Bryant Gumbel rips LeJudas:

“Finally tonight, a few words about championship rings. Just when did they become the all-important barometer of who does or doesn’t count in sports? When did they supersede personal excellence or exemplary character as a standard of greatness?

“I got to thinking about that the other night after the self-anointed chosen one, LeBron James, embarrassed himself as he tried to make his decision to seek rings in Miami sound like a search for the Holy Grail. It’s when he essentially admitted to placing a higher priority on winning than anything else.

“LeBron’s decision is typical of our immediate gratification era, but it flies in the face of history. Even though he never won a title, Dan Marino is still the biggest hero in Florida. And in Boston, all those Celtics championships are dimmed by the unforgettable brilliance of Ted Williams, who never won anything. In Chicago, Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus have legendary status despite playing on losing teams. And even in the NBA, where guys seem obsessed with being viewed as ‘the man’, real men like Barkley, Ewing and Baylor are ringless, but revered.

“Despite such evidence to the contrary, LeBron James seems to think he needs a ring to change his life and secure his legacy. Maybe he’ll get one, maybe he won’t, but it’s probable that no amount of rings will ever remove the stench he wallowed in last week. LeBron may yet find that in the court of public opinion, just as putting on a tux can’t make a guy a gentleman, winning a ring can’t make one truly a champion.”

wouldnt expect that from Bryant Gumbel but hes right on

Jesse Jackson whatya say to Bryant?

Thats todays world everyone wants it quick and easy. They dont wanna work for anything anymore. Hope they run into alot of injuries next year, that would be awesome.

When will people stop crying about him leaving?? As far as the circus, he will have to deal with the backlash. Should he have stayed at Cleveland? Probably. Sign a three year deal. See what happens. See if the mutts they put on the floor can help you win. But he didn't do that. So now everyone can boo at him till when he comes to town. Oh, that's if you want to spend money on a ticket!

