What LeBron James Should Have Done

Craig, are you trying to say you are leaving us for Miami?

Indeed. A little humility and gratitude would not have preempted the backlash from Cleveland fans, but it certainly would have taken some of the edge off of it. I continue to be dumbfounded at how tone-deaf Lebron and his handlers were through this whole process. It’s almost pathological ignorance

YES! yes yes yes yes. If he HAD to leave, this would have been the most respectful way to do it without hurting his teammates, fans, or that sacred brand of his.
And I totally agree about the title of his special. That was no innocent mistake, and in NO WAY could that have been taken as a playful joke… Even non-Cleveland fans knew that was a fully intended slam against the city and it’s misery.

THAT’S why we’re pissed. Not because he left and we thought we owned him.

I choose to believe LeBron was not vindictive in the way he left but auto-intoxicated in the hermetically sealed world of himself and his “team.” Unlike Modell, he does not understand the rage. If we really loved him, why wouldn’t we love the great drama and his ESPN thing just like every other adorable thing he ever did or said.

We made this frankenstein. Wonder if everyone else is as sick of looking at his face right now as I am. That precious smirk is all for himself, always was. Shame on us.

lebron does not need to adjust his actions to suit the white man – j.jackson

yeap…thats how it should have gone.

at the same time it is almost easier now that we can hate him for it.

NEEDS MORE THIRD-PERSON PERSPECTIVE

I don’t think he meant any harm. I think he has no clue. He’s like a kid, who has no concept that everything has a cause and effect. He thinks he’s loved unconditionally, but he’s loved because of what he brought to us. He thinks that there are no consequences, and now he’s shocked that there are. He lives from one party to the next. He was partying when he made his decision, he took a brief break to announce it, then went back to partying, this time in South Beach. Normal people don’t operate like that.

Yay!! Denny’s back!

@Alex – he didn’t actually say that did he?

This pisses me off more because I now see how well it could have been done. What a jack-a**
/Thanks Craig

@18 – no he dint not say that, but the fact that you asked only proves what a blithering idiot j.jackson is

I gotta get rid of this picture by the way….Lebron 6′s…..disgusting.

Well, we know whose side Stern is on. As I predicted, he knows it’s a player’s league.

PDcavsinsider

Stern to fine Dan Gilbert 100k for his letter. Which Stern called ill advised and inprudent.
3 minutes ago via TweetDeck

@ Jake / 24: what are you doing with your shoes? I have 2 pairs and can’t quite decide.

@Harv 21.

Auto-intoxication? Sounds fun.

@31
yep, saw nike not being there. bad year for nike. pretty much skunked on their world cup proteges (rooney, ronaldinho -didnt even play-, ribery, drogba, cannivara). they hung with kobe (and seemed to have come out ok). would love to see them drop lebron… and feature durant. may happen but doubtful.

(but state farm HAS to drop lebron… it’s gotta happen.)

as far as college. my personal feeling is college ed is overvalued in general (eg, i’m 25 years removed from practicing my degreed profession, and i’m not unique.). but there the value of being able to hang in mainstream culture is indeed a benefit.

that said… i’m not sure ballers of lebron’s stature get much of that benefit. at least not in the basketball mills. (see: iverson, a.)

i think his advisors aren’t advancing his stated goals. to be a billionaire?

the best option is to be the ‘hometown kid’ with ‘community values’ who humbly eschewed glamour and the easy path to become the best baller ever.

second best option, take on the mantle of savior of new york basketball.

there is no third option.

but that’s my opinion on the best way to meet his stated goals. where his advisors are failing him — IN MY OPINION — is that the goal is not defined. ‘lebron, how do you want to be remembered?’ ‘lebron, what’s most important to you?’ ‘think about this seriously and let’s talk about how to get there.’

this whole thing smells like 25 year olds who want to get laid in a spectacular environment.

don’t get me wrong, i may have made the same choice at 25. and geez, the evidence, the only frame of reference they have, suggests he can’t make a wrong move.

