The latest episode of “Blame Lebron”
The Celtics play the Cavaliers tonight, one game before Lebron James visits his old basketball home for the first time. All of which means you’ll be hearing far too much about James in the next few days.
The Cleveland media repeatedly asked the Cavs if they were overlooking Boston, only the Eastern Conference’s best team. Shaq has already been asked about Lebron’s return, and he said two things: first, he doesn’t worry about the game. He just wants to know if Lebron will throw the powder in the air beforehand. And second, if Shaq’s return to Orlando was a six on the vengeance scale of one to ten, Lebron’s return to Cleveland is a twelve.
I’m sorry you have to hear about James all the time. I really am. But I’m also going to discuss him here, in this space. In other words, I will now contribute to the problem I just apologized for. This is where I apologize for the second time in the same paragraph.
My beef is with Adrian Wojnarowski’s latest piece on Lebron. I get that Woj finds Lebron to be everything wrong with sports. I understand that. In a way, I agree with it. But there comes a time when we need to stop blaming everything on Lebron. There comes a time when the other people in the Heat organization should take a little flak, too. Not everything is Lebron’s fault. Not everything that goes wrong should be blamed on the two-time defending MVP.
Look, I love Woj’s work more than life itself. I’m currently re-reading “The Miracle of St. Anthony” for the 1,113th time (estimate only), and I consider it one of the greatest pieces of sports journalism ever penned. But Woj has a tendency to pin all of Miami’s problems on Number Six, and sometimes it just isn’t fair.
Woj’s latest column on the Heat mentioned a quote from Dwyane Wade that threw Erik Spoelstra under the bus, while not directly throwing Spoelstra under the bus. “I’m not going to say he’s ‘my guy,’ but he’s my coach,” Wade said. Wade, keep in mind, is a former NBA Finals MVP, one of the five best players in basketball, and owner of a personality strong enough to be his own man. Yet Woj felt free to blame James for Wade’s apparent sour attitude toward Spoelstra.
As much as ever, the Heat need Wade to influence James. Only now, it’s clear James is influencing Wade. With Udonis Haslem out for the regular season, the locker room misses one of its vital voices. Now, Wade is struggling on the floor and James is the devil on his shoulder, whispering that he doesn’t need to be accountable, that there’s an easy fall guy for everyone: Spoelstra.
Sure, Wade is the one who wouldn’t back his coach, but it’s Lebron’s fault. This was always going to be Lebron’s fault, if anything failed, no matter what it was. Lebron is the two-time MVP, and he’s the one who risked his legacy by teaming with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. If the Heat fail, regardless of how well Lebron plays, that failure will always rest on his shoulders. And so it was that Woj, in a piece preaching how James should be more accountable, offers Wade a way to escape accountability altogether: just blame Lebron.
One gets the feeling Woj would also blame Lebron for the BP oil spill, World War II, and Angelina from the Jersey Shore, if he could.
I’m not saying Lebron has zero fault in this whole mess. It’s very possible he leaked the ESPN story about Miami players doubting Spoelstra, as Woj claims. It’s very possible he returned his cold french fries to a renowned chef — wait, what? It’s very possible he doesn’t respond well to the word “no.”
All signs say Lebron James a spoiled, narcissistic baby who has rarely, if ever, been held accountable for his own mistakes.. But in trying to hold him accountable for his own misdeeds, let’s not also blame him for the mistakes of others. There are a lot of things to blame on Lebron James. Dwyane Wade’s opinion of Erik Spoelstra is one thing that just isn’t Lebron’s fault.
And Spoelstra? It’s nice that he is standing up to Lebron, like Mike Brown never did. It’s nice he’s telling Lebron “no” sometimes. But if Spoelstra expects to keep his job, and to keep from losing his own locker room, he should figure out a way to make his talented team work. That, not just repeatedly saying “no”, is what coaches are supposed to do.
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Around the NBA | Jay King | November 30, 2010
As a Cavs fan and a attendee of the nightmare that we call game 5, I don’t know if Spoelstra can do ANYTHING to make a team work. Why do I say that? If LBJ is doing what it seems like he did in game 5, then what is a coach to do when one of his star players is purposefully tanking on the team and trying to undermine the coach? He absolutely did leak that story through one his buddies. That’s the only place Broussard gets his info. He absolutely did bump Spoelstra on purpose. What is spoelstra supposed to do? Suspend him? Bench him for a few games? I mean..this is what you do to a regular player who does these kinds of things. As a matter of fact, if this was joe average on the team who leaked a story like this, joe average would be getting traded within 24 hours. I feel for Spoelstra, and because Riley isn’t the typeo f guy to take this stuff either, I suspect LBJ is gone after one year in Miami.