Another great article this morning by Adrian Wojnarowski

part 1

At the Beijing Olympics, where LeBron James was surrounded by such talent and possibility, the Cleveland Cavaliers began to lose their star to free agency. The beginning of his departure came in small moments on the daily bus rides through the city’s choking smog and bigger ones on the basketball court. Together, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and James kept talking about the summer of 2010, about the chance of a lifetime to chase championships and roll like a touring rock band.
And yet before Pat Riley’s free-agency vision for the Miami Heat could ever be validated, James had to first become a member of that 2008 Olympic team. The public never knew what those on the inside of American basketball’s elite power structure did: In the years and months before Beijing, that was very much in doubt for James.
Back when the Heat’s three new superstars had signed short contract extensions and started to explore the idea of free agency thrusting them together, a different discussion had played out within the NBA and USA Basketball: What should we do with LeBron?
From Team USA coach Mike Krzyzewski to managing director Jerry Colangelo to NBA elders, the issue of James’ immaturity and downright disrespectfulness had become a consuming topic on the march to the Olympics. The course of history could’ve changed dramatically, because there was a real risk that James wouldn’t be brought to Beijing based on fears his monumental talents weren’t worth the daily grind of dealing with him.
When the mandate had been to gather these immense egos and get the NBA’s greatest players to fit into a program, no one had a more difficult time meshing into the framework than James. Other players made it a point to learn the names of staffers and modestly go about their business without barking orders and brash demands.
No one could stand James as a 19-year-old in the 2004 Athens Olympics, nor the 2006 World Championships. Officials feared James could become the instigator of everything they wanted to rid themselves for the ’08 Olympics. For as gifted as James was, Krzyzewski and Colangelo subscribed to a belief that with Kobe Bryant joining the national team in 2007, they could win a gold medal in ’08 with or without LeBron James. Behind the scenes, officials had taken to calling James’ inner circle, “The Enablers.” No one ever told him to grow up. No one ever challenged him. And yet, James was still a powerful pull for his teammates, and everyone had to agree they could no longer let his bossy and belittling act go unchecked. These weren’t the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Team USA wasn’t beholden to him.
After the NBA witnessed the behavior of James and his business manager Maverick Carter during the 2007 All-Star Weekend, the commissioner’s office sent word to USA Basketball the league wouldn’t force James on them for the Olympics. Before Team USA gathered for the 2007 Tournament of the Americas in Las Vegas, an unmistakable message had been delivered to James through Nike: Unless you change, we’re serious about leaving you home.
“Legacies were on the line,” one league official said, “and they weren’t going to let LeBron [expletive] it up for everyone in China.”
Through Nike, James ultimately heeded the message and became more tolerable to coaches, teammates and staff. Team USA assigned Jason Kidd to babysit him at the Tournament of the Americas in 2007, to try to teach him something the Cavaliers never had a veteran to do: professionalism.
When James returned to the Cavaliers, the franchise hoped that he had grown, matured and maybe learned some lessons. Only James understood the angles and leverage he had in Cleveland. Every day, owner Dan Gilbert and general manager Danny Ferry wondered: What must we do to get him to re-sign in 2010?
What will make him happy?
The answer, as the Cavaliers eventually discovered, was nothing. James lived to make demands, but those with knowledge of his plans insist he never intended to re-sign with the Cavaliers.
One week after James joined Wade and Bosh in Miami to potentially alter the NBA’s balance of power for years, Yahoo! Sports has shaped a story of how events unfolded in the free-agent frenzy of 2010 based on interviews with several sources who were either involved in or have direct knowledge of the process.
Within an hour of the Cavaliers’ season ending in Boston, James’ inner circle, including power broker William Wesley, agent Leon Rose and business manager Maverick Carter, stood outside the visiting locker room grumbling about coach Mike Brown.
James had wanted Brown gone a year earlier after the Cavs lost in the Eastern Conference finals to the Orlando Magic – despite Brown guiding Cleveland to 66 victories while winning the league’s Coach of the Year award. Ferry debated Gilbert to keep Brown. He won out, but Ferry knew it would be tough to make that case again in 2010. Every decision the Cavaliers made had to be run past James. He didn’t always get to decide, but he had to be consulted.
This time, Gilbert believed he had to fire Brown to have a chance of re-signing James. When he was fired, Brown purposely left his star’s name out of a public statement of thanks. He knew James had led the movement for his dismissal for more than two years and Brown no longer needed to pretend that he liked, or respected James.
Ferry warned the owner there wouldn’t be a better coach available to hire. Eventually, Gilbert pushed out Ferry, too. The owner wanted to take over a bigger portion of the basketball decision-making and Ferry’s stubbornness made that difficult for him.
The franchise was in complete upheaval, and Gilbert had the Cavaliers trying everything possible to impress a non-responsive James. The Cavaliers star had started to fully distance himself from the organization. He refused to get on the phone and discuss his future with Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, whom Gilbert had offered $30 million to take over as coach.
Before the Cavaliers ever reached out to him, Izzo turned down a less lucrative offer to coach the Chicago Bulls. James wasn’t returning Gilbert’s calls and messages – never mind willing to talk with Izzo. Before Izzo finally turned down Gilbert, he was delivered a direct line to two of James’ close NBA friends, who told him he should only take the job with an expectation he’ll never coach James in Cleveland. Gilbert tried to sell Izzo, but the coach feared there wasn’t a single influential official in the Cavs organization who truly had a relationship with James.
No one had more intelligence and better monitored the disconnect between James and the Cavaliers than Miami Heat president Pat Riley. He had informants and spies everywhere, including his own star, Wade, who had been telling Riley for most of two years they could lure James to South Beach. The Heat had everything they needed to sell James, except for what finally arrived on the eve of the NBA draft: salary-cap space.

part 3

All along, teams believed Bosh would choose to play with James or Wade. What Bosh truly wanted was to play with James and Wade. It was commonly accepted that Bosh’s time with the Toronto Raptors taught him he couldn’t be the centerpiece player, and so he embraced the idea of playing the part of Robin to James’ and Wade’s Batman.
Wade had come to believe James would likely leave Cleveland, but became largely certain once the Cavaliers lost to the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinals. For the first time, James could no longer blame his supporting cast and coaching for a playoff exit. His peculiar performance in a Game 5 blowout, lethargic and distant, pushed James on trial.
Within days of the season’s end, James and Carter traveled to Winston-Salem, N.C., for the birthday party of New Orleans Hornets star Chris Paul’s young son. With James on the premises, rules for the toddler’s birthday party included no photos, no video.
James was close with Paul, and free agency and the possible connecting of the players’ futures did come up in conversation. Paul was unhappy with the Hornets, and frustrated to see so many of his Team USA teammates on championship contenders and playoff teams. James and Carter long had been trying to recruit Paul to their LRMR marketing company and the Rose/Wesley/CAA cluster for his contract representation.
As a prelude to Paul eventually going into business with James, Wesley began working the New York Knicks and New Jersey Nets to get them to try and trade for Paul with the strong suggestion that it could deliver James in free agency. Both tried, both failed.
As Wesley worked front offices, his stature started to rise out of the subculture of the sport and into mainstream news coverage. Carter wanted credibility beyond the public perception of him as merely James’ childhood buddy, and ultimately he could no longer hide his jealousy when Wesley started to get too much public recognition for packaging the players in free agency. Privately, everyone in the circle knew James was leaving Cleveland, and it would be harder for his Akron guys to get credit for the deal.
During the NBA Finals, Carter met entertainment mogul David Geffen at a party in Los Angeles. Carter talked informally with Geffen’s people about the possibility of them attempting to purchase a majority share of the Los Angeles Clippers and signing James with the team’s cap space. Carter even made sure to show up with Geffen courtside at Staples Center for a game in the Finals to elevate his stature as a major mover, but buzz died fast when Clippers owner Donald Sterling made clear he had no interest in selling his team.

