Drastic Times Call For
Drastic Fawning Over LBJ

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

It's been nearly two weeks since the Cavaliers completed their season in a disappointing Eastern Conference semifinal-round loss to Boston, and I've heard surprisingly little coming out of Cleveland since.

If that city wants to keep LeBron and thereby continue to think its first pro sports championship in more than 50 years is still within reach, it needs to do something drastic.

Making sports headlines for more than 18 months have been reports of what rap mogul Jay-Z, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other Gotham greats have had to say about LeBron moving his NBA game to the media capital of the world.

And since ESPN's Chris Broussard started reporting two weeks ago that James had taken a liking to Chicago, now that city's luminaries -- even President Barack Obama -- are weighing in on the prospects of LBJ taking his broad shoulders to Chitown.

The NBA's Nets, Clippers and even Heat also appear to be in the running to sign James after he becomes a free agent on July 1.

But what exactly has Cleveland done to show its love? Inexplicably, not much at all, it turns out.

During his seven years in Cleveland, the city has added giant, several-stories-tall images of LeBron on the sides of downtown buildings. But those are more the doings of his biggest sponsor, Nike, than they are of the people of Cleveland.

Which is why those in the 216 need to do something and do it quickly. They only have five weeks or so to show LeBron that they desperately want him to stay, that just because of two subpar playoff games, they still love him and that they'll shell out their hard-earned meager wages to continue to fill Quicken Loans Arena all 41 nights next winter.

So Cleveland, if you're listening, here are some steps you can take to show the greatest basketball player on the planet that you want him to re-sign with your Cavaliers:

+ Announce a LeBron James Day -- perhaps June 21 to mark the first day of summer -- where Mayor Frank Jackson hands over the keys to the city to LeBron, and residents flock down to Public Square for a big rally. Maybe change the name of the city for that day to LeBronland.

+ I'm not sure what the tourism marketing slogan is for the city of Cleveland, but maybe change it to LeBron On The Lake or Loyalty On The Lake.

+ If you don't like that line, how about, "Cleveland: We Might Light Our River On Fire, But At Least The World's Greatest Basketball Player Lives Here."

+ New York has its Canyon Of Heroes and Chicago's got Grant Park. I'm not sure where Cleveland would ever honor a championship team, but maybe it should plan that now and call it LeBron James Way.

+ Send Spencer Tunick back to Cleveland to shoot a gaggle of hot women lying naked on the ground in front of the Q, spelling out P-L-E-A-S-E S-T-A-Y L-E-B-R-O-N. Cleveland's got to have enough hot naked women to spell that out, right?

+ Urge Earnest Byner, Craig Ehlo, Brian Sipe and Charles Nagy to visit King James and regale him in the tales of their near-postseason successes. Surely they've thought many times since their high-stakes disappointments what things would have been like had their individual failures not led to heartbreak. Perhaps they can convince LeBron how great it would be to finally bring that starved city a championship. Could any town love one man more?

If Cleveland doesn't take some drastic measures soon, those WE ARE ALL WITNESSES t-shirts will take on a drastically different meaning shortly after July 1.

Middle-Aged Writers
Need To Stop Posing

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

Aahhh, to be 25. Most have been out of school for a few years -- or in my case, a few months -- some have already earned a promotion or two at work, others are still trying to get a foot in the door, and still others are tending bar in New York or Los Angeles waiting for agency calls about the next audition.

Whatever the goal, 25 is a great age to be working toward it. You're old enough to be smart enough, but you're young enough to still have everything in front of you. At the very worst, you can still live cheaply with mom and dad while you get your situation sorted, and then go confidently in the direction of those dreams.*

You've got friends aplenty and perhaps a healthy social life. You hit the bars with the fellas on Fridays and take out that pretty girl on Saturdays. Life is largely care free.

But what if your name happens to be LeBron James? What was Friday night like for him, just 24 hours after his season and perhaps his career in Cleveland ended? While most of us don't have any idea how he kicked off his weekend, the entire sports world seems to know what will be best for him come July 1.

A quick Google News search of "LeBron James" turned up 11.1 million results, the most recent of which was a Tim Cowlishaw column headlined, "What Exactly Is LeBron James The King Of?"

What I absolutely hate about sportswriters is their ugly habit of building people up only to tear them down without any regard for the fact that they were the ones who slid in the pedestal in the first place. Am I the only one who sees the joke, in this case at least, isn't on LeBron James but on Tim Cowlishaw?

