See that grainy, America's Most Wanted style picture? Good, now memorize it. If you ever see this man punch him in the gut. Spit in his face. He is all that is wrong with sports journalism. A shameless provacateur, a mock-outrage anger junkie. A man who writes highly opinionated, less than brilliant takedowns of the disgusting news media's fawning over LeBron and intersperses them with fawning bullshit coverage. This man is the enemy and I hate him with everything I'm worth. Either that or it's the most boring part of the year for followers of the NBA, post free agency excitement, post draft, pre warm up camps, and pre International Basketball contest that will determine which country has the best role players (all the stars are too busy to play at the FIBA 2010 World Championship, including the stars from other countries). In the absence of actual coverage, I propose we turn on each other. Why not? We've already turned on LeBron.
But some of us, Wojnarowski included, turned on LeBron way back when the season was still happening, well before the Decision, a remarkably stupid and respect burning event (in all eyes, but Miami's) in which LeBron announced his decision to leave Cleveland for tax free South Florida. While the decision was stupid and dropped the real LBJ's credibility (but not to a point he can't recover from), it does make sense if we follow the twisted path of one story line. This path was pursued by many fans, including self-proclaimed, "Hey I'm a fucking FAN, OK?" Bill Simmons. The story is that LeBron James doesn't care about winning (and he's probably un-American). Followers of this storyline insist that Jordan, Bird, and Magic all cared so much about winning, which is what makes them great, and that all LeBron cares about is dunks, which makes him less than great. It would seem beyond obvious that the aforementioned dudes played on teams that featured ridiculous talent and that LeBron didn't. Nonetheless, as these pricks have taken to the airwaves to proclaim that they would never, ever, do what LeBron did, I guess it needs to be pointed out. So here goes: Michael Jordan played with Scottie Pippin. Remember him? He took the Bulls to 50 plus wins and a barn-burning second round of the playoffs on his own. Jordan also had one of the best coaches, if not the best coach (but you should all know my opinion on the matter: he's not) in Phil Jackson. It wasn't Jordan who taught Rodman how to rebound. Indeed, Rodman had already logged 3 of the top 5 rebounding seasons of all time when he joined the Bulls. Not to mention the countless other All-Stars, 3 Point Contest Winners, all NBA defensive players, and all NBA team players who played with Jordan. I'm pretty sure Magic and Bird had similar, if not quite as many, gifts on their respective teams (Jabar, Riley, McHale, and Parish), but I wasn't paying very close attention to Basketball in the years before I was born. None of these guys were made good by Magic, Bird, or Jordan. They were already good. They may have been given the chance to shine on a bigger stage, maybe they were even made slightly better, but without the fad three, those teams were all very good.
Now, take the case of the Cavs. LeBron played with Mo Williams and Big Z. Very arguably, these two guys owe their status as having been All-Stars to his play. Similarly, fired coach Mike Brown, who won Coach of the year in 2009, almost certainly owed that to LeBron. And... that's pretty much it. The Cavs for the last two years were a 60 plus win team. If you want to measure LeBron against Michael Jordan you can measure how much each man's presence swung their team's abilities. When his airness returned, the Bulls gained 17 wins over the year he had been totally absent, and set the NBA record for the best season ever at 72-10. If the Cavs drop by less than this from their 66 ('08-'09), 61 ('09-'10, a season LeBron sat out the last half dozen games of) win heights, then we will have decisively proved Jordan better than LeBron. If they don't, however, I'm sure there will be some new excuse for the King's inferiority.
The point of this isn't that LeBron didn't break a lot of hearts and disgust a lot of people (me included) when he announced that he was going to Miami. The point is that if you were breathing down LeBron's neck in May for not wanting to win enough, for not being enough of a competitive asshole, then you should have cheered this new Miami team on. If, on the other hand, you hated him then and you hate him even more now (I'm looking at you Simmons, Wojnarowski), then I suspect that you were just looking for an excuse to tear him down. And that makes you a Michael Jordan level asshole, but with no chance of winning the NBA Finals.
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