LeBron does the most shamefully pathetic dive of his career, gets the call:
Gets two free points, ties the game with seconds to go:
Sideshow Bob mugs Howard, no call:
Stan Van Gundy is all like ”WTF?!”
Overtime, clock ticking down, LeBron gets a shot off…BRICK.
Game Over.
Stan Van Gundy’s game 3 post-game press conference was priceless. Watch it here.
Reporter: Stan, the foul that Dwight fouled out on and a couple other call on LeBron…they don’t even look like fouls sometimes. Can you comment on that?
Stan: Nope. But you can. You write a column. And see, the league won’t fine you $25,000 or whatever. So…so you write it. That’s what I love – you guys see it, but you don’t want to write it. But you want me to comment on it so now I’m a whiner and I get fined. You saw it, write what you saw.
![[gasp] How *dare* you! This is *my* ball. I AM KING JAMES!!!](http://ihatelebronjames.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/lebron-scowl-300x156.jpg "lebron-scowl")
How *dare* you! This is *my* ball. I AM KING JAMES!!!
In the NBA, you can be fined for complaining about a call if you are a coach, even when you are unquestionably right. The press can write whatever they want, but they rarely write stories critical of LeBullshit. Consequentially, LeBron James has become a monster and the last two minutes of every close playoff game (arguably the only part of a basketball game worth watching) are a usually a joke. Thanks, ESPNbavid $tern. Even the defensive player of the year (carrying 5 fouls in a pivotal playoff game) doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt on a decisive defensive play when he goes up against LeBron. When you guard LeBron, you are simply “the guy who is about to foul LeBron.”
You know the situation has gotten completely out of control when Bill Simmons, one of the most eager and enthusiastic of all LeBron fellaters, capable of writing super-romanticized bullshit like this:
In Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals, with one second to play and his Cavaliers trailing by two, a 6-foot-9, 275-pound local kid from Akron bullied toward the basket like a tight end. His goal was to jump as high as he could, extend his hands 2 feet over the 10-foot rim, then catch a lob from 50 feet away that had to be perfectly thrown. When his path was cut off, he recalibrated his mission almost as a navigation system reroutes a car, darted away from the basket toward the top of the key, caught a pass coming from his left, turned toward the rim, took a split second to center his body, bounced off the balls of his feet, extended in the air, then arched a 24-foot shot over the extended fingers of a 6-foot-10 opponent from Turkey. Even as he released the shot, he was falling backward, so his momentum carried him toward the other basket. Somehow, the shot rattled home. And that’s when LeBron James turned around, sought out his teammates and joyously hopped into their arms.
This was one of the bigger moments in recent NBA history: The time when our latest hope for “The Next Jordan” actually did something MJ would have done. Like so many other die-hards, I spent the next 24 hours rehashing the moment through phone calls and e-mails and texts.
…can force himself to admit this:
[Jordan was the best and worst thing to happen to the NBA because he created] a generation of one-on-one players who careen toward the basket in big moments, create some form of contact and hope officials will bail them out. With four seconds to play in Game 4 and his team trailing by 2, LeBron put his head down, dribbled as fast as he could and prayed Michael Pietrus would either bump him or trip him. If you watch the clip, he’s moving so fast that it would have been humanly impossible for him to make a shot. That wasn’t his goal. He wanted a call. And he got one. Their feet got tangled, LeBron lurched forward, and the refs bailed him out.
Both of these quotes came from the same article. This is what drives me crazy about Bill Simmons. He clearly and obviously sees what is happening to the NBA. His knows the history of the game in a way that very few dorks are capable. He can even recall a particular foul Bill Laimbeer committed against some guy from the Clippers in the 2nd quarter of a regular season game 20 years ago and what kind of doritos he was eating at the time. He has correctly identified the problem with the modern game (see above) and even offers a few reasonable solutions to this problem. But then he turns around and produces piles and piles of his own hero-worship bullshit (with some of the most comically overwrought sportswriting ever), the root cause of the problem he has just identified. Wow. Whether he realizes it or not, he is actively contributing to the demise of his beloved NBA, nudging it further and further away from his own ideal vision of the game. I just don’t get it.