part 5

As it started to get back to Jay-Z that the Nets were trailing to the Heat and Bulls, a Nets official close to ownership – against the wishes of several peers – hatched a plan to leak the notes of a Prokhorov staff meeting to a media outlet. The leaked notes indicated that Prokhorov believed James’ brand would be diminished as part of a three-star team in Miami. What’s more, the notes also indicated what great respect Prokhorov had for Maverick Carter.
The Bulls still believed they were strongly in the bidding for James. They met him on July 2, and for all the discussion later about the belief that Chicago wouldn’t give jobs and access to members of James’ inner circle, the issue had never been raised with team executives.
For everything the Bulls tried to sell – from owner Jerry Reinsdorf to GM Gar Forman to coach Tom Thibodeau – there had been one thing that troubled James’ about the Bulls pitch: Derrick Rose never called and tried to recruit him.
Chicago officials never directly requested Rose to reach out with a call, and the young point guard felt James could’ve always reached out to him had he wanted to discuss the possibility of playing together. James needed to be courted, needed to be wooed and apparently it surprised him there was a star who wasn’t falling over himself to do that.
On the eve of the Bulls’ meeting with James, Forman and vice president John Paxson requested and received a second visit with Wade within 24 hours in Chicago. They met for a couple hours in the office of Wade’s agent, Henry Thomas. Chicago believed it needed badly to emerge out of the meeting with a commitment from Wade to take to James in Cleveland. The Bulls could still make a couple of moves to position them further under the cap and sign two maximum salary players.
Without James committed to joining him in Miami, Wade hadn’t completely let go of the Bulls as a bargaining chip. He knew Bosh would come with him, but LeBron still hadn’t told him that he was going to sign with Miami.
Nevertheless, Riley’s presentation on July 3 pushed James closer to committing than ever. Riley never did pitch James on his own return to coaching, and yet bringing those five championship rings into the meeting were his way of selling James on the fact that Riles’ prints would be all over the team. No other basketball executive in the process could tell James they understood what a title team needed, what it looked like and how they had already done it like Riley could. Riley had such credibility, such presence and he completely captivated James.
Want the best talent? It’s here. Want a Hall of Fame coach? He’s upstairs, waiting for your arrival. Nevertheless, Riley had backed far away from a news conference at season’s end when he suggested he would be willing to return to the bench should a free agent deem it a deal-breaker to sign with the Heat. For James, it wasn’t. Wade had sold him on Erik Spoelstra, and Wade didn’t want Riley hovering over this coach the way he had Stan Van Gundy before taking over on the title run in 2006.
Perhaps Riley could always be seduced to the bench, but he has privately told people he has come to cherish his ability to escape to his Malibu home for a few days here and there in the season. In a lot of ways, the grind no longer appeals to him and he’s wanted to give Spoelstra, his longtime apprentice and understudy, every chance to succeed.
Nevertheless, the pressure on Spoelstra to win a championship in 2011 promises to be immense. To keep his job, he’ll probably have to win it all, especially because Riley has his eye on Doc Rivers to someday coach the Heat. Rivers has one year left on his Celtics contract, and has been heavily affected by the distance between him and his family still living Orlando.
Riley never sold any coach to James in the meeting, but the one sitting next to him. Yet, James understood that Riley ultimately had no loyalty to anything but winning.
Wade wasn’t allowed to recruit for the Heat before the end of the NBA Finals, because he was still a Heat employee. Yet before the end of the Finals, there were two June meetings that involved Wade and members of James’ inner circle – one in Ohio and another in Chicago. The NBA doesn’t seem interested in pursuing a tampering probe, but a senior NBA official wants the league to investigate whether Riley promised James employment and benefits to members of his camp.
“The bigger issue is salary-cap circumvention,” one top NBA front-office executive told Yahoo!. “You can’t promise jobs or preferential services outside of a contract or a job for a friend. If that’s part of the deal, it’s a violation.”

He would call him a HOUSE NEGRO

I just think this is all crazy. I mean this is all about titles that myself and im sure most other people will not think much of, as Stern says"it was all within the rules" but not within the unwritten rules imo.

They all took less money to win championships, the only way I can enjoy this is if they lose it, it would be one of the happiest days of my life. lol...cloud 9 comes to mind.