Portrait of young man However, I defied all of my sports logic and the general consensus around the nation, and I actually kind of adopted the Miami Heat as a secondary team that I kind of followed and I rooted for.
Mostly because of Lebron James and mostly because I think America is innately racist.
Now, I don't think everyone is racist nor do I think they're card-carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan. But I think we react to certain things. We demonized individuals for certain actions and I think the color of that person's skin has a lot to do with how we react.
Lebron James didn't kill anyone. He didn't get high or drunk and go driving (and get caught, anyways). He wasn't fighting dogs. He didn't roll into a club with a gun and fire it into his own leg. He wasn't hauling a half-ton of coke across state lines.
James is a dumb kid that's been told how fucking special he is for HIS ENTIRE LIFE and he frankly doesn't know how else to act. He's told what a global icon he can become and he acts on that not realizing the ancilliary outcomes.
I think James is super special and if you can't overcome what you think of him personally to realize this, then you are flawed and you probably really don't like basketball. It's why I love him. I love watching him play the game.
Unfortunately, we're starting to build a pretty good case against James being very good. I think its all mental, 100 percent.
We have the 2010 meltdown in the playoffs when he quit his team. There was "The Decision." Now, we have three rounds of superior play against the likes of the Chicago Bulls and Boston Celtics where he was outstanding.
We have the 2011 Finals now. James was, without a doubt, inferior in the last six games and, maybe more than anything, it prevented the Miami Heat from winning the world championship.
No, it wasn't the lack of role players. It wasn't Chris Bosh not "being a superstar." It was James. If he does his normal damage there's a really good chance the Heat win the title, and not the Mavericks.
This is fact. The Mavericks won this title fair and square and it was their defense against James that paved the way for that title. On the other hand, I've watched James carve up defenses as good as -- and better -- than the Mavericks' and I had little doubt watching the last several games that James could not have found better shots.
It's disappointing. Not that the Mavericks won, but because it really seemed too easy. That sounds cocky. And a little ridiculous considering these games were all close and came down to the fourth quarter. The point is that never once did I really worry about Lebron James taking over in the fourth quarter and scoring 20 for a Heat win.
That's disappointing. We can really consider James damaged goods at this point. I really think that he was too good for so long that he doesn't know how to A) get better or B) take criticism. I also don't think he knows how to handle the media or talk to people. These niceties that we take for granted are things he never learned or never needed to learn. He had other people do it. He's a professional now and its killing his image. He missed out on the natural growth a player receives in college. He missed out on the growing pains of being a professional.
He's retarded, frankly. It's partly his fault. James isn't some result of the system, although its safe to say he's the bearings, pistons, cogs and screws of a gigantic machine that I think has snowballed without his doing.
James is not a victim. He's also not an innocent bystander. He's a tragic mix of both.
