I was wrong yesterday. This may be unchristian of me, but it doesn’t totally matter for a few hours. To quote the truly lamented Stephen Jay Gould, I now hate LeBron James with a hate which only love can understand.
The love of Cleveland, Ohio, if not the city, its rich history of professional sports, fostered since I was five years old in the summer of 1990 and Daddy took me to the bone-chilling (even on a summer’s day) Cleveland Stadium to see an Indians team which had a .500 season (and would lose 105 the next year) play Seattle, featuring a hotshot kid named Ken Griffey, Jr. I didn’t care that apart from Griffey these guys were all mediocre. I fell hard for the poetry of baseball, and the Indians became MY team. Just as the Cavaliers became MY team after Is aw a few games at Richfield Coliseum, and the Browns became MY team when I finally got used to Daddy watching or listening to them every Sunday. And I can remember 1995, when Progressive Field and Quicken Loans Arena were brand new and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Great Lakes Science Center were pristine and Tower City was the place to be and Cleveland was full of hope…even for my parents, who had seen the Drive and the Fumble and the Ehlo moment. There was nothing I looked forward to more in my pre-teen years, even through high school, than driving up the freeway to Cleveland for a game.
A decade later, we had lost two World Series, including a heartbreaking Game Seven to a shitty corporate enterprise called the Florida Marlins on my 13th birthday. The Browns left and were replaced by a new Browns with nobody who knew football running the team. The Cavaliers had been a non-entity since 1992. And the city was bankrupt, poverty-stricken, and no longer considered a potential tourist destination.
Then LeBron came, this teenager who could play like nobody since the two M.J.s retired, and suddenly the Cavs were contenders, and the Indians even had a miraculous upswing until the Curse of the Big Geek came upon them. But I’m losing the point. LeBron brought the hope back. He was personable, daring, and knew the game so brilliantly he could almost singlehandedly—in the free agent era!—give you a title. It was impossible not to love him.
That’s why last night hurt. I can understand switching to another team. I can understand wanting a certain situation for yourself. But to go on national TV, and create so much hype in the process, to casually rip the city you grew up in, the city which gave you everything, the city which held to you as the one shining beacon it had left? And never mind that this Decision (all respect to the King) might tarnish his legacy forever…
As the much superior Mr. Simmons wrote yesterday, “I think it's a cop-out. Any super-competitive person would rather beat Dwyane Wade than play with him. Don't you want to find the Ali to your Frazier and have that rival pull the greatness out of you? That's why I'm holding out hope that LeBron signs with New York or Chicago (or stays in Cleveland), because he'd be saying, "Fine. Kobe, Dwight and Melo all have their teams. Wade and Bosh have their team. The Celtics are still there. Durant's team is coming. I'm gonna go out and build MY team, and I'm kicking all their asses." That's what Jordan would have done. Hell, that's what Kobe would have done. In May, after the Cavs were ousted in the conference semifinals, I wrote that LeBron was facing one of the greatest sports decisions ever: "winning (Chicago), loyalty (Cleveland) or a chance at immortality (New York)." I never thought he would pick "HELP!"”
So…you crushed I don’t know how many spirits to enter a situation which will put your once-undisputed greatness into question.
“Winning is a huge thing for me.”
Enjoy the wins, LeBron.
Just know that in my heart of hearts, I love Cleveland and will not stop until the day I die…and I REALLY f**king hate Miami.
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