Yahoo! Sports Debuts Online Magazine – The Post Game, Including WFNY
January 12, 2011Chris Perez: Pure Rage On Mr. Gilbert?
January 12, 2011I love the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and not just because Mila Kunis is in it.
For those who have never seen it (*spoiler alert*….but why haven’t you seen it yet?), the movie stars Jason Segel as a guy named Peter Bretter, a musician who writes and composes the musical score for a hit television show. He’s been dating the show’s star actress, Sarah Marshall (played by Kristen Bell) for a long time and he assumes everything is going great. He’s shocked when she drops the hammer on him and tells him it’s over and that she’s leaving him for a rock star named Aldous Snow.
Anyway, needless to say, Peter Bretter is absolutely crushed by this. His work begins to suffer and everything in his life seems to be crumbling to pieces. He decides that he’s going to get away from it all and he books a vacation at a Hawaiian resort. The joke is on him, though, as Sarah Marshall is staying at the exact same resort with her new boyfriend Aldous Snow. I won’t get into what all happens from there on, but the crux of the movie is about the manner in which Peter and Sarah are trying to coexist in this awkward situation as well as how Peter works to move on from Sarah and find both new love and personal fulfillment in his professional life.
By now I can hear you asking “what on earth does any of this have to do with LeBron James and/or the Cavaliers?” Well, let me explain.
This starts with The Decision. The parallels to the Cavaliers being Peter Bretter, LeBron being Sarah Marshall, and the Miami Heat being Aldous Snow are about as obvious as can be. The Cavaliers were the behind the scenes musician providing the score to the show while LeBron James was the superstar. Maybe LeBron really was too big for the Cavaliers, but the Cavs certainly never thought this was the case. The Cavs thought everything was going great when LeBron publicly spurned them for the rock star team, the Miami Heat. In fact, in the movie, Peter finds out that Sarah had begun seeing Aldous a year before their breakup. So, too, have we since learned of LeBron’s flirtation with Pat Riley and Dwyane Wade before he and the Cavs were split up.
From that point on, things have been falling to pieces for this franchise. Dan Gilbert had his public letter to Cavs fans which blasted LeBron. The team has been losing, they were completely humiliated in their December 2nd matchup at home against the Heat, injuries have decimated the roster, and absolutely nothing has gone right this season aside from the opening night victory over Boston.
The parallels don’t between art and reality (yes, I just referred to Forgetting Sarah Marshall as art) don’t stop there. As Brian Windhorst reported earlier this week, the Heat are in Los Angeles to play the Clippers while the Cavaliers are in town to play the Lakers. Typically, both teams would stay in the same hotel, giving us yet another Sarah Marshall-esque level of awkwardness.
Well, unlike Peter in the movie, the Cavaliers aren’t going to fight through the tension. Instead, they have chosen to move hotels so the two teams don’t have to frequently run into each other in the lobby. Some may mock this move, some may approve, but it really just is what it is. The Cavaliers organization is clearly not over LeBron, which brings me back to the main point of this whole article.
In the movie, to get over Sarah Marshall, Peter wrote a Dracula puppet rock opera. The Cavaliers don’t have such a luxury. The closest they can come to that is to put together another championship contending roster. Beyond that, the Cavaliers and us fans have to learn to forget LeBron James.
Then again, LeBron himself isn’t making it easy for us to forget about him. In the wake of the Cavaliers’ horrendous loss last night to the Lakers, LeBron took to Twitter to seemingly fire back at Dan Gilbert in public. I’m sure most of you have heard about the Tweet, but in case you missed it, LeBron wrote:
Crazy. Karma is a b****.. Gets you every time. Its not good to wish bad on anybody. God sees everything!
About a hundred different thoughts went through my mind when I first heard that. The biggest thought, though, is ‘why is karma on LeBron’s side’? After all, Dan Gilbert never said anything negative about LeBron while he was a player in Cleveland, and if we’re being honest, there were some opportunities for Gilbert to deliver some harsh words at times for LeBron’s actions and performances.
