I don’t know if you guys heard the news or not, but LeBron James left the Cleveland Cavaliers to join Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh with the Miami Heat. I’m so topical and on time, I know. Well Ohio and more specifically, Cleveland, didn’t take the news so well. There were burnings of James jerseys, hilarious albeit inappropriate letters from the owner and many more shenanigans. It has, in some circles, been compared to the old wrestling heel turn by the NWO.
Well Cleveland is taking all that anger, misguided or not, and is turning it into creativity. For this I applaud them. Whenever I try to turn anger into creativity, a hooker dies it turns into horribly bitter sounding prose. If they can continue to output their anger and feelings of loss into awesome creative projects like this, Cleveland may have just found a new fan I fully support them.
I only know the date because I looked it up, but what it signifies is more important. That night, Michael Jordan hit his last shot as a Chicago Bull, and the NBA would never be the same.
Look where we are now. Ask yourself how you can be an NBA fan at this point. Lebron, who had been generally a good guy until the last few weeks, went heel. Kobe’s always going to be Kobe. Kevin Durant is a decent guy, but plays for the team that ripped out Seattle’s heart. The entire GM, ownership and coaching structure has been proven irrelevant in personnel decisions. This has ceased to be something the fans remotely matter in, they just happen to pay the bills.