[launche]

I would have to say I find Jackman's thought process on this matter about as biased as one can imagine.  Let me just say this clearly, you make an excuse for every one except Lebron.
I don't find your arguments rationale or the least bit objective.  Do you see where you've taken this thread, how low it has gotten.  And you throw things out there like the players should try and not sleep with Lebron's mom and so on, really is that classy?  If I didn't know it I'd swear you were Dan Gilbert, you have that kind of venom and I don't understand why.

Yes Lebron love the limelight, that's where we are act as a popular culture.  That is what he grew up with I would imagine his entire life.  What may seem odd to you in that manner is normal to him.  For better or worse try to imagine you being "The Man" since you were say 12 or 13 yrs old.  Try to imagine people sucking up to you, asking for autographs etc... at age 12 yrs old.  Whatever way you grew up I'm sure that wasn't it.  Most of us can't relate to that and that's one real issue when we attempt to offer our assessments of these people.  At 25 he's had more happen in life and more complications and conflicts that many people will their entire life.  I'm not making any excuses for these guys but we have to put things in perspective.

A man (person) is only as good as their options or circumstances.  As life gets more complicated so do the decisions and consequences.  It's easy for a person with simpler options in life to criticize certain situations saying what they would or would not do etc... because they are not there. 

...Kobe severly injured huh, he wasn't injured enough to shoot the ball 24 times was he?  He could have passed it 24 times.  If he was so severly injured them why not let someone else shoot the shots.  He had capable players around him.  I have no doubt in my mind that Gasol could have carried the Lakers, no doubt. Again you are making excuses.  Isn't that narcissism if you are severly injured and you'd rather shoot your team to a lose rather that defer and give them the best chance to win?  Give me a break.

I will say it again, Jeter is a very good player who happens to play for a owner obsessed about winning at any cost.  All Jeter has to do is show up and be a good player, nothing more and nothing less.  Over time things will/have worked out in his favor.  He is not a great player, he is not a clutch player, he is not whoever you think he is.  He has not consistently stepped up bigtime in the biggest games.  I don't follow baseball closely but I would bet, and please correct me if I am wrong, that what he does in the regular season is pretty much what he does in the post season.  There's no stepping up or taking it to another level.  He does the same thing, again as I said he is a very good player and I will give him all the credit for being consistent but don't tell me he's great or raising his game to great levels.  Call him steady Jeter and that counts for a great deal.  Steady good things over time will appear to be great, or may actual be great.  I'm a good husband for the same reasons Jeter is a good player.  Am I a great husband, no, I could be adding so much more to my wife's life and I know that.  She may think I'm a great husband because I'm there everyday, I do good things and I try not to mess things up.  What he is most of all is fortunate and smart enough to realize that.  Is he classy, yes, but also let's not discount that some people are just safer than others and also more boring that others and many times safer and less exciting can come off or lead to other perceived traits.

Gotta go I just heard Steinbrenner has passed away.

[rollo]

 Who cares? As a long time sports fan of 52 years the game has changed. Hip Hop uniforms show Biz, Body Art, rules changes [ Traveling ?]. That with ticket prices only Donald Trump can afford. They can keep it. A Circus at best.
  Give me the old Knlcks and Celtics anytime. Can you say Frazier , Earl the Pearl, Bradley, , Willis Reed ?


charles

[launche]

Who cares? As a long time sports fan of 52 years the game has changed. Hip Hop uniforms show Biz, Body Art, rules changes [ Traveling ?]. That with ticket prices only Donald Trump can afford. They can keep it. A Circus at best.
  Give me the old Knlcks and Celtics anytime. Can you say Frazier , Earl the Pearl, Bradley, , Willis Reed ?


charles

Those were your glory days, let the kids of today have there's.

[jackman]

Launche,

Jeeze, let's just agree to disagree.   Lebron can play anywhere he chooses and I support his right to choose.  I don't agree with the way he chose to announce his decision but if he wins a couple titles no-one outside of Cleveland will care about the past anyway.  Kobe had a more serious issue in Colorado a few years back and I didn't think his image would ever recover.  He seems to be doing pretty well these days. 

Lebron will have a chance to show the world the kind of player he is next year and for the next 6 years in Miami.  It will make pro basketball in general more exciting and I will probably watch every Heat game televised in my market, even if I'm not rooting for the Heat.  In fairness, I didn't root for the heat before Lebron's arrival. 