Sports journalists are the only people able to freely criticize the bullshit without getting fined. They are the only people with an audience large enough and an influence great enough to force some kind of change in the bullshit. Yet, these very same journalists rely on this hero-worship bullshit to pay their bills, thanks to the atmosphere fostered by Nike and Sportscenter. Looks like we’re stuck.
So, Stan, this is why jerk reporters won’t write the obvious fucking columns they need to be writing. And they probably never will.
I have just discovered a fantastic LeBron website (thanks, Tamislav), LeBron Travel TV. It’s a youtube video channel devoted to the documentation of LeBron’s bumbling and stumbling bullshit. The camera doesn’t lie.
Suck on this obviously choreographed LeBron/NYC photo op, Cavs fans. Wow. More on this later.
A couple of stories I’ve missed because I’ve been taking my usual post-playoffs break from LeBullshit:
First up – Tim Donaghy and game fixing. Ah, the Donaghy scandal(s). When Donoughy got busted, it demonstrated as a matter of fact that all-powerful NBA refs are capable of massive sleazebaggery. It was pretty shocking, but the scandal was successfully contained by the NBA and we were led to believe that the whole fiasco extended to a crazy rogue ref and affected a couple of inconsequential games.
Then Donaghy pulled a full-on Jose Canseco and the issue was no longer containable. According to Donaghy, an inner-circle of sycophantic refs working in cahoots with league goons created an atmosphere in which star players were not called for technical fouls (LeBitching at refs without punishment, LeBron’s famous LeElbows, etc.) and that bogus calls/no-calls (“the travel” anyone?) were made to force TV-friendly matchups, game sevens, and to prop up popular stars in the league. Think about the Celtics/Cavs series – how many games did LeBron play like absolute trash (see previous posts), and still wind up taking 20 free throws, keeping the Cavs in the game and therefore in the series? The answer is…surprise…almost every game in the series.
[Way too easy. See the internet for *tons* of hilarious captions.]
Predicatably, ESPNBAvid $tern stonewalled (and still stonewalls) on this issue. This is how I see it – nine times out of ten, this pleading the fifth bullshit is basically an admission of guilt. Any reasonable person can see that this crap is happening on a regular basis or, at the very least, that the existence of game fixing is very likely and warrants serious investigation. Jeff van Gundy, Phil Jackson, and a slew of other coaches and players are on record agreeing with Donaghy’s accusations.
On to a tengentially related ref story – the NBA announced that it will begin fining floppers next season. At first, I thought this would be a good thing, because it would stop LeBron from doing things like pretending he was poked in the eye when he wasn’t and putting flagrant fouls on opposing players. I was totally psyched about it. Then I thought about it for about ten seconds and realized that the league will never do anything to fuck LeBron over. So, sadly, I concluded that the new rules will actually make opposing players more afraid of taking charges from LeBron, which is basically the only thing a defender can do to stop LeBron, since if you actually try to block his shots or steal the ball you are automatically called for a foul. Plus, LeBron clearly doesn’t give a crap about fines since he is, uh, kind of rich. Very, very depressing development. Ugh.
Next up – NYC. See the LeBron/Statue of Liberty picture. The whole LeBron to NY story has gone from conjecture to pretty much a foregone conclusion and I love it. Poor, poor Clevelanders. Trade him now and get some value.
Finally, on to the US All-Nike Olympic team. Yeah – so the Coach K’s US Olympic team is made up of all Nike-sponsored players except for Dwight Howard (Adidas). That’s just fantastic. Looks like Gilbert was on to something when he said that it appeared the roster was set before tryouts. Apparently unconcerned about keeping up appearances, Nike promptly announced a documentary series about the team’s road back to the Olympics to air on ESPN.
For you conspiracy buffs out there, I’ll leave you with Nike’s official team photo. Notice that Dwight Howard is covering up the Nike swoosh on his shorts. Most importantly, notice that a freakishly enormous rat has been dressed in human clothing and posed in a sitting position, blocking Dwight Howard’s Adidas shoes. Hmmm…
Ever seen the commercial where LeBron is playing a defense lawyer and exposes some wheelchair-ridden guy as a faker by throwing him a basketball? If you haven’t, you can watch it on the vitaminwater website. I just wanted to point out how perfectly absurd it is that the punchline of the commerical is “dude is a faker” when LeBron himself is the NBA’s most shameless, pathetic faker. You know, irony and all that.