Not to play the “but he started it” card here, but it was LeBron’s actions that inspired Gilbert’s letter. Whether you agree with his letter or not, there’s no denying that it came out of LeBron’s actions. It wasn’t just about LeBron leaving, either. In the wake of his Game 5 disappearance, the potential tampering, the public decision, and not even having the decency to inform the Cavaliers ahead of time that he was leaving, it’s not hard to understand the visceral, if not vitriolic, reaction Gilbert had. Maybe you don’t agree with him writing it, but you should at least understand why he did. It was LeBron James who destroyed this organization, not Dan Gilbert.
Never the less, we all know we have to move on and forget about LeBron. It’s been a long process for me personally, and one that I’m still working on, but I really thought after that December 2nd game that I was getting over it. These days, I never think about LeBron anymore nor do I think about him as the causality for the pathetic performances we’re seeing on the court. While watching the first half of the game (sorry, I was sick yesterday and couldn’t stay up for the whole game), I wasn’t thinking about LeBron whatsoever.
But LeBron just won’t be quiet. He has to keep bringing things up and putting himself in the public eye in Cleveland. You want to forget about LeBron and move on, but it’s hard when he keeps using Twitter as a tool of controversy. Dan Gilbert hasn’t been talking about LeBron one bit since his letter. He said his piece, and now he’s moved on. For the sake of all of us, I wish LeBron would do the same and just go away.
As I pointed out earlier this week, there are still plenty of positives to take out of this season, and I still stand by that belief. LeBron may want to talk about karma, but if you ask me, it’s the Cavaliers and the city of Cleveland that is owed some positive karma. After all, the fans of Cleveland’s sports teams have done nothing to deserve this anguish of losing, not to mention the humiliation of LeBron’s public mocking via Twitter. He’ll say it’s not about the fans and he has nothing against us, but how can fans of the Cavaliers not feel even a little uneasy inside when LeBron is laughing at such an embarrassing loss?
I’m sure someday all this misery will stop. It has to, doesn’t it? But for now, I’ll just keep focusing on the players who still play for the teams I follow and continue to write about the positives and the ways I think our teams can get better. So, if you’ll excuse me, I have a sock puppet rock opera to write.
15 Comments
I don’t want to ridicule anyone’s process of “getting over LeBron” – BUT, can’t we stop talking about this guy like he matters to the current Cavs roster? If the Cavs can’t stop playing like they’re broken hearted, we need to clear the roster of those afflicted and build a new team that is willing to play like professionals – not teenage girls.
I actually didn’t like that movie. Except the opera, that was good stuff.
LeBron-free WFNY. That would help me forget.
Hey Lebron: die, die, die…I can’t.
I just went from six to midnight.
@ JNeids: well done, what a scene that would be.
@ Shamrock, who I’m sure will try to post here soon enough: just don’t. Go back to your very important job.
Good stuff Rock…..The good news is that if you all loved talking LeBron at 1, you will LOVE talking about him at 2.
Fantastic article. Love the movie. The Cavs level of execution reminds me of this line from the movie “My wife wants me to do certain things I find inappropriate. If god was a city planner he would not put a playground next to sewer.”
OK, we are in the darkest months (January – NFL draft) of the darkest period of Cleveland sports in recent times. But more LeBron PTSD? Really?
You guys must be suffering blogger’s block. Here ya go:
– prepare for pitcher/catcher reporting with Manny Acta limerick contest.
– Review of Austin Carr’s new school text: “Learn Your Verbs and, uh …”
– The Butterfly Effect: A Russell Branyan Career Retrospective
– The Rob Ryan Exit Interview: “Is That a Kangaroo in Your Pouch or Are You Hiding Your Head Coaching Notes?”
You’re so welcome.
i heart photoshop
He is the little kid who will never grow up. I guess skipping college can do that to some people. How can he accept his role as the villain when he is still being bitter about the fact that everyone outside of Miami turned on him this summer? Maybe it is LeBron who should get over it.
Nice analogy but can Kyrie Irving be the Cavs’ Mila Kunis? I don’t think Manny Harris is going to fill those shoes. This just seems like the wrong year to have the NBA’s #1 pick.
chicks… maybe we can get next year’s too
Did Dan Gilbert pay the writer ofnthis dishonest piece? Dumb Gilbert didn’t stop after his venomous letter, because thereafter he commissioned a high profile law firm to investigate Miami’s alleged collusion. Had he found more fodder, you think he wouldn’t be all over Lebron?
I was over Lebron when I saw him opening night with a Heat jersey, playing against Boston. That was when I realized it was truly over.