At The End Of The Day

At the end of the day, when all is said and done, the bottom line is that the whole universe revolves around LeBron James. You don’t get to vote on it. That is just the way it is.

Just in case you do not know anything about LeBron James, here goes: James is a twenty five year old professional basketball player who played for the Cleveland Cavaliers (or “Cavs”). He is consider by those that know this sort of thing, as one of the best professional basketball players currently playing and he is probably one of the best that has ever played professional basketball. In 2009, he led the Cavs to the Championship Series, losing to the Kobe Lakers. This season, the end of his contract with the Cavs, he took them to the playoffs, but they got boot in the early rounds.

If you have followed sports at all since 1974, you know that the off season is when players chase the big bucks, going to other teams, leaving their former teams high and dry.

Since James is such a good player, there was a demand for his services and several teams went after him to pay him what he is “worth”.

[The term “worth” is an economic term, not a social or spiritual term. James earns more than a school teacher because a lot of people can teach but not a lot of people can play professional basketball at his level.]

There were some people; I prefer to call them “morons” who thought, at the end of the day, James would stay in Cleveland. He is a local yokel, growing up in Akron. To them I say: have you ever watched The Weather Channel? It is cold up there about 7 months out of the year and everybody has last names like Jabbernakczakowski.

A guy like James, who doesn’t have a “ring” (the championship ring), needed to go not only to the highest bidder, but to the team that had the best chance to win a championship. This knocked out New York, who for some reason has forgotten how to run a NBA franchise. Atlanta? Please. There is some kind of law that states Atlanta must have at least one mentally ill sport franchise and currently it is the Hawks. Chicago has a good young team, however there’s that Michael Jordan comparison. The only real team left was Miami who upgraded their team with Chris Bosh and locked up their franchise player Dwayne Wade.

It is interesting to note that James wanted a recruiting process because he went directly from high school to the NBA and was never recruited (poor baby) by a college.

Have you ever watched an announcement from a high school athlete regarding the college scholarship signing? The kid is at a desk with a row of hats: USC, Penn State, Notre Dame and UGA. The sportscaster will say, “Okay, Tater, which school are you signing with?” Then Tater whips out a Florida hat and says, “At the end of the day, when all is said and done, the bottom line is that Florida gives me the best opportunity to use my talents to win a championship”. That’s what LeBron wanted.

So, at the end of the day, Thursday to be exact, when all was said and done, James signed a multimillion contract to play for Miami. A place where it never snows and they don’t have any state income tax. It took an hour on primetime ESPN to do that.

I do worry that in the next generation of athletes, there will be one that will want to do his free agent “decision” as a Broadway musical, or at the very least, an episode of “Glee”. [“Where do you think he’ll go? The Pistons? The Bulls?”] But at the end of the day, when all is said and done, the bottom line is that we’ll see.