LeBron James: media whore, or just misunderstood?

[Afterthought]

I'm a fan of the NBA. huge fan, for a long time. I've even said I'd die for basketball, and I've been playing it since I was a kid.
my personal history aside (go Lakers!), let's get to the issue at hand.

this is America. the land of the free. where you can do almost anything, as long as it doesn't infringe upon somebody else.
However - there's a classy way to do things, and a crass way.
take for instance - OKC Thunder star Kevin Durant. signs a 5 year deal with little to no fanfare.

then let's look at the LeBron "hoopla." for over a year, sports talk is littered with stories of where he might go.
and I mean littered because it was all talk, and as the saying goes, all that talk was very very cheap.

but this guy apparently didn't get enough attention over it, so he had his own hour long special about it on ESPN.
which milked the whole process another 27 minutes. excruciating minutes at that.

and after all was said and done, he jumped ship to go play in Miami. that's his choice, and very fair, and that's ok.
but it's the way he did it and all the F'N HYPE that went into this thing...
in this country we love our politics, but even political coverage hasn't ever been this bad.

it caused an instant backlash, by fans, by the Cavs owner, by Jesse Jackson for crying out loud.
and Jesse made it racial, which I can't fathom, because if say LARRY BIRD (the white Celtic player) did the same thing back in the '80s, the fans would still have been pissed in the same way.
so how that's a racial issue, I can't understand and won't waste time on.

I'll leave the main issue up for debate instead - and go with the media whore part of the argument.
the whole thing just played out like bad theatre. but it did have some interesting endings -

LeBron toilet paper.

LeBron is Benedict Arnold.

LeBron according to Cracked.

[Blimigerite]

I think the media attention is warrented.  It'd be like Jorden or Magic Johnson switching teams in their prime.  The media would have been all over that.  Granted ESPN didn't have quite the viewship then but they'd still be all over the story like flies on stink. 

The Cavs owner was definitely bitter about it.  LeBron was the only thing that made that team good and he knows it.  There is no way the Cavs are going to the NBA championship game anytime soon.  They may make it to the playoffs but lets face it every team makes it to the NBA playoffs. 

[Afterthought]

this is a funny mash up if you remember your NWO.
or your Outback Steakhouse.