The debate:
Did the LeBron James era in Cleveland end around 10:30 Thursday night?
The guess is that the majority of those who guess on such things figure he is gone, ostensibily to Jordanville or Frazierburg.
The Cavs were upset by Boston, and upset in less than a full series. Few of us saw that coming, even with the Celtics having a healthy group.
LeBron, dog, stay in Cleveland. Make Cleveland yours. It's available, you can do it, and you'll be surprised: you'll like it. Don't break up this team. Don't turn Cleveland into, gulp, Atlanta.
Chicago is Jordan. Boston is "pick one of 10 players." The Knicks are, um, let's see, the Knicks have sucked so long, we have to go back to Ewing.
The bulk of this team is available to be back next year. An aside: some of us knew the Shaq experiment wasn't a good one. Smelled too desperate. Don't let them do that again. Keep Scottie Pippen retired.
But bigger isn't better.
And you've been a one-namer for awhile now, you're going to make money. You could play in Youngstown and make money.
Your future is fine. The Cavs, as you know, ain't going to let you go without a fight, which means improving the team. Give them that year. Now, they know. You're thiiiis close to leaving, and they're thiiiiis close to rebuilding for the next five years and bemoaning the loss of a local kid who's the best player in the game.
Stay, one more year, just for that, just because you're from there. Maybe the organization isn't worthy of such loyalty, but fans are.
I'm not sure you need much of a management team to consult with, for the above reasons. You're Bron. Your marketing, your off-court money is set. You have marketed yourself well. You appear to be, by all we can see, not a jackass.
And, uh, yeah, you're all of 26. You've got a little time.
Don't just take the money in a bigger market, especially when that bigger-market team sucks.
Cleveland: Top team in the NBA, which doesn't mean an automatic championship, as we all know.
Chicago? Looking for a coach, blew the last coaching hire, have blown coaching hires for a few years now. And the Bulls went 41-41.
New York? The Knicks? Who are trying to be the Clippers of the East Coast? Who haven't won since 2000-01 and then dumped Jeff VanGundy at 10-9 in 2001? The Knicks who went 29-53?
Los Angeles?
The Clippers speak for themselves, and when they speak, it's a stutter. The Lakers are a full-fledged drama, between Kobe, Phil and his missus, the team owner and father of Phil's missus.
Don't leave a winning team, a successful team that's currently falling just short. Don't be about the money.
Different isn't automatically better, and whatever you might do to help out a new team - contract issues, less money - is horrible if you don't do it with Cleveland first.
You know your team better than the speculators. You also know that front office will listen to you, and you've proven to be a pretty wise kid, if 26 is still a kid.
Surprise us with the substance we don't expect from our pro athletes. I'll bet you a paycheck you don't regret it.
LOUGHDMOUTHINGS
I have a bad feeling about this Saints-Vicodin case and newly-dropped lawsuit.
Said the protagonist, Geoffrey Santini:
"In the overall scheme of things, 130 pills is nothing.The proper way to do this would've been to say, 'OK, we've got a coach (Joe Vitt) who made a mistake. It's not the Drug Enforcement Agency's task in life to worry about 130 pills. This in effect would've been a non-issue.
"With my relationship with the U.S. Attorney's office and other law enforcement on the state and local level, I know for a fact that I could've worked out a situation where we could've got the coach (Vitt) behind closed doors, plead him out and probably got him into a pre-trial diversion program. At least, we would've had a chance to keep it under wraps.
"It's just 130 pills. But they wouldn't let me do it. (General manager) Mickey Loomis just wanted to cover it up, and that's where they broke more laws." And Thursday, the lawsuit was dropped because the case is going to arbitration, which "blocks the public release of video and audio recordings that Santini said he made to protect himself and others who were participating in the alleged cover-up for fear of losing their jobs," according to AP.
It's notable that the Saints put the clause in his contract that any lawsuit filed by Santini could be taken to arbitration, which effectively becomes a silencer.
It makes everything mighty quiet and ready for the "we'll never really know" file.
Santini is a former FBI agent of 31 years who resigned last August, about five months after the alleged pill-swiping began.
Santini headed the investigation that finally brought sleazy Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards down, and Edwards had been sleazy for decades.
Nosirree, not a good feeling. They hired a near-legend security boss, and we'll see if they got much more than they wanted. ...
So Mark Fox thinks that tweeting in the summer is a distraction to his Georgia basketball team? Really?
There's a level of megalomania with coaches who clamp down on the most innocous things as "distractions", like the irrelevant Twitting, or not letting players talk to the media.
Dude, if tweeting and talking are distractions, you have idiots on your team. It's a coach's biggest copout, whatever qualifies for the ‘d’ word.
No, a kid who's 20 isn't a man who's 35, but still. Distraction? No. ...
Yet another reason for Braves backers to chill: They've had 12 home games, 22 road games. That will reverse itself at some point, and more winning shall follow.
Patience, while rare, is not a bad trait to have in sports. ...
So Tiger may not play in the U.S. Open.
A) The tournament will go on;
B) Boy, the breathlessness of the media when it comes to golf borders on worship;
C) Better start getting used to a Tiger-free golf world, because it was going to happen at some point. ...
"Our players will not go to class or have girlfriends, because academics and groupies are distractions."
Sure. ...
T. J. Simers of the L.A. Times is really loved, as he was reminded during a recent visit to Dodger Stadium.
Ran into Manny Ramirez, too.
When he saw me, he grabbed his crotch.
"Very classy," I said, although ever since taking female fertility drugs, he probably likes to remind himself he's still the same guy he used to be.
Allllrightythen.
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