I completely understand that athletes mean way more to fans than fans mean to athletes. In fact, everyone understands this. Fans agree to dish out ridiculous amounts of money to watch their favorite athletes play, to wear their shoes and jerseys and anything else with their name on it. In return, athletes do their best to perform and pretend to give a crap about the fans. That's just how it works. Part of every athletes' carefully crafted image is how good they are at acting like they care about their fans. Everyone is perfectly alright with this arrangement . . . Until someone screws it up, and then all hell breaks lose. Lebron James royally screwed this up. He had every right to leave
Deciding that he needed to have an entire hour devoted to himself to announce something that literally took about 15 seconds was essentially like a guy hijacking the halftime show of the Super Bowl to break up with a long time girlfriend who coincidentally had bought him tickets to the game (some analogy credit there goes to Bill Simmons). James didn't even have the common decency to tell the Cavaliers he was leaving before the rest of the world found out so they could start coming up with a practical contingency plan. He just strung them along for the ride, giving them hope until the very end. Lebron did however have time to refer to himself in the third person almost half a dozer times and to talk about all he had done for
Lebron James forgot something crucial when he decided it was a good idea to flip off everyone in Cleveland. While James, or any other athlete for that matter may not care about fans or what they think, they need to remember that without the fans, they wouldn't matter at all. Athletes are rich because fans are willing to pay to see them and where the same gear they do. Athletes are famous because fans care about what they do. If you took away the fans, Lebron James would be Sydney Crosby. Sure, people would kind of know who he was, and they might watch a playoff game or two, but overall he'd be irrelevant to our society as a whole. Without fans, King James would be less important than Landon Donovan was before the World Cup. So while fans might care way more about athletes than athletes care about fans, the athletes need to be careful not to upset the balance because at the end of the day, its the fans money that lines the athletes pockets.
3 comments:
Ravi,
I think you are completely correct on your assessment of Lebron James. I found it interesting though that you left out Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan's names. Many people in basketball have now pointed that James is not a winner, and Michael and Kobe wouldn't have done this. Lebron James cares more about advertising what he does than he cares about what he does. I never liked Lebron because of his ego and he looks like Osama bin Laden when he grows out his nasty beard. Enough to get any good soldier to dislike you.
You hit on the big ones that not too many people are talking about. The fans. Some people have really dogged ESPN for this stunt too. And they should. ESPN promoted exactly what is wrong with the NBA (which the players are worse in the NBA than any other sport per capita). How do us fans feel? Pissed!
Kevin Durrant is the epitome of what the fans want from a big time player. Someone who cares about the kids who look up to him, someone who cares about who is writing him the checks. Lebron may have won the MVP, but you don't see Durrant leaving because he needs more talent. He is committed to make the team develop around him.
As for your previous post of Jesse Jackson I thought the same thing. That man doesn't want racism to end, because if it does he owes a lot of apologies. My assumption (a serious psychological assessment of him) is that he hates white people for murdering MLK. Honest opinion. He was dear friends with him, and was a very quick responder to the incident. Yet I think MLK would be ashamed of Jesse Jackson's actions since. MLK fought against people like Jesse Jackson. My assessment of his comments?
Slave owners don't pay slaves millions of dollars.
Slaves don't sign contracts.
Slaves don't get to decide where they go when free agency is up.
Slaves don't get an hour long special on TV unless it is explaining how horrible it was in the 1800s on PBS.
Slaves aren't usually referred to as King.
Jesse Jackson is an idiot, which is why he stuck up for another one, Lebron James. Both losers, and care nothing about the audiences that pay their bills.
Ravi...you make me laugh!!!
Oh yeah & I'm just waiting for the Lakers to Three-Peat anyway...my guess is they won't have to beat the Heat to do it either!!
One major reason I left out MJ and Kobe from this post is that MJ and Kobe are killers and Lebron just isn't, its not in his DNA. The problem is, every one of us wanted him to be a killer because physically he's the most impressive thing the NBA has ever seen. We wanted him to be a killer because if he was then he'd have a chance to be the G.O.A.T. As it is, he's basically a more jovial version of Vince Carter. An immensely talented guy who just doesn't have that killer instinct. There's a reason there's only one Michael, and only a few other guys in that category, such as Bird and Kobe. Lebron is as talented as anyone the leagues ever seen (although a better jumper would be nice) and at the end of his days his stats might match up with anyones, but right now, I just don't ever see him being in that category.
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