LeBron James: America's Biggest Douchebag?

Young Star Snubs Cleveland
Again With Newspaper Ad

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

For an image-conscious guy as concerned with his brand as LeBron James is, you'd think after the PR devastation he suffered last month that he'd seek out someone other than homeboy Maverick Carter for career advice.

Tuesday's full-page ad (PDF) in the Akron Beacon Journal certainly was a nice step, but it came a day after former Cav and new Heat teammate Zydrunas Ilgauskas did the same thing in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

If LeBron had some rift with Cavaliers officials -- and clearly he did because 1) there was no mention of the words "Cleveland" or "Cavaliers" in the Beacon-Journal ad and 2) that whole Dan Gilbert thing -- then by all means, he can stick to his seemingly principled guns and give them the silent treatment for the balance of his career.

But what James fails to recognize is that it's never the team that a once-beloved player is trying to say goodbye to when he pulls the ole full-page-ad move. It's never the other guys from the locker room or the coach or the general manager.

It's the people who came out night after night to support that player and his team, paid for expensive tickets in a city whose economy has been among the worst in the country and still paid $20 for parking, bought his jerseys and his shoes, trash-talked NBA fans from other cities and believed with every piece of their hearts that they were finally going to see a champion along the shores of Lake Erie.

When talking about winners in Cleveland, they would no longer have to consult their grandparents to once again recall the days of Jim Brown because they knew it was just a matter of time before LeBron carried the Cavaliers and their fans to the promised land.

Sure as a group we had some behavioral issues on July 8, but can you blame us? Illogical fans called James a traitor and a liar, but those in the know know he didn't really lie about anything. Following the philosophy of noted thinker Rod Tidwell -- "It's not show friends; it's show business," -- James made a decision he thought gave him the best chance to win multiple NBA championships, and he gets to play alongside two all-stars who are good friends to boot. I'd have done the same thing.

What we had the problem with was his calculated, hour-long disembowelment of our proud city on a blockbuster television special that proved to be one of ESPN's most watched programs this year. Because of James, bloggers and talk-radio callers have a lifetime supply of let's-laugh-at-Cleveland ammunition, as if there wasn't enough of that already out there.

So would it kill him to maybe try to help us with the healing process? Perhaps drop a note in The Plain Dealer expressing gratitude for the seven years that Clevelanders supported him? And maybe hint at an apology that he could have handled that whole circus better, simply by not making it a circus?

Again, it's not Dan Gilbert he'd be thanking; it's James' broke-ass former neighbors in a depressed city who'd probably like to hear something nice from an old friend one of these days.