he and his crew don’t realize that they can make a mistake. mistake being that his ‘fans’ start saying… ‘geez, he’s not as nice as i thought he was.’ ‘i don’t want to be identified with a narcissist.’ ‘i think i’ll pass on that vitamin water and go with gatorade because peyton is a regular guy.’

i want to pre-empitively say that YES IT WAS HIS CHOICE. i want to let any trolls know that it’s fair to take loyalty to community out of it and discuss this as a ‘business’ decision. and on a BUSINESS basis… he blew it.

for the record, i’m not hiding behind his heinous ‘decision’ production as the reason i think he blew it. it made him a d.b. nationally, and i’m ok with that. but even if he’d conducted this departure with class, i’d feel betrayed (yes) on a personal level.

but i would also feel as though he simply made the WRONG decision because he had the chance to be the best ever. and he pissed it away to party in south beach.

@31 – “College teaches kids how to act in the real world”
No it doesn’t. I agree Jim, it is very overrated. Tell me where in the real world would it be acceptable to see half the stuff that college students participate in.
Second, do you really think (most) Professors have a clue of what the real world is like? They sit in their bubble of Acadamia and discuss the issues of the world like its an easy problem to fix. In theory, ya, its great. In practice, unless they have had actual experience in the field, they are clueless.

@34 Sounds like the “book smart” verse “street smart” debate.

What LeBron really should have done was to tell management a few years ago that he really wanted to play with his buddies and that if they were smart they would start dumping salaries like crazy so that he could help them bring the Wades and Boshs to Cleveland.

Instead, he kept saying that winning a championship was the only thing that mattered to him. Clearly, that is important, but with who he wins it is at least as important to him.

Had he said that to management and they had ignored him, then they deserved what they got, but because he held them hostage by not treating them with respect, well, we know what happened.

I wonder what Chris Paul is thinking. He just dumped his agency for the guys over at LMRM. They’ve probably been selling CP3 on all the great capabilities they have, how ingenious they are and all the juice they have becuase of LeBron. They have been telling him that they are so powerfull they wrangled an hour of Prime-Time from ESPN/ABC for a special that is going to be basically an hour long brand rollout for one of their clients and they can do the same from him. Then it airs, not only does it come off badly in sincerce, it’s basically boring and a really bad interview. Then the reviews come in and LeBron and LMRM gets hammered. Do you think CP# is trying to get signed back with his old representation? Becuase if this was their idea of a great idea, what’s a not so great idea look like

I am a true clevelander on vacation in ohio and heard about this mess in hampton va…Lebron should have made his annoncement from cleveland and had some humility he was givne the opportunity to do what most people never get the chance to do is play sports for a living…Yea he has every right to play where he wants since he is a free agent i just think he owed cleveand a little more graxious respect and should not have handled his leaving the way he did it made us feel betrayed that he would think so little of the fans who spent money to see the team sports is big in cleveland i miss that here in va even though i am having fun and can’t wait to be home again…yes i think that this issue is blown big since i had to ask my friends back home about it and it did make the paper down here in the sports page there was a small article about it. I was angry not had him but at the way he chose to leave cleveland if he would have come to cleveland and said hey i love the fans here and they were a great support for 7 years but i want to expand my horizons i would not have felt betrayed since i left cleveland to see if i could learn stuff in va and find work but didn’t so i learned how to get around but i learned that family friends are priceless no amount of money means more that what you have in your ouwn back yeard yes i wish him luck and hope that he dose well in life but i am not happy at how our city was treated like we are the poor ophrphan child that no one loves well clevland rocks the best place in the nation we have snow up the ying yang and a cool some times hot summer but here it is over 105 on some days only 7734 turn that up side down and you know what i mean is 2 degrees cooler than we are ha ha

A guy I play soccer with called me a “heartless prick” because I thought LeBron’s charitable live TV announcement was narcissistic and cruel. The nerve of me! He’s from New Jersey, so I tied to dismiss it.

I nominate Theresa for the “Run-On Post of the Year”

Great article. Simply and classy – it’s amazing that LeBron’s handlers, who do this for a living and get paid six (seven?) figures to do stuff like this could not manage to draft a one page letter that probably took you fifteen minutes. Keep up the interesting, well-written work, Mr. Lyndall.