Glaceau vitaminwater – now infused with 100% USRDA of iron(y)!
Let’s go to the videotape. Game 6. LeBron appears to have been popped in the eye in the lane. LeBron wincing and contorting his face in pain for what seems like an eternity. LeBron blinking and scowling and rubbing his eyes. Cavs even take a timeout for King James to tend to his horrific boo boo. Replay time. Uh, yeah… LeBron wasn’t touched on the play. Unbelievable. Of course, many sportswriters’ game recaps referred to the eye-gouge as if it were legit, some even worked it into some kind of LeBron perserverence theme.
What kind of a shameless crybaby goes through that much trouble for a phantom eye-gouge? It’s one thing to play up something that actually happend. It’s another thing entirely to go completely overboard playing up something up that never happend. Worst part about all of this? LeBron must have known that the replays would show him to be a liar and he still did it.
Just sad. Future of the NBA.
Immediately after game four, sportswriters everywhere have been cranking out articles glamorizing LeBron’s psychological victories against the Wizards. Many of the usual suspects, including Washington DC’s own Michael Wilbon, have joined in the fun.
Yes, there is trash talk flying everywhere and yes, LeBron has been on the winning side of things lately. In the NFL, winning can turn Randy Moss into a good teammate and Ray Lewis into a great guy. The same is true in the NBA, apparently, where winning can put you on the right side of things, especially when your nickname is The Chosen One and even AP articles refer to you as King James. Sportscasters will demonize and ridicule trash talk from Stevenson, Gilbert, and Haywood (Barkely, every single sportscaster on EPSN, Stephen A. Smith, etc.). Yet they will take trash talk or some other jerky behavior from LeBron and interpret it as some kind of cutting-edge psychological technique that demonstrates LeBron’s true competitive genius.
What these talking heads are really doing is actually promoting cheating or bad behavior as some kind of virtue. LeBron started the feud with Stevenson by trashing him to Drew Gooden. LeBron elbowed Andre Blatche in the face and started a fight with Brendan Haywood at center court. LeBron talks trash. LeBron shamelessly takes advantage of the special LeBron-only rules regarding traveling and charging as he lowers his head and blindly bull-rushes his way to the basket when his jump shot is failing him. And when he is called for a foul, LeBron has the gall to complain and whine about it. If somebody gave me a fifty dollar bill out of the blue, I wouldn’t whine and complain that they should have given me a hundred dollar bill. Dude is just spoiled.
Below is an exchange between Mike Wise, a DC area reporter, and David Stern. This conversation was televised on Comcast before game three of the series. I heard about it through the grapevine, but I wasn’t able to locate the actual clip on the internet. The best I could do is find a kinda-transcript from a DC area sports blog,
http://www.truthaboutit.net:
David Stern was on Comcast before the game talking with Russ Thaler and Mike Wise of the Washington Post…who was hitting him with some hard questions, albeit halfway in jest….such as:
Why does LeBron travel worse than Patrick Ewing in the 80s? Laughing non-answer. Or….
Why do superstars get calls? Evidently Stern can prove that this is not true with statistics, but doesn’t have the time….yeah riiiight.
Nice. So the best Stern can do is laugh it off (awkwardly, I’m guessing) and refuse to acknowledge the question? That’s pretty telling. The way I see it, he got called out and was essentially rendered speechless, even in a friendly, half-kidding environment. He might as well have said: “Well Mike, because that’s the way the NBA like$ it. And because I am absolutely unwilling to do anything about it…that’s why.”
If anybody has this clip or an actual transcript, please email it to me. I’d love to see David Stern squirm with my own two eyes.
This is a fact – if every player in the NBA acted like LeBron James, the league would degenerate into a technical foul-ridden joke and everybody would be asking why the NBA is such a classless pile of crap. Or the league would degenerate into a no-holds-barred slugfest where fouls are never called and everybody would be asking why the NBA is such a classless pile of crap. Either way, David Stern should probably consider the long-term ramifications of allowing this LeBron-related bullshit to go down game after game, series after series, year after year.