My comments about Lebron's mom were a bit out of line but they were based on stories that were coming out of Cleveland long before this whole Lebron leaving episode.  I bet you won't see Delonte West in a Heat uni...

Macrojack,

You were the one who brought up the Toyota thread.  I was just having fun, pointing out the other side of your biased argument, even though my comments were obviously as biased as the ones you presented.  In this thread, I am of course biased against Lebron James.  Do you think I'd be saying this stuff if he was in a Bulls uniform!??

Cheers,

Jack

[fredgarvin]

I'm starting to wonder if Launche is related to James... 

[launche]

I wish, I'd love a spot of the roster.
I was just playing devil's advocate to Jackman and having some fun.  Also didn't want to let what I felt were false statements about various things concerning Kobe, Jordan, Bird etc...

Hey I said before Lebron handled things in a poor way and my only issue was the extent to which some folks were pushing things.  Hey given his stunt it would be easy to join the hater's parade but I've always been one to think for myself.  And I'll mention again I'm a Heat fan and long before Lebron or Wade.  But I try to be as objective as I can.  Lebron acted like an a-hole but it doesn't mean he needs to be condemned forever for it.  Same for anyone, we're only human.  Just don't get caught up in the 24 hour news cycle hype as if some little blip on the radar is the worst thing ever.  They'll write to same end of the world or he's or she's the worst person in the world story again tomorrow.  They only build them up to break them down to get ratings all along the way.

But if it makes anyone feel better:  Lebron is a scumbag, now let's play ball.

[macrojack]

The calendar says LeBron is like 25 or 26 years old. He might have an actual high school education but that is unlikely. Everything has been arranged and handled for him from the first moment half his life ago when it became apparent that he was probably going to be a strong investment. The only thing he has ever done off the basketball court is party hearty. He probably didn't get to be a kid for long. So you guys who want to paint him as some conniving mastermind are heading up the wrong anus. You can say he didn't handle it well but I contend that he didn't handle it at all. He's just a big dummy who does what he is told. I'm sure he has no idea where his money is or how much he is worth.
It isn't my intention to defend him nor to justify the events as they unfolded. My interest is in lending a realistic perspective to the situation.

ESPN and its many brethren in local news shops around the country have a vested interest in generating controversy. As long as they have you involved in whatever smarmy crap they can dream up, you will tune in and help their ratings so that they can charge that much more for their next half hour of contrived gossip. The LeBron "story" was pumped and hyped as much as they could manage so that the rest of us would respond in churlish indignation over the effrontery of that guy who thinks he's better than Jordan and doesn't appreciate the hardship some Clevelanders endure just to buy his jersey. I mean, who the hell does he think he is?

[fredgarvin]

I wish, I'd love a spot of the roster.
I was just playing devil's advocate to Jackman and having some fun.  Also didn't want to let what I felt were false statements about various things concerning Kobe, Jordan, Bird etc...

Hey I said before Lebron handled things in a poor way and my only issue was the extent to which some folks were pushing things.  Hey given his stunt it would be easy to join the hater's parade but I've always been one to think for myself.  And I'll mention again I'm a Heat fan and long before Lebron or Wade.  But I try to be as objective as I can.  Lebron acted like an a-hole but it doesn't mean he needs to be condemned forever for it.  Same for anyone, we're only human.  Just don't get caught up in the 24 hour news cycle hype as if some little blip on the radar is the worst thing ever.  They'll write to same end of the world or he's or she's the worst person in the world story again tomorrow.  They only build them up to break them down to get ratings all along the way.

But if it makes anyone feel better:  Lebron is a scumbag, now let's play ball.

I was enjoying your posts! Yours and Jackman's. Sport is all about bias, that's part of what makes it fun.

[rklein]

quote by macrojack

The calendar says LeBron is like 25 or 26 years old. He might have an actual high school education but that is unlikely

From my previous posts (only 2 or 3) on this thread, I mentioned that I grew up in Akron and currently live in Hinckley, Ohio(25 min. from Cleveland).  I have also mentioned that Lebron James has the right to play and live anywhere he chooses.  I also mentioned that the way it all happened was the epitomy of narcissism and bad judgement.  However... the above quote seems to stereotype and is not accurate.  Actually, Lebron James was an honor roll student at St. Vincent St. Mary High and did graduate with probably a very good high school education.

