Rays 5 Indians 2: More Reason to Despise Florida
July 9, 2010The Dan Gilbert Letter
July 9, 2010How many times have we heard athletes say that professional sports is a business? I am not stupid. I understand why they say it. In the NFL it is especially important as a player to have that phrase as a defense mechanism. In the NFL you make your bonus money and then as soon as you are perceived to no longer be earning your keep, the team cuts you. From that perspective, I get it that sports is a business. Funny enough, if that was truly an inarguable fact, none of us would buy into the prospect of watching sports and rooting for teams.
It has happened a lot in the last few years where people have become fans of companies like they would sports teams. The most recent examples are people clinging to their cell phone carriers. Even more appropriately do you remember the satellite radio wars? How silly do the Sirius vs. XM people feel today? Well, let me tell you. I am an XM guy and I feel pretty stupid now that the companies merged and XM barely exists at all. That is what happens when you apply fandom to a company or business. Trust me when I tell you that the professional sports can’t sell that, even if the players say it constantly.
So what happens is we buy in and pretend that our rooting, love, and adoration will mean something just a little more. But, if all else fails, we can always fall back on the idea that whatever happens with our emotions, at least it will be predictable because sports are a business. Businesses are predicated on self-preservation, desire for profits, and furthering a brand. At least we can all take solace in the fact that when our standing ovations aren’t enough, that it isn’t really our fault because Manny Ramirez was supposed to take the contract for the most money. That is almost easier because then we can just be angry at economics. It’s just business.
Except when it’s not. For the Minnesota Twins, it wasn’t pure business this off-season. Yes, they paid Joe Mauer a whole lot of money to remain on their team. At the same time, it can easily be concluded that Joe Mauer certainly didn’t chase the last dollar in signing his 8-year extension. He sacrificed some common business sense.
That storyline was apparently too good for Clevelanders, except we didn’t even need it this time. We rooted, adored, defended and helped pay the greatest basketball player in Cavaliers history. But, we didn’t expect that to just be enough. We were also in a position as fans to know for a fact that he couldn’t possibly make any more money anywhere other than our fair city. All of a sudden when we finally wanted it to be exactly like a business, sports found a way to smack Cleveland in the face one more time. The method of the smack certainly didn’t help, but it is almost better that it was completely brutal. It makes the anger easier and more palatable.
Ladies and gentlemen, in Cleveland predictability doesn’t exist. Don’t try to make sense of it. You can’t.
10 Comments
LeBron is humbled by the fans’ love for LeBron. Humbled! However, LeBron believes that LeBron has spoiled the fans here, so LeBron must do what makes LeBron happy. LeBron hopes that LeBron’s fans will continue to support LeBron in Miami because he is LeBron.
/we are not worthy
Love it. well written
Yep, if Manny Or Thome were basketball players, they would have stayed in Cleveland for the money. We just can’t win.
Exactly, even when we’re in the best position, we aren’t.
Oh, and I keep seeing when he talked to Wilbon, that the Cavs would have traded him or not renewed him at some point.
That’s delusional. Would Gilbert kept him and made him a front office guy when his career was over? Of course.
He’s fooling himself about a lot of things today.
@4 – exactly….he need not look further than Zydrunas. The guy served little to no purpose and we did everything we could to keep him around. It’s a cop out.
What are the implications of Florida’s tax laws on the amount of money LeBron left behind?
Also, the story that I heard a lot of over the past week is that the place that matters the most in how much money LBJ will ultimately make is China and all they care about are championships. It appears to me he chose the easiest route to a championship.
So, all this crap about how he didn’t choose the money doesn’t fly with me.
Ohio state income tax is 5.45% over 200k. So on 15 million he would be giving up ~820k. The Cavs could have offered ~5% more, so as salaries go it’s a wash I guess.
Not buying the marketing angle. We argued so long that he won’t make more in NY I’m not going to start buying that he’ll make more in Miami, without an idea more than pure speculation.
It’s a business. The regular people (fan in any sense of the word) enable and lift the companies and their entertainers up to these heights. We buy the junk they sell, drink their waters, pay for overpriced tickets (food and parking), jerseys and sneakers.
For the entertainers if it isn’t salary, it’s endorsements. If it isn’t endorsements, it’s dropping an album or movie. If it’s none of these, it’s the glory, then it becomes other things.
Today I feel like I have much better things to do. I certainly will wait to see how long it takes me to miss basketball before I become a fan again. I will tell you, baseball lost around 1994 me and I didn’t miss it. As LeBron has searched his values, he’s inspired me to search mine. My values don’t include the greed, vanity, lust or selfishness exhibited by our entertainers. After LeBron, Roethlisberger, Woods, LT I can’t imagine why I support any of this.
sports are a business, yes.
but this BUSINESS is built on primitive tribal loyalty. the emotional connection between team and community is what enables the business.
piss on that emotional connection and your ‘business’ craps the bed.
I am quite tired of all of the talk of the Cleveland fans and the curse, and the lack of loyalty on the part of LeBron and what he owes the Ohio region and the general woe is me attitude. Please note, Cleveland nor the state of Ohio have a monopoly on grief. There are countless areas of the country whose sports franchises have not won anything, ever. New Orleans only finally last year won a Super Bowl after countless years of sub par performance. To boot, they were hit with Katrina and now the region has the oil spill. Their basketball team left (New Orleans Jazz) to go to a state which had never even heard of jazz. The area just picks itself up and gets on with it. It is the nature of the sports business. My advice is that if the Ohio area cannot handle the ups and downs (mostly downs) of sports, then get rid of all of your sports franchises. The display of vitriol on the part of the Cavalier owner is simply shameful. He cuts players all of the time in what he considers best for the franchise. The players also must do what they consider best for themselves and their families. LeBron James does not owe the owner nor the region anything. He has already given the region 7 years of his life. At what point is it ok for him to leave the franchise? There is no guarantee of a championship anywhere as only one team wins each year and many times it is the luck of the draw. Kendrick Perkins doesn’t go down to injury maybe the Lakers don’t have a championship this year. Who are we kidding, LeBron James is 25 years old and wants to not only win a championship, but also wants to live in a perceived more exciting city. There is nothing wrong with that. Children leave home all the time to move to what they consider to be more exciting cities. LeBron James has a gazillion dollars and may want that quintessential L.A. experience as a young man which one can get in only Los Angeles (of course), Miami and maybe New York City. This does not mean that he hates Ohio or Cleveland. In fact, he loves the place. For goodness sake, he played in Cleveland since he was 18 years old. He is now 25. It is ok for him to explore other options.