All season long, night in and night out, the Miami Heat has been battling on two fronts. The three NBA stars, and their crude supporting cast, have been playing hard against their on-court opponents while simultaneously having to fight off public relation attacks from all sides.
Quite a bit has changed from a few years ago when the big three schemed together on the jet ride over to the Olympics. Back then, Lebron, Wade, and Bosh were not only adored in their respective team’s hometowns, they were loved all over the world (yes, even Bosh had created a global aura around him up there in Toronto). Although still young to the league, all three players were building up their product, with Lebron leading the wolfpack.
But then “The Decision” happened…and then that ridiculous pyrotechnic show outdoing a Wrestlemania production…and Wade telling everybody and their mother to screw off because he was okay with being the bad guy…and Lebron redundantly talking about his talents as if they were a friend of his or some form of expensive luggage…and Bosh bitching about not getting the ball enough…and the head coach ratting out cry babies in the locker room…and Lebron calling a reporter’s question handicapped…
Who knows what Chris Bosh truly wants (that ostrich always seems to be sticking his head in the sands of other planets), but it has been both James and Wade’s life long dream to build their image up just like the great Michael Jordan. But Jordan did something they didn’t do. He kept his mouth shut so people didn’t know how much of an egotistical jerk he really was. Jordan was self-aware enough to know that most parents would have a hard time spending $150, just so their kids could play basketball in the shoes of an asshole.
King James apparently hasn’t learned MJ’s little trick yet. Lebron’s post-game press conference after the series win over the Celtics will go down in the record books as the first acceptance speech to ever be given by someone before actually winning the award.
“I’d like to thank my friends and family who stuck by my side through this whole ordeal, I’d like to thank the fans back in Cleveland, I’m sorry it had to go down the way it did, I’d like to thank my producer, my director who was so patient with me during those tiresome shoots…”
Most watching were hoping for the Oscar exit music to start up in order to get Lebron off the podium, but sadly the band never started playing. Maybe finally beating the Gang Green after all those years brought it out of him, but James discussed his whole upbringing behind that microphone as if he just cemented his legacy by beating a broken down Celtics team in the second round of the playoffs. Not only that, but Lebron went on to talk about the fact that he needed the win for himself, saying now he could move on. There wasn’t much mention of what the win meant to his team in that twenty-minute ramble.
Wade appeared like a decent guy when he came into the league, fighting through injuries and a weak supporting cast to heroically win an NBA title, but now he just comes off as a pouting baby who starts shoving random people when things don’t happen to be going his way. Everyone has seen Wade’s MMA takedown on Rondo (the only possible thing on the Celtics standing in the way of his run at a ring) and how he barrels wildly into the lane for constant bailout calls when his shot isn’t falling. One might think Taj Gibson’s thunderous slamma’ jamma’ (Shout out to my man Thunder Dan!) would have humbled Dwayne just a tad, but no. Instead, Wade has to steal the glory by boasting after the game about his 90-1 blocked/dunked on ratio. First off, who even knows ratios something like that? And secondly, there’s NBA footage in stock from this past season of Wade being dunked on, though nowhere near as beautiful as Gibson’s posterizing.
Let’s face it. No one likes this Miami Heat team, except those weird people in the white shirts who show up for home games roughly halfway through the third quarter. This team isn’t likeable because they don’t go out of their way to be liked.
No one’s forcing these players to put on a smiley face and act like respectable adults, but how long can they continue demanding the NBA fan base to blindly buy the latest useless product they have been pushing, just because they have “the talents”?
—–Seth Newton
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