What's even more ridiculous than the Cowlishaw piece -- and I typically like his columns and think he's usually the most logical of the "Around The Horn" gang -- is that there are plenty other middle-aged white men who seem to think they know what's best for a 25-year-old black superstar athlete whose currently facing a decision unlike any these sportswriters have had to make in their professional lives. And of the biggest decisions these guys have had to make, none has done it under the microscope by which King James has found his every move and syllable examined for the better part of a decade.

I'm obviously aware the role of a sports columnist is to write about what people want to read about, and if you can present your opinion in a way that elicits debate (read: sells papers or online subscriptions or at least generates page views) then you've done that job well.

By participating in the LBJ conversation on Twitter for most of the last week, I was reminded how many LeBron haters are out there. Is it because he operates dog-fighting rings or sexually assaults teenage girls or simply possesses an ornery personality like some of his colleagues? None of the above. Shoot, he doesn't even taunt his opponents.

The hate stems from his gift, his basketball greatness that causes the very writers who cover him to do what they do with all larger-than-life icons: they saturated us with a new definition of hyperbole.

And if the media thinks that's what its readers and viewers want, then I can stomach such overkill for the most part. But maybe the language these guys use could sound a little less sanctimonious. Instead of "he should do this," perhaps try "he could do that." Why would anyone other than LeBron claim to know what's best for him?

In the same breath that writers acknowledge LBJ's quest to further his global brand and become a post-career billionaire businessman, they criticize the absence of rage in his post-game press conferences after the Game 5 and Game 6 losses. "I didn't see any fire from him. He should have been mad as hell," I heard from a white TV analyst in his 50s the other day. "He just doesn't get it."

No, sir, you and your colleagues might be the ones who don't get it. You want a pro athlete half of your age, a young celebrity who's led a life nothing like yours, to react to losing a sporting contest the way you think you would.

The reality is that while we can have a good time speculating with friends over beers what we'd do if we won the lottery or if Charlize Theron walked into the bar, but none of us has any idea what it's like to be one of the most recognized superstar athletes on the planet. We surely don't know how we'd have reacted after those last two games against Boston, and we're definitely clueless about what will happen on or shortly after July 1.

Write about his game all you want, talk about what NBA insiders will be telling you all summer, but stop pretending to know what's going on inside the mind of a man you will never ever be.

(* = paraphrasing Thoreau, of course.)

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

Dear LeBron James:

Cleveland loves you. Ohio loves you. I love you. If I had a dog, I'd train it to love you. Actually, scratch that; it would already know to love you upon sliding out of its mother's slimy birth canal.

Unfortunately for the aforementioned, those big shots in New York love you. And it sounds like Chicago is starting to fall for you as well. Lots of people love you.

But who has always loved you? Your mother and your friends, for starters. Those you grew up with in Akron, not too far from your office the last seven years. That's nearly 30 percent of your life so far.

You've done so much for northeast Ohio, LeBron. You've done us all a huge favor by giving us something fun and exciting to cheer about. In the seven years that you've been dominating Quicken Loans Arena, Cleveland's Indians and Browns have made one postseason appearance each. Your Cavs, however, are playoff staples and even championship contenders.

But we need that trend to continue. There's so little else in our city that gives us a reason to smile. I know there's a big ribs cookoff on the west side every summer, but that's not quite the same thing. I mean, have you been there?

We don't just want you to stay in Cleveland. We need you to stay. Surely there's the promise of a better life in New York, but can you imagine if what you pulled in Tuesday's Game 5 actually went down at Madison Square Garden? If you thought the Cleveland fans got ugly, just wait until you get a taste of Midtown after a night like that. And don't bother reading the papers the next morning.

LeBron, I know it's only basketball, but it's hard to trivialize it like that when you're standing to earn the biggest contract in NBA history this summer. I know you want to be a billionaire businessman down the road, and what better place is there to reach for such a goal than in New York?

But you want to win championships, too, don't you? Isn't the now more important than the later? You said an hour after the Game 6 elimination Thursday that "it's all about winning for me," and it should be. Your gift is basketball, not board rooms. Keep using the basketball to fulfill the near-term goals with the team you grew up watching.

And if you want to keep shooting commercials, shaking hands on seven-figure deals and building your brand, well, that's what summers and private airplanes are for. Sightseeing and fine dining are great and all, but once the basketball season begins, it doesn't matter where you live. Your focus should be on your team, whether it's the Cavs, Bulls, Knicks or the Lithuanian touring squad. 