Randy

[jackman]

quote by macrojack
From my previous posts (only 2 or 3) on this thread, I mentioned that I grew up in Akron and currently live in Hinckley, Ohio(25 min. from Cleveland).  I have also mentioned that Lebron James has the right to play and live anywhere he chooses.  I also mentioned that the way it all happened was the epitomy of narcissism and bad judgement.  However... the above quote seems to stereotype and is not accurate.  Actually, Lebron James was an honor roll student at St. Vincent St. Mary High and did graduate with probably a very good high school education.

Randy

Great post!  I deleted my original post because I'm trying to keep things civil with some of the Lebron fans on the thread.  Needless to say, I agree with you 100% on this one.  Please refrain from interjecting sound logic into the arguments and wild speculations of people who prefer to live in a dream world. 

Some people would rather pretend that Lebron is not responsible for his actions because he is uneducated and a mere puppet, completely at the mercy of the greedy business types who control his every move.    You pointing out that he's actually a pretty smart guy who went to a good high school and got a decent education only serves as a buzz-kill. 

It's much more fun to just assume poor Lebron is just a victim who deserves our sympathy.  Those people from Cleveland are so mean...why aren't they thanking him for all of the good things he did for them?    

I was a fan of Lebron until the last playoff series when he played poorly and then had the nerve to say he "spoiled" the Cleveland fans over the years with his great play and implied that he was above criticism.  If I had known about his lack of education, maybe I would have thought differently.   

Cheers,

J

[TheChairGuy]

LeBron is a dick....let's face it, most of us were at 25yo and we have, in all, rather ordinary skills.

This guy is 6'8" 260lbs and runs and leaps like a gazelle...for that he is paid more handsomely than 99.999% of the folks on earth.  It's real easy to be an arse-hole at 25yo with all that going for him.

I'll cut him a lot less slack if he still acts like this in 4 years...but for now, he's just rich, talented, immature - but too young to know otherwise

John

[launche]

I try to stay away but I can't, this is too amusing. 

I agree I don't think Lebron is some brick head.  If he were that dumb he would have stayed in Cleveland.  He may be any bad name you can call him and that's fine too, nobody said he had to be a really nice guy.  Last time I checked he hasn't harmed anyone.  He hurt some people's feelings, people's feelings get hurt everyday, many times by accident (any married man would know).  It's interesting how people want other people to do things they way they would do it or by their set of standards.  People are their own entities and will do things other agree and disagree with. 

Look I don't know, I have a hard enough time to to figure my life out and what's going on in the head of my spouse and kids to try to unravel the moral and ethical fabric of athletes.  But I will always call the BS criticism that we tend to let spew from our mouths like we somehow have a handle on it all.  When the fact of the matter is most the people with opinions lives are probably rather so simplistic, mundane or uninvolving that this type of judgement gives them something to get excited about. Look at our media whore culture and tell me I'm wrong.  I've said it once before but it bares repeating.  Get out of other people's lives and get into your own.  I say it to my family, my friends and as often as I can.

Look the NBA is top heavy, in about the last 30 yrs or so about 8 or so teams have won the title, think about that.  And of those 8 the Lakers and Celtics have dominated most of the time.  It just likely wasn't going to happen in Cleveland.  And let me just say that New York has no excuse for being as bad as they are.  It's a crying shame and I'm sure David Stern wants to slap that whole crew.

As far as Lebron giving up in the playoffs etc... I can't speak to that no one knows except Lebron.  Now if some of the personal rumors are true then can you blame someone for being a bit distracted.  But none of that matters as much as the real point.  Where is the hell were his teammates?  How about some help, those guys just didn't help that guy out.  Nobody can play great every game, it's logical a player is going to have bad games.  Where was the help? Please answer that question.  Yes I guess that Cleveland fans were spoiled.  If he has a bad game or two and they rip him to shreds instead of asking where's the help then I can see his frustration.

Gasol and Artest bailed Kobe out plain and simple.  They lose if relying on Kobe but who got the credit for the win, Kobe.  Please give Pau Gasol his due, Kobe wins NOTHING if Gasol isn't there.  Jordan doesn't win 6 without Pippen,  Horace and what we all came to know as the ultimate role players.  Let's not forget a great coach, a great system and a great and consistent coaching staff.  Bird doesn't win without Mchale, Parrish and the rest.  Magic doesn't win without Kareem, Worthy, Cooper etc...  Where's Lebron's Pippen, where's his Mchale, his Kareem, his Gasol, his Garnett, his Duncan.

