Saturday, July 10, 2010

My thoughts on The King

Many people are arguing whether or not Lebron James made the right decision to leave Cleveland to become the third member of the new “Big 3” in Miami. The answer to this question depends largely upon who you ask. I can assure you that the fans in Cleveland are feeling betrayed, or think that Lebron is being a coward. Dan Gilbert, the Cavaliers owner, reacted very immaturely saying that the Cavaliers will win a championship before Lebron James does. “You can take that to the bank.” He also mentions that the Lebron James quit in the second round of the playoffs against the Celtics. I can hardly put any credit to his comments, because wasn’t he in the running to sign Lebron James again? I wouldn’t want a guy who quits in the playoffs on my team again. I think the owner is just a little butt-hurt about not getting his star player back. Meanwhile, the fans in Miami are now screaming chants of “Beat LA, Beat LA.” With this Miami team stacked, they could have a chance to finally take down the Lakers this coming year.
Many people are forming their own opinions about the whole situation. My opinion might be a little different than most, but here it goes. I think Lebron James made the best decision for his career. I know most of you reading this blog don’t play video games where you get to become a coach of a professional team, or even make yourself be a professional career. When I play football or basketball games where I’m a player/coach in a dynasty, I get bored of staying with the same team. Most the time I’m able to win a championship 75% of the time, and that gets boring, so I go to some crappy team and build them up. Now I know that is the complete opposite of what Lebron James is doing, but the guy spent seven years trying to get a ring, and was never given enough good teammates to take him to the top. There are many reasons why professionals play in the NBA. Many play for the money. Some play for the championships, and some just play because they love the game of basketball. To me, there is no problem with either reason. It’s apparent that Lebron James wants a championship and feels that he has a better chance of doing it in Miami than he does in Cleveland. Don’t get me wrong, I have great admiration for players that stay loyal to their team. John Stockton played his whole career in Utah and never won a championship. Dan Marino also stayed with his Dolphins and never won a championship. All in all I understand where he’s coming from.
The only thing I did not like was how Lebron James turned it into a reality show. I think he could have handled things a lot better instead of burning the bridges he had with Cleveland. I think if he would have told Cleveland that he needed some superstars of his own, or he was leaving, Cleveland would have tried harder to get rid of some of the cap room to sign some players. When Lebron told him that he was dedicated to winning championships, it was hard for me not to think he was going somewhere else. Cleveland, to me, didn’t seem to try that hard to sign a Robin to Lebron’s Batman. What did you want Lebron to do? He’s a winner, and he will go where he has the best chance of winning. Part of me thinks Lebron wanted out, because Cleveland wasn’t getting him anybody, but I still think he should have helped them in bringing in other big superstars.
To close out of this blog I would like to criticize my Jazz for their offseason inactivity. They just let Boozer and Kyle Korver walk out of Utah and into Illinois without even putting up a fight. I’m not overly concerned about Kyle Korver, because he only averaged seven points a game, and was a hit and miss with how good he was. If the Jazz expect to win with the current team that they have they will be worse than they were last year, not better. In my honest opinion, I think that they need a center that is big and can play defense. I was kind of hoping that Amare Stoudemaire would have come to the Jazz, but now he’s with New York. We’ll see how the rest of the offseason pays out, but I sure hope that we get someone down low that can play defense, otherwise we will not be able to defend Pao Gasol or Andrew Bynum this season.