Tom Knott of the Washington Times: shining beacon of truth, real American hero.
As horrifying as the reality of this annual LeBron James playoff nightmare may be, there is at least one sportswriter who is willing to speak the truth. One free-thinking champion willing to rage against the shreaking horde of glassy-eyed sportscenter zombies, Stephen A. Smith-style jerkfaces, repetitive-ass analysists, and catch phrase-pandering television announcers: Tom Knott of the Washington Times. God bless you, sir. You are my hero.
I imagine that poor Tom has finally gotten to the point where he simply can’t take the shameless LeBron nonsense anymore. Covering the Wizards for the Washington Times and watching the same shit go down for three years in a row has to be beyond painful. After game 1, he probably found himself at the same point I found myself two years ago when I was actually motivated enough to start up this dumb site. Tom matter-of-factly just puts it all out there in his column. Clearly, he has stopped trying to be a “good” sportswriter of the Michael Wilbon mold. I linked his two articles below. Read them. Then read some pro-Cavs articles from the Cleveland rag of your choice. Then compare both types of articles to ESPN or SI articles. Hmmm, funny how close the “objective” sports media outlets are to Cavs-centric hacks. And it’s not like Tom Knott’s columns are fueled by a blind love for the Wizards. He pulls no punches when it comes to trashing the Wizards for their crappy play in both articles.
So – here are the articles, read them for yourself (if the links have expired, just google “Tom Knott” and the name of the article):
LeBron should go back to class (April 20)
Oh, these foul forces of evil (April 23)
First, Tom Knott calls out LeBron for that bullshit elbow from game 1. He brazenly suggests that…gasp…LeBron should be suspended for elbowing some guy in the face. Imagine that! So outrageous and controversial!
LeBron James should be suspended from Game 2 after being unable to control his inner bully yesterday.
James deposited an elbow in the face of Andray Blatche with 11 seconds left in the first quarter. He then twice threatened to drop an elbow on Brendan Haywood, first to his groin region and then to his face, after the two became tangled near the end of the first half.
In the second article, Knott focuses on Mike Brown’s ridiculous argument that LeBron is a hopeless victim of a Washington Wizards’ evil campaign of ultra-violence:
Brown said: “Washington has come out and said, ‘Hey, they’re going to hit LeBron. They’re going to hit LeBron. They’re going to hit LeBron.’ You can’t have grown men saying, ‘I’m going to go hit somebody.’ If that’s the case, we, the NBA and the officials cannot allow anything to get out of hand, and they have to keep control over the game on both sides.”
It also should be pointed out that the best blow delivered in the series so far was the one James administered to Andray Blatche in Game 1. It was a James-inspired forearm to Blatche’s jaw that the three referees apparently missed, just as they miss the hop, skip and jump that James sometimes employs on his way to the basket.
Most importantly, Knott says what everybody knows, but nobody says…that the league tacitly (or possibly actively) encourages calls consistently favorable to LeBron:
This is not to endorse the notion the referees are persuaded by Brown’s fantasy [that the Wizards are violent thugs out to get King James].
They are persuaded by the dictates of the league office, which in turn is persuaded by the marketing power of James.
So he is not the Chosen One. He is the Bubble Player.
And woe to the player who karate chops his head in the manner of Anderson Varejao taking down Blatche in Game 2.
I have a little warning for Cleveland fans: you worship LeBron James now, but you have created a monster. Precisely the kind of monster who would bail on his home team for more money, more glory, more whatever. He already roots for the Yankees at an Indians playoff game, you idiots. The more you encourage LeBron’s bullshit now, the more it will grow like a weed, and the harder it will be to stomach when he turns on you. What are you going to do when LeBron shows up at Quicken Loans Arena wearing a Knicks jersey? What are you going to do when he elbows a Cavs player in the face? What are you going to do when eliminates the Cavs form the playoffs with a charge and a travel in the final seconds of game 7? Shamelessly root for this asshole at your own peril, morons.
