Dwayne Wade’s play this upcoming season will prove if LeBron’s decision was emotional or professional.
The thing Heat fans are overlooking is just how bad Wade was even with tons of rest and how hated that team was, even years after the decision. He regrets it. The whole process. He admitted it. He isn’t sad about winning or the accolades, that’s what he went there to do. He accomplished that. He has absolutely no loyalties to Miami in any way. Heat fans deluded themselves into thinking LeBron was sold on being in Miami.
I think that team knew it had a timetable from the beginning. They talked about it, agreed to a window to convince him, and it didn’t work.
Miami fans should be thankful for the experience. How often does the best players in the league join a new team and win them championships? You guys enjoyed a huge chunk of LeBron’s prime and showed him that if he stayed he’d get run into the ground like Wade.
In the end, everyone outside of Miami is okay with this because it’s like the end of an exploitative relationship. Sure, you’re on your own and you may never find what you were looking for, but it’s better than being used by people who only care about how to use you for their gain. More than anything, that’s probably what made him leave. He was surrounded by snakes.
At least if he’s going to be exploited it might as well be by his own people. Besides, with Kyrie, Thompson, Varejao, and Wiggins/Love he wouldn’t be required to always carry the burden. As he reaches 30 I’m sure he’ll be happier deferring to younger guys who haven’t had their taste of success yet and are hungrier than he is.
It’s very possible. He likes Fisher a lot, and him and Melo both grew up in Baltimore so they have that connection.
Bargnani and Stoudemire are gone after this year. The Knicks are in a pretty good spot, plus that first round pick. It’s actually better long term for the Knicks to suck this year and get the #1 pick next year, and combine it with Durant and Melo and maybe someone else to work Phil’s triangle scheme.
But I think the Knicks are probably a top 4 seed this year just with Melo and with Fisher’s triangle, which is just Phil Jackson’s. There is some good talent on the team actually. People will be all surprised during the season, and then people will act like they knew all along that Phil Jackson knows NBA basketball.
Wiggins is probably getting traded for Love. If not, we’re still talking about a rookie who plays the same position as LeBron and will be his backup.
We know all about Ray/MM and their inconsistencies down here. Celtics fans can tell you about Ray too. They’d be shooters on a team lacking shooters right now, and that’s definitely where their value lies. LeBron wants people he’s comfortable with… that’s the only way he’s going to ease the initial burden of learning a new system and new players.
Cleveland will compete and be top 3, but people are making the same foolish mistake that they did to the Heat in 2010-2011. This stuff takes time. They will not be anywhere close to as good as what people imagine next year.
I’m a realist. My team has been to the Finals 5 times, ECF many more times than that. I know what a team needs to have in order to win a championship. Cleveland doesn’t have it yet. Knowledgable Laker fans will tell you the same thing.
Cavs will have their championship. When LeBron is focused on something, he’ll usually accomplish it. But it won’t be this year.
Honestly didn’t see this coming and I think Lebron is a fool for going to that abyss in Ohio. Dan Gilbert’s comments since then showed he isn’t sorry for what he said four years ago. In that summer game when he was talking to Reggie he says “Lebron is a man now” as if he wasn’t till he decided to go to Cleveland. The tweet about telling his son he can wear his Lebron jersey again was beyond childish and stupid and we all now heard how they just took the letter off the website a few days ago.
As for the fans he doesn’t owe them shit. He took an obscure, irrelevant team to two consecutive best records in the NBA and a finals. That organization never made the moves it needed to put them in a true chance to contend for a title and he got sick of it and went to Miami. The fans should be upset at the organization for that and Dan Gilbert for verbally assaulting their own super star but no they burn his jerseys boo him for an entire game and call him a traitor, idiots
The media makes the discussion seem like it was so bad and tastless but its no different than what teams do to players and coaches ALL THE TIME. Nobody on ESPN was crying when Steve Blake finds out he got traded as he walked into Staples to prepare for a game. Why? “Because its a business” yeah its always just business until a player takes their influence and power into their own hands and makes a dicission
Besides Carmelo staying in NY (if he does) this will be the dumbest move in generations as far as basketball goes. You can’t be serious about winning titles when you go from winning somewhere that proves they can adjust and make the right moves to a place that doesn’t and shows they won’t. All they’ve done is get lucky in a few drafts for being terrible
Gilbert is one of the main reasons I don’t like the “Decision 2.0”, as an owner Gilbert is an embarrassment. Even if he didn’t type up “Comic Sans” his ineptitude, bitterness and jealous post Lebron’s departure has been horrendous. Gilbert is one of the main reason’s that owners like Arison and Buss were seemingly nurtured by the luxury tax.
But yet Lebron gets upset at Arison and Riley for cutting Mike Miller saying they were being cheap, the situation is hypocritical but then again as Geo stated it was all a farce.
Eh, I don’t think it matters. I at least don’t really care. It’s not my life. It’s his life and his decisions.
I just wish I didn’t have to see those atrocious Samsung commercials with him grunting like an ape all the time. But apparently a lot of people like them, or they wouldn’t keep making them.
Eh, I wouldn’t say Gilbert’s being rewarded just yet. Sure his team has won multiple draft lotteries and now they have Lebron but they haven’t won anything yet. In sports success is always measured by how many championships you have. Lakers and Spurs have traditionally been well run with great ownership and management. No surprise they’re the also the teams with multiple championships that span across decades.
Lebron might be able to make his team mates look better on court, but the burden is still on the team to develop their players. Danny Green was a scrub on Cleveland. San Antonio developed him into the player he became today. If Cavs management and player development stays inept Irving doesn’t learn how to play D and stays injury prone, Anthony Bennett becomes a bust and Wiggins turns into Rudy Gay and not a prime T-Mac.
Heat fans weren’t hated so much for being arrogant, plenty of cities have arrogant fans especially when they have a great team, they were hated for bandwagoning. Many heat fans only started watching after the big 3 went down, and shit like game 6 of the finals last year definitely didn’t help. What kind of fans leave before the game is over, what kind of support is that? I salute the true heat fans, though I have a feeling they are in the minority.
Look at other miami teams? The Dolphins are legendary, and yet the the owner has to buy thousands of tickets to keep the games from being blacked out. Then you have the Marlins who won a pair of titles within 6 years (1997 and 2003) and yeah they were all popular then, however after that their attendance was abysmal. Stadiums are practically empty. This is why Barkley said Miami fans aren’t real fans.
Lebron deserves some of the blame for Cleveland not bringing in free agents, and he’s making the same mistake again. He wont commit to a long term contract. He signed a 2 year deal. No one is going to want to go to Cleveland unless Lebron is there.
Whether or not Lebron would stay in Miami if they won this year is pretty much speculation. Personally, I’d imagine him staying with this contract until they lost, whether it was this year or next. From there, I don’t know. I don’t even think Lebron necessarily knows.
That CBA bitterness, the sad thing is it was partial responsible for Lin not being a Knick as well the operating cost was too steep. This season due to revenue sharing the Knicks actually lost money just imagine if they keep his contract.
So Lebron is the front office now? Even when I lived in Miami I rooted against him but the criticisms he gets make nonsense. If Cleveland wasn’t willing to clear cap space by getting rid of the bums on those teams for quality role players and a free agent or two it’s not his fault. We are talking about a team that thought Moe Williams, Antwan Jamison and Jamario Moon would win them a championship…
I think people underestimate how bad a relationship Lebron probably had with Gilbert and the organization behind closed doors which may be why the decision happened the way it did and why Gilbert was so quick to recklessly and foolishly display his misplaced anger at Lebron
