This just feels so anticompetitive & gross, free agents constructing their own self-selected Dream Team of Greed. Not how sports should be.
This just feels so anticompetitive & gross, free agents constructing their own self-selected Dream Team of Greed. Not how sports should be.
I’m happy to hate on LeBron James as much as the next guy, but really, if three superstars want to sacrifice a small amount of salary so they can play on the same team and win a championship, why is that not laudable? There are a lot of reasons to snark on this deal, but greed isn’t a good one when Wade is supposedly accepting less money to stay with the Heat, and both James and Bosh could have made more money had they stayed in Cleveland and Toronto, respectively.
You’re right, I probably shouldn’t have included the word “greed.” But the whole thing still feels gross. LeBron could have taken on a serious challenge by going to New York, or showed some loyalty by staying in Cleveland, or taken on Jordan’s Shadow by going to Chicago and becoming the unchallenged superstar of that team. Instead he… joins Dwayne Wade as co-superstars in Miami, along with Bosh… not setting himself to compete against the league’s best, trying to bring a title to a city that craves it, but instead moving to a place that’s almost as bandwagon-y as L.A., with a bunch of other stars who wanted to play there because, I dunno, it was the most convenient available opportunity for them to build their little self-selected franchise? It’s the pro-athletes-as-mercenaries concept, taken to a whole new level. I don’t know, it’s hard to put into words, but the whole thing makes me want to take a shower, and/or care about the NBA even less than I do now.
Glad to see the salary cap working so well in the NBA…
What Brendan said.
So glad there’s a real major sporting event going on right now. Go Holland!
I frankly don’t see how this is qualitatively any different than how the recent Celtics and Lakers teams came together. Aside from Rondo, Pierce, Kobe, and Bynum — who were homegrown — the Celtics imported Rasheed, Ray Allen, and KG; the Lakers imported Gasol and Artest, not to mention found a way to keep Odom. The previous Lakers dynasty of Shaq and Kobe was grown organically (until they landed Karl Malone and Gary Payton, but that backfired and they didn’t win the championship that season), and the Pistons and Spurs’ titles were “homegrown” as well.
As for the salary cap, the NBA salary cap is very loose, to put it mildly, and teams like the Lakers, Celtics, and Knicks have exploited that soft cap to full effect in recent years (only the Knicks failed miserably under Isiah Thomas’ leadership).
It doesn’t bug me that he went to Miami to form a Superteam. What bothers me is how LeBron has used this whole period to make it about him and him alone. Ugh. A one hour special devoted to your decision? Really now? Why not call a press conference, like everybody else.
I don’t see how this is anti-competitive. I don’t even think the Heat are going to be the best team in the East next season. Maybe they’ll have the most regular season wins, but that’s hardly important in the NBA. When it comes to the playoffs the Celtics and Magic are still massive team powers. After the Triple Threat in Miami sit down to rest, who’s gonna pick up the slack? And Dwayne Wade is the most over-rated “superstar” in the NBA. Nobody would know who the hell he is if it wasn’t for Shaq going to Miami and handing them a title and the spotlight a few years back. Ever since that One championship, Dwayne has either missed the playoffs or not even made it out of the first round. Some superstar.