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I don’t think Woj’s putting the whole blame for Wade’s comments on LeBron’s broad shoulders.. The way I read it, Wade had the choice between publicly backing his coach, a guy he has good history with, or throwing him under the bus like LeBron reportedly did by leaking the shootaround incident or bumping him at the start of a time out (in other words: backing James).
By saying that LeBron influenced Wade rather than the other way around should not be seen as a full blame on LeBron, but also on DW who was expected to keep things together with this (his) team. What we’re seeing for now is more a LBJ takeover of the Heat franchise, pushing Wade aside without him doing anything about it.
Throw in the mix the whole Christina Bosh internet campaign, everybody laughing at Carlos Arroyo and Joel Anthony, criticisms of Spoelstra’s playbook and the memory of how Pat Riley handled the Stan Van Gundy situation a few years earlier, and we actually end up with quite an amount of people receiving blame for the Heat Circus.
James is, of course, a more frequent target than the others, but his spoiled child behavior makes it deserved in my opinion.
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It’ll be time to stop blaming LeBron for things when things stop being his fault. I’m sorry, the “what can we do to make this team work” thing is what got Cleveland into its mess in the first place.
Maybe a year of saying “no” to LeBron… which would mean no title either… is the best thing in the long term for Miami. Maybe a year of tumult will lead to a future of positive team play and those multiple titles they were talking about.
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LeBron always was punk the truth is just now coming out though. He deserves every bit of it. This guy thinks he is bigger than the game. I want to see another special about how the HEAT sucks. This guy is a selfish tool. Pile away folks, this guy calls himself the king. Verbal regicide is the order of the day on this cat.
I would not take LeBron on the Celtics in a million years. He ruins any offensive flow with pointless dribbling and is a mediocre go to guy. Now he is in a bigger market more will see his flaws. The Big Choke in MIA is not working. Its not all LeBron but its his team. He never mans up and its always his team-mates or coaches. Dude lacks maturity and responsibility and killer instinct. When your the best on the team your supposed to lead not be the center malcontent.
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Here’s my thing. Tear Lebron apart all you want. Say he’s a punk, or this, or that. But when you blame Lebron James for being a bad influence on Dwyane Wade, that’s when I draw the line. Wade is his own man, and he’s strong-willed enough to formulate his own opinions.
That Wade has soured on Spoelstra has nothing to do with Lebron. It has more to do with the fact that the Miami Heat, who were supposed to challenge for 72 wins (not to mention world supremacy), are now 10-8. Spoelstra’s job is to get the most of his talent, and he’s not doing that. Granted, it’s not all Spoelstra’s fault. But let’s not pretend Wade is being badly influenced by Lebron James because he won’t fully back his under-achieving coach.
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if i’m completely honest, i love jumping on the ‘blame lebron’ bandwagon as much as the next guy, but i get where you’re coming from . i too absolutely love the Woj, but after reading your post i agree that perhaps he is putting too much on LBJ.
however, you have to understand that this Heat team is all about LBJ, whether you like it or not. his influence on his team mates, the coaching staff etc are all part of the package that comes with him. when they signed Bosh, they knew what they were getting – a PF who can score and board sometimes, thats it. with Lebron, the chemistry issues, the authority issues, the shot selection, the play calling, the ‘who takes the last shot’ issues, the relationship with his coach – all intangibles that are all part of this huge soap opera that is the 10/11 Miami Heat.
rest assured, if this experiment works this year, it will be because of Lebron too, just like if it fails, it will be his fault as well. he is, after all, the self-proclaimed ‘king’, and more is expected of such leaders than others. quite frankly, i don’t think Wade, whom i love, has the stomach or the locker room presence to control Lebron.
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We expected Wade to run a tight ship, given how the Heat was supposed to be HIS team.. what we’re seeing now is a lack of leadership emphasized by him not backing a coach he grew up with as a player and who is, according to Chris Mannix’s latest piece on the topic, definitely “his guy”.
The way I read Woj’s article, James is taking over the team and trying to run it like back in the old days in Cleveland, with Wade not doing anything about it. I don’t think it should be read like the story of a bad child corrupting a little angel.
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But even if Lebron is commandeering the team and causing all these problems, it’s still Wade’s fault. He is still his own man. We can’t ask Lebron to talk accountability for his own mistakes, then blame Lebron for Wade’s mistakes on top of it.
I agree, Lebron has been coddled his entire professional life, and even far before he became a professional. He needs to be held accountable for his own mistakes. But he shouldn’t be held accountable for things that aren’t his fault.
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