Friday, July 9, 2010
Hey Dan Gilbert, Go Fuck Yourself!
Well, that didn't take long. The shameful, poorly reasoned, and grammatically incorrect screed from Cavs owner Dan Gilbert has already retroactively made Lebron's decision look like the height of class. In said screed, Gilbert threatens LeBron's Heat with the fact that, "I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER 'KING' WINS ONE" (his mentally unhinged caps). Adding, "You can take that to the bank." That's just the kind of brilliance you should expect from the guy who had seven years to try and keep King James and could only come up with Mo Williams as an incentive. I was quite disgruntled by the way James left and wish he had stayed, but that speaks more to my own perverse desires for sports figures to follow codes of "loyalty" and other nonsense than it does to any logically reasoned argument on my part (I'm just spitballing here, but there seems to be a really sick element to sports fandom in which we want a bunch of huge guys we'll never meet to live as personifications of our poorly fleshed out heroic ideals, ideals we ourselves don't ever approach; the fact that we then turn our collective scorn and vitriol on them as soon as they act human makes us crueler than the Romans were to the Gladiators, more like the Aztecs). If I had grown up in Cleveland I couldn't have waited to get out. Dude gave them seven years and they immediately commence to spit in his face? Fuck that. Fuck Gilbert, fuck jersey burning "fans," and fuck Ohio: there's probably a reason everybody not too fat to get out leaves. Go NAFTA and, in the relatively rare cases in which they play the Cavs, Go Heat!
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Agreed. We love to build idols and tear them down. Either all of us completely misunderstood LeBron for 7 years, or he is the same person he was 5 weeks ago. Clearly, at least in this blogs esteemed opinion, the latter is true. LeBron was loyal enough to stay with a shabby Cavvy team for 7 years (anyone think this team will win more than 30 games without the still-and-always king?) He acted poorly, and no one disputes that. This behavior has been successfully forgotten, though, due to the utter incoherence and belligerence of the city of Cleveland and those who live in it. I am reminded of Michael Scott when I read Dan "the clown" Gilbert. What does "you can take that to the bank" even begin to imply? Am I to assume that there is some currency to Gilbert's gibberish that I can deposit in one of my gibberish accounts? To be fair, both he and Mr. Scott (or rather Mr. Carrel) are professionals in separate entertainment businesses, and with LeBron gone, they will occupy the same role: make me laugh.
ReplyDeleteYou both sound like idiots here.
ReplyDeletePoint: Lebron is an asshole. Counterpoint: Ohioans are fat. And broke. Suckers. Point: Lebron was disloyal. Counterpoint: I like loyalty and have values, but who really cares - it's my fault for expecting that public figures should behave like decent human beings.
You know, that goes for both Lebron and Gilbert - if you're going to give Lebron a pass for dragging his sorry ass through a nauseating public performance like he did, then you ought to think long and hard about deciding to crucify someone performing equally shamefully. Poorly does not begin to describe the way everyone acted, and Alistair here isn't helping anything by shitting all over Ohio for no apparent reason (they're not allowed to be upset? Not allowed to burn jerseys? Why?). The truth of the matter is that everyone's behaved like an ass here, from the top to the bottom, and they all should be ridiculed for it. Fuck Lebron and Dan Gilbert - I hope in the relatively rare cases when they play each other the fucking stadium burns down.
I think you're right to a large degree. My attacks on Ohions (counterpoint: reminds me a lot of onions) were met mostly meant to be in jest, but also to reveal a little bit of the disgust I felt at the jersey burning behavior. Being upset and burning things are quite different. By going the burning route, the route of lamentation, hair pulling, and wailing (which is how nearly all of them acted) the Cavs fans came across as hired mourners at a funeral. They seemed totally out of step with reality (this is sports) and like giant babies (admittedly, I'm sure my above rant comes across in much the same way).
ReplyDeleteBut, you are right, this shouldn't absolve LeBron. Sports is about loyalty (that's why we root for the home team, or the team our father roots for). And LeBron showed a lot of bad faith in betraying the loyalty of Cleveland. My point was that Gilbert and others showed an equal, if not worse, bad faith in their claiming those fans' broken hearts as their own. Gilbert, let's not forget, considered selling the Cavs to OKC. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall him signing many other local youth to multi-million dollar b-ball deals out of a loyalty to the people of Cleveland. Instead, Gilbert was loyal to the dollar. Similarly, jersey burning fans weren't loyal to anything other than an NBA title (remember their booing of LeBron in Game 5 vs. Boston? none too loyal).
So, to recap, LeBron acted poorly and lost my respect. He made me feel bad for his fans in Cleveland. Gilbert and some Cleveland fans raised my ire by falsely calling on the real fans' pain as an excuse to a) self-righteously rant and b) play with fire. Fuck all these people. To the actually kind and decent people of Cleveland: I hope you beat the Heat, but that Dan Gilbert has a stroke while you are doing so.
Dave,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that your standard for being a decent human being is wrapped up in and defined by the career decision of a 25 year-old young man who is trying to live the American dream by moving himself (by his own bootstraps, no less!) up in the world, economically speaking. I wonder what you think of me and my long and agonizing decision to work at the health sciences library this summer...
Colin,
ReplyDeleteYou miss the point. My standards for decency have been created and worn-in in the real world, from interacting with real people and real problems. They've been developing for 24 years, and will last for another 70, God willing. To think that I should do anything *other* than expect the same level of decency from a professional athlete as anyone else insults both my worldview and the concept of values. Yes, Lebron's just a 25 year-old. So why shouldn't I treat him just like anyone else? And don't give the bootstraps shit - he's one rich sonofabitch. He's probably wiped his ass with more money today than you'll see in the next two years. It's not about money. It's not about what decision he made. It's how he made it and how he conducted himself.
Alistair - spot on.
I think that you are not treating him as anyone else, and that is exactly my point. Tell me of one other profession in which you would react in such a repugnant manner to someone deciding to leave one job for another, seemingly better one? We do not hold athletes to the same standards. Instead, we project our own strange morality on them and ask them to live up to standards that we set and create for them. I think you raise some good issues about LeBron. He handled this poorly, and I certainly have lost respect for him. The ire and rage that has been repeatedly fired at him, however, is over the top and unjustified. It is still not entirely clear how LeBron has acted so indecently that his value as a human being and his true morality should be questioned. Again, treat him like anyone else: critique him for his mistakes, but do not infer from a few poor decisions who he really is. Would you really react this way if, say, a professor left Carleton to work for Harvard? you may be angry at him, probably deservedly, but would you honestly question his decency? As for the bootstrap shit, I think it is impressive that someone coming from relative poverty can make money and hopefully give some back in the form of various charities (e.g. boys and girls club). Agreed, he is now a rich sonofabitch, but since when is that a crime or a reason for moral degradation? Granted, he acted like a jackass. But don't mistake action for morality. Although they are related, they are not synonymous.
ReplyDelete