliers posting less than 20 wins this year, one wonders how many games Lebron himself won? Is that not clutch? I can't remember one game I watched in which I thought... "man Lebron really blew that one." I do remember two games last spring though, when Lebron gave up. It wasn't an outright, intentional, lay down and die affair, but it was obvious that Lebron had somehow lost his motivation to play. After the Heat ousted the Celtics last night James himself even said that a lot of his emotion came from the fact that he had finally gotten over the hump of the Celtics, the team that beat his Cavaliers in the second round last season. He admitted that he saw no way for the Cleveland roster to match up with the Celtics roster. He saw no foreseeable championship in Cleveland. He had waited seven years, and signed two contracts and had not gotten the pieces to beat the Lakers or the Celtics, hell, even the Orlando Magic. The point is to win the NBA championship. He had lost trust that his organization would ever be able to complete the puzzle to win him a championship, and you have to give it to Lebron, what he wanted was a championship. He took less money to get it. Put in this light, his departure from Cleveland is justified, and done with no less motivation than the best of us would have if we departed one job for another. Talk Show host Colin Cowherd illustrated this point well when he compared Lebron leaving Cleveland to a lawyer leaving a bad firm. He also pointed out that lawyers get to pick their first job, and that Lebron had to go to Cleveland. He had to go to the "bad firm.", and was for all intents and purposes loyal to it. I feel for Lebron. I really do. I feel he should have the right to play for who he wants to as a free agent. That's what a free agent is. And we've all heard the argument that it wasn't THAT he left, but HOW he left. There's some merit to that argument, but having psychoanalyzed myself as a Cleveland fan for the past year I've determined that while the way Lebron made "the decision" had an effect on the level of my animosity, I would've have been greatly disappointed either way. For while I believe that Colin Cowherd's analogy has merit as a defense for the decision, and I never want to be part of the fanbase that makes Lebron feel shackled to a municipality called Cleveland, which I think he sincerely loves, and respects, and sincerely regrets the way everything went down, and while I didn't take his decision personally, I will say that as a Cavalier fan that I wished that Lebron James was not only about winning a championship for himself, but wanted to win one for Cleveland, the city of the Superbowless Browns, and the Indians, who despite their magical run in the 90's lost two world series, and are without one since 1948. If anyone could have sympathy for a sports city such as Cleveland. It was Lebron James. Now it may be a lame argument to say that he should've stayed for the sake of local sympathy. I understand that in the bigger context of his personal legacy that to ask Lebron to stay for Cleveland sounds absurd, but what doesn't sound absurd, assuming that this kind of egotism is tolerable, (it apparently is not only tolerated, but sympathized with, and encouraged), is to make a case that Lebron's legacy would be significantly more legendary if he did stick it out like Jordan and bring championships to the Cleveland Cavaliers, rather than join a superstar in Miami, and manufacturing championships through personal agreements made during the Olympics rather than through blood, sweat, and tears. Again, I understand why he did what he did. And maybe we should applaud the postmodern/generation x athlete. This vision of Lebron James being Cleveland's Michael Jordan was actually in my heart and mind since the minute he was drafted. He just never got his Scottie Pippen. Here was hoping that my favorite player felt the same. Here's the disappointment in discovering that the feelings were not mutual. There are weaker individuals in character than Lebron James, to be sure, but they are not Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, or Kobe Bryant. Maybe Lebron's way of thinking is a better way of thinking than those guys in the long run. Maybe we'll just have to get used to the utilitarian oppurtunist athlete? But why? Why? Why did the city of Cleveland have to be the ones that paid for the revolution?