Sorts of Sports

Back to Your Dull Lives

Today I woke up showered, ate breakfast and continued my daily monotonous workday streak of a boring “real world” morning. Thankfully, this helped LeBron James sleep last night. In case you haven’t heard his post-game comments following the Miami Heat’s Game 6 loss to the now-NBA Champion Dallas Mavericks, here are the goods: 

“All the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. They can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal. But they have to get back to the real world at some point."

With those comments, LeBron James sealed the deal. Congratulations, you now are the most hated superstar of your generation. Any thread of humility or human connection was lost during this series. Whether it was him and the usually classy Dwayne Wade – who by the way was gracious in defeat and limped over to shake the hands of his opponents – mocking Dirk Nowitzki’s sickness before Game 4, his “Now or Never” tweets, or his post-game disrespect for anyone and everyone, LeBron couldn’t have lost more public sentiment. It’s one thing to say you don’t care what the haters say. But you aren’t buying any good will when you belittle literally everyone in America.

Outside of wanting to see greatness unfold before our eyes, sports fans want to connect with champions. After 13 years of soft spoken hard work, Dirk Nowitzki couldn’t believe what was happening. He walked off the court, too emotional to be anywhere but by himself in the locker room. We’ve all had those moments in our life, where life is far too surreal to put into words.
The crux of LeBron’s “likeability” problem is that nothing in his life seems that important to him. He’ll wake up today and think about his next night out, or his next shoe deal. The millionaire athlete culture has tainted the most physically talented basketball player since Wilt Chamberlain. LeBron took the easy way out and got burned. Even if he wins a few titles in Miami, the 2011 Finals can't be erased.

Think of the NBA Finals MVPs of the past decade and their common traits. Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Chauncey Billups, Kevin Garnett, even Dwayne Wade. They all live and breathe the game of basketball. LeBron only breathes one thing: himself.