If it really is all about winning for you, you'll definitely be taking at least one step back if you go to Chicago or New York because those teams aren't in position to contend for a championship next year. While your current team has fallen short of expectations the last two years, the Cavaliers are much closer to a ring than most teams. Oh, and by the way, whether it's right or wrong, sports fans are a fickle bunch, and those in Cleveland will hate you forever if you leave.

So if all these things are equal, why not stay in the city and continue to play for the team where you've already built such a strong foundation? After what that city's sports fans went through long before that Game 5 debacle and the 48 crippling hours that followed, imagine what kind of hero you'll be in your own hometown. Everyone I know would kill to have just a sip of that kind of juice. As the King, you'll own the shiniest chalice, and thirsty Clevelanders shall all be witnesses.

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

When I left my apartment to pick up some food about a half hour before game time, Stuart Scott was teasing his typically annoyed ESPN audience with, "Stay tuned for what will be the most important game in the history of the Cleveland Cavaliers."

When I returned 20 minutes later, he was throwing to colleague Michael Wilbon, who was far, far away from the Boston-Cleveland game, getting ready to explain "what tonight's Game 6 will mean for LeBron's legacy."

The legacy of a 25-year-old basketball player who's about halfway into his prime and barely a third of the way through his career overall?

Working at home all day every day means I get to have ESPN on all day long, which in many ways is a good thing. I obviously get to stay up to date on the day's sports news and so forth, but the overkill is truly disgusting. You take the good with the bad, I guess.

When I used to work at FOX, I heard from several reliable co-workers, including one who claimed she was on the distribution list, that there was some electronic directive emailed out from the top reaches of the company every morning, emphasizing what the day's talking points were to be. Translation: Let's pound Obama for this, or let's praise Palin for that.

I've got to think the high-level folks in Bristol do the same thing, because the LeBron's-last-game-in-Cleveland talk earned a mere mention on "SportsCenter" Tuesday morning, but such speculation -- and until July 1 that's all it will be -- has since ramped up to a level unprecedented even by ESPN's norms. In fact, Jimmy Clausen's pre-draft and draft-night coverage are starting to get a little jealous.

So while I'll be rooting for my Cavs for the next couple of hours, a small -- very small -- piece of me will be relieved if they lose because the postseason hype will be overwith. All that remains to be seen is where LeBron signs over the summer, and I can't imagine ESPN will cover that story too much.

Win In Boston Would
Force Game 7 In Cleveland

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

It's amazing how one weak performance by the world's greatest basketball player has set off a deluge of anti-Cleveland sentiment around the sports world.

But that's the nature of sports media, thanks in large part to ESPN, Frank Isola and of course, Twitter and the blogosphere.

Before we plan our LeBron James goodbye party, however, there's still the matter of tonight's Game 6 in Boston. Some think there's no way the Celtics let the Cavs off the hook, while others are expecting an eruption of Mt. LBJ, forcing a Game 7 back in Cleveland on Sunday that the Cavs couldn't possibly lose, right?

Whatever your opinion about this series or LeBron's NBA future, below are the facts, the four things Cleveland must do to win tonight and push the series to a final game.

+ Play team basketball -- The Cavs have won many games with James dominating while his teammates stand around and watch (see: the last seven years). That can't happen tonight. James needs to attack early like he did in Game 3 at Boston, but his supporting cast needs to be just as aggressive. Ball movement, sharing the basketball, finding the open man and playing good, active, team defense are imperative.

+ Play desperate basketball -- This time of year you hear "desperate hockey," but you don't hear the "desperate" tag as often in basketball because hoopsters don't think it's macho. Whatever. People like Antawn Jamison and Mo Williams need to be aggressive, enthusiastic and even physical. No sense saving their energy for another game because without a win tonight, there won't be any.

+ Play physical basketball -- Shaquille O'Neal has probably given more on the offensive end than was expected in this series, but he's still not even grabbing six rebounds per game. He and Anderson Varejao, and hopefully Zydrunas Ilgauskas and J.J. Hickson, need to keep Boston off the offensive glass. And I'm not only talking about rebounding. I'm talking about an elbow here or a hip check there. I know it's hard to change your personality for one game in May, but it's worth trying.

+ Play with mental toughness -- The last time the Cavs faced elimination in Boston was just two years ago in the same conference semifinal round. The Cavs came up short in Game 7, but it was close, and I'd like to think the Cavs have improved more than the Celtics since then. Cleveland can't think about the fear of elimination. Instead, for inspiration, the Cavs should consider the reward for a win tonight -- a Game 7 in their own barn on Sunday, with all the momentum behind them.