Very true Irish. I would also add obviously Ray Allen taking his talents to South Beach.
I hear what you are saying. Lebron was wrong to leave like he did. That said though it is a business. He was a free agent. His obligation to Cleveland had expired.
Most of the greats had some not so nice sides to them on and off the basketball court.
I can't get mad at James for leaving, not when the Thunder owner moved the Supersonics to Oklahoma City, primarily because he couldn't get what amounted to welfare money for a new stadium. Business is business.
I actually supported him leaving Cleveland for Miami, I thought it was the sensible move if he really wanted a ring. Hell Kevin Garnett left Minnesota for Boston, as we remember.
King James (yes he finally truely earned that crown) just did the worst possible PR move on his way out that turned him from another Michael Jordan successor to the NBA's Ric Flair: The #1 heel.
But other than that, to belittle James (and the Heat) for winning their ring is just silly. They earned it, and they didn't, well the Thunder and Celtics and everybody else should've fucking played better. He's been needing a championship to make do with the hype and attention given him for all these years, and that title lifts a whole lot of weight off his back. It reminds me when Kobe Bryant finally won a championship without Shaq's help.
Really I couldn't care less if the player is a saint or a dick. It's been endlessly debated for over 20 years about Isiah Thomas being snubbed from the Dream Team. Should he've been on the team? Absolutely, he was one of the best, hard playing NBA stars of that era. He was absolutely the most ruthless, inconsiderate, dirty-playing son of a bitch star of his era too, but would anybody sympathize with my feeling that at least it was OK to be a douche when fighting for titles instead of most of these modern atheletes who seem rather indifferent?
I mean NBA TV recently did a terrific documentary on the 20th anniversary of the Dream Team. All those members danced around the Isiah Thomas controversy, with Michael Jordan outright lying that he had nothing to do with Thomas getting snubbed.
But fact was this: Most if not everybody on the Dream Team fucking HATED HATED HATED Isiah Thomas.
Jordan despised his guts, never forgiving Thomas for his team walking out of that playoff defeat without shaking the Bulls' hands. Jordan played with Pippen, who also hated Thomas and admitted in that doc he didn't want to play with him on the DT. Jordan was a close associate of both Charles Barkely (who agreed with Pippen) and the elder Magic Johnson (Jordan was one of the first players to learn about Johnson contracting AIDS), and of course Johnson was close to Larry Bird.
So all that starpower networking, it's not a surprise Thomas wasn't on the Dream Team. He's a douche, a bad (if well-earned) reputation that obscured that he was awesome.