Now he has some help, judge him more harshly now for sure.  But not when he's a one man show going up against a team who is beating him as a team like Boston, Spurs, Magic etc...  The regular season is fine to win all those games but in a seven game series against the same good team, the truth eventually comes out.  No one else stepped up to give him a break, to bail him out.  He had to be the man every game, ever position, every shot.  It's unbelievable how biased we can be.  Would I want a relief from that, absolutely.  Did he take the easy way out, if the hard way is staying in Cleveland then yes he did.  I would make that decision 100 times out of a hundred.  it should have never even been a question to anyone other than Cleveland fans.  They owner knows he should leave, he was just praying he was stupid or sentimental enough not too. 

The Cleveland fans should be pissed at Lebron, I would be too, but I'd be for a minute and then put things in perspective.  But they should also be even more pissed at that CAV's organization for not giving him help to win.  A successful organization does that.  That's one reason why Gilbert wrote that dumb letter, to further cast Lebron as the scapegoat and try to paint himself as the victim, it wasn't me I'm one of you, it was he who betrayed us.  When the fan's emotions settle a bit and they think about it they will start to realize how much Gilbert played a part in all this. 

The Heat knew they had to get Wade some help after having Wade suffer with those mediocre teams. Boston knew that with Pierce, the Lakers knew that as well.  The Lakers never won when they did not have big time talent.  What happened the years when Kobe didn't have other big time talent.  They either didn't make the playoffs or lost in the first round.  He was running around shooting 25-35 shots a night, scoring 50,60, 80 points to win games.  The moment Kobe was tired of that which doesn't win rings and was talking about leaving town.  Well what do you know, Pau Gasol the gift from the basketball gods was delivered via Lakers brass Jerry West in a shady back door deal.  And the next year they are right back contending for a title.  Let's deal with the facts folks, not being emotional and pissed, I'm talking facts or sound logic.  Maybe that's too much for this thread.

So what Dan Gilbert failed to do was realize his star couldn't beat everyone by himself and was getting frustrated.  Same situation the Lakers were in, same for the Heat, same for Boston.  They all had a very good to great player surrounded by average talent and they all went out and got them big time players to help.  And that's why they all are winners and the CAV's are not.  So don't be pissed at Lebron (too much) it should have never gotten to this point.  The CAV's should have found a way to get that guy some help.  Look at the Magic, you don't think they have tried and are trying to get Dwight Howard some help.  It may not ultimately work out but they are trying. Unfortunately the talent they've brought in just hasn't lived up to the spotlight.  And let me just say Vince Carter should be ashamed of himself.  If I had Howard on my team I would try harder than that.  His teammates are letting him down and it will be no surprise when he leaves as well.  Maybe to join Durant and Westbrook.  Trust me Howard see's the landscape and he isn't stupid either.

[jackman]

This would be more fun if we were a bar and talking about this stuff over a beer or two.  I'd even buy Launche a Dos Equis or two! 

I hope the Heat play well this year because it is no fun to root against a bad team.  What fun is that?

Cheers,

J

[launche]

It sure would be more fun.  Here we might just come off like a bunch of crazies.  A bar and some beers is normally how it's done.  Damn internet is taking all the human interaction out of our lives.



Cheers Jackman 

[jackman]

It sure would be more fun.  Here we might just come off like a bunch of crazies.  A bar and some beers is normally how it's done.  Damn internet is taking all the human interaction out of our lives.

Cheers Jackman 

Same here my man.  I just returned from a 25 mile training bike ride and could use a cold one!  Since I've been riding/training I rarely have more than one or two beers per week and have become a lightweight. 

At least the internet lets people from all over the world argue about things like sports and politics!  This thread has been fun and I hope I didn't insult anyone.  It's just sports and most of my comments were in jest!

Cheers,

J

[lonewolfny42]

So is Lebron coming to New York?

No....but the Cleveland fans are taking care of their unwanted clothing items....for a good cause....

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hSX9clI5CVwkL3Luo1atbc43V1NwD9H304000