The News Lampoon.com

The King James Version

The King Who Never Really Was

By Mickey Sartre, News Lampoon cub reporter

August 27, 2010, Cleveland--Northeast Ohio’s version had everyone believing a hopey-dreamy promise that he would bring a championship to his beloved home.  The last had come in 1964 when Jim Brown led Cleveland to the NFL title.  Brown played here his entire football career.  The thought of him wearing anything other than an orange helmet is unfathomable (Syracuse, where Brown played football and lacrosse, also wore orange helmets).  Some think it was a better time and forget that Brown, though a legend, was no saint.  He had more than his share of personal problems, and many thought him selfish for retiring to Hollywood after nine years of professional football.  But he gave all he had to his Cleveland team, and when he left, he never seemed to regret his decision.  LeBron James gave seven years to the Cavaliers, and, like Jim Brown, is entitled to do what he wants with his life, even if The Promise was never realized.

Perhaps a better comparison is Bernie Kosar, who left Cleveland when Coach Bill Belichick unceremoniously released him mid-season in favor of Todd Philcox.  Kosar, from Boardman, would have retired a Brown had it been his choice.  Like LeBron, Bernie almost led his hometown team to the Promised Land.  He eventually won his ring in Dallas (as perhaps LeBron will in Miami) but his heart remains in Northeast Ohio, where, like Jim Brown, he is revered.  Bernie tried to contact LeBron to discuss the merits of staying put but got the royal brush-off.

LeBron had told us the Cavs had “the edge” in the sweepstakes for his talents, but Cleveland sports fans smelled trouble with the pronouncement that his already long-awaited choice would be announced not from Ohio but from Connecticut in an hour-long “special” to be broadcast by ESPN.  He had deigned to accept offers from his suitors at his Cleveland offices, had accepted his most recent MVP award at The University of Akron, done interviews at his old high school, St. Vincent-St. Mary, also in Akron.  Now he’s going to Connecticut?  Uh-oh.  At least, we thought, it will be over, and we were assured by The King’s men that within the first ten minutes of the broadcast our agony would mercifully be put to an end.  But the court jester, er, “interviewer,” Jim Gray, paid by The King, managed to drag it out for a full half-hour, asking such penetrating questions as “Do you still bite your fingernails?”—while we bit ours.

At long last, “The Question” was asked and “The Answer” given.

“I will take my talents to South Beach. . . .”

As if going to Connecticut to make this excruciatingly drawn-out public service announcement wasn’t bad enough, it was (here comes that word again) entitled “The Decision.”  One can only hope that this was merely another blunder by The King’s suddenly-inept team.  Anyone remotely familiar with Cleveland sports history has heard of “The Drive,” “The Fumble,” “The Shot,” all synonymous with Cleveland sports misery.  Now add The Decision to that list.  Twist the knife a little more.  We’re Cleveland sports fans, we can take it.

LeBron’s charity work in hometown Akron might be unparalleled, but now, looking back, one wonders if those altruistic bike-a-thons were really “all about the kids.”  The money made from his self-serving, self-indulgent broadcast went to The Boys and Girls Clubs of America, but the boys and girls in attendance seemed to have gotten short shrift, not even meriting a mention from His Highness.  (How many times did they show The King’s cute new vitamin water commercial?)  This night was all about LeBron, and knowing there would be fallout, he used the kids as a shield.

The King’s crown, his “brand,” is tarnished, and even worse for the brand than the anger and disgust the “look-at-me” event garnered, the brand has become a joke—overnight.  Witness the ESPYS, an event in which LeBron previously had enthusiastically participated, had hosted, used as a platform, but mysteriously skipped this year.  He must have gotten the heads up because he was the butt of numerous jokes throughout, with Tiger Woods and his recent troubles coming in a distant second.  Bad timing, bad for the brand.  And on ESPN!  The same outlet that had only nine days before partnered with him to broadcast The (bad) Decision.

How far we have fallen!  How heavy the crown!

We remember reading about LeBron in the local papers before he was The King, watching him on ESPN when he was a mere fourteen-year-old princeling; discussing whether all the exposure he was getting at such a young age was a good thing; a little later, whether he should go to college or straight to the NBA.  We were split about this early, more innocent decision in The King’s life.  Most said, “NBA, no question.”   LeBron’s world was different than ours; he’d already been schooled by experience and advice from the likes of his idol, Michael Jordan.  He was media savvy and universally praised as “a young man who certainly handles himself well.”  And by the way, he was already one of the best basketball players on the planet.

The Chosen One of course chose to forego college, and when the Cavs won him in the NBA lottery, it seemed a gift from God.  Cynics thought it suspicious—the odds were astronomical, the ping pong balls were weighted—which made us all the more certain in our belief it was divine intervention.  At last!  Our luck had turned.  Talk about Hope and Change!  Soon, Cleveland would no longer be the Rodney Dangerfield of cities, no longer be “The Mistake by the Lake.”  LeBron would be our savior.  And for a time it seemed he was.

Now LeBron James has forsaken Ohio’s gloomy North Coast to realize his hoop dreams in Florida’s glitzy South Beach with fellow superstars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, something it now appears these three amigos (a-ME-gos, some call them) had been planning for at least three years and that they are certainly entitled to do.

In what seemed like only minutes (actually about two hours) after The Decision, Dan Gilbert released a sarcasm-drenched open letter to Cavs fans with many upper-case letters and irony-denoting quotation marks.  The letter had a loud, unhinged quality to it which many in the national media seized upon.  What is this Gilbert guy, some sort of a MAD MAN?  Perhaps, but he was our mad man, and we were soothed by Gilbert’s tone and timing.  Gilbert said what many in and around his adopted city wanted to hear.  We too were feeling unhinged, and Gilbert’s feisty, bare-knuckled response was a welcome tonic.

When asked about “The Letter,” LeBron said Gilbert might regret writing it someday.  Asked at a recent charity golf tournament about LeBron’s decision, Michael Jordan said he could not imagine leaving Chicago to join forces with rivals Isiah Thomas, Magic Johnson, or Larry Bird.  Charles Barkley has expressed similar sentiments. Since then LeBron has “tweeted” retribution against those who have spoken out against him, prompting Barkley to call him a “punk.”

The day after The Decision, down in Miami, James, Wade, and Bosh were hailed in a flashy celebration as The Three Kings, leaving many to wonder which will wear the crown.  Meanwhile, up north, a local television station, perhaps inspired by Dan Gilbert’s thundering missive, had already dubbed James “The Traitor.”  His jersey was being burned, dragged through the mud, cut to pieces; his image everywhere being defaced, erased—The King Who Never Really Was.  Cleveland sports fans know they will get along without him.  They got along without the Browns, which at first was like having an earache and a toothache at the same time.  Losing LeBron is a minor headache in comparison.  They ain’t even close.  Everyone knows Cleveland's a football town.