Sports Then and Now

The Miami Heat were must-see TV this year, but there were many other teams that NBA fans tuned in to watch.

It has now been one year since “The Decision”, the infamous one-hour show on ESPN where LeBron James announced that he would be “taking my talents to South Beach” to join Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami to play for the Heat.

According to some members of the media, it was this one hour that was the sole reason for the NBA to have their best season since Michael Jordan and the Bulls in the late 1990s.

But in my opinion, the league had been gaining momentum in the previous few years prior to “The Decision”.

The NBA’s resurgence really began during the 2007-08 season when the league’s two most legendary franchises, the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, returned to championship prominence and ended up meeting in the Finals.

Ratings for that year’s playoffs and NBA Finals increased significantly from the year before where ratings for the NBA Finals reached an all-time low when the San Antonio Spurs swept the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Celtics and the Lakers have remained title contenders in the three seasons after their meeting in the 2008 Finals as Los Angeles would go on to win the next two NBA championships, including a seven-game series win over the Celtics in 2010. Read the rest of this entry →

It isn't yet clear how the 2011 Finals will impact LeBron's legacy.

From the day he announced that he was leaving Cleveland and taking his talents to South Beach, LeBron James has been under a media microscope that judges his legacy from game to game. Now after consecutive sub-par performances and with the Miami Heat trailing the Dallas Mavericks three games to two, it really is time for James to determine how people will look at him for years to come.

When James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade teamed up to form the “Big Three”, they talked about winning multiple championships and many across the league predicted a dynasty in the making.

However, many, including myself, also thought it would take the Heat a couple years to get comfortable playing together and finding the right supporting cast and that Boston and the Lakers would have one more championship battle before the dawning of the Heat Era.

That Miami dispatched of both the Celtics and the Chicago Bulls so easily in the Eastern Conference playoffs made us forget just how hard it is to get over the hump and win that first NBA Championship. Read the rest of this entry →

For all their struggles in meeting the national hype this season, the Miami Heat are right where they were expected to be. Playing in the NBA Finals as the Eastern Conference Champions. The Heat are gunning for their second championship in six seasons as they take to the court against the Western Conference Champion Dallas Mavericks as the finals open this week.

Yet it has been anything but easy for Miami in getting to the finals. While the story of last summer, “The Decision”, brought superstar LeBron James to the Heat to join forces with Dwyane Wade, that hasn’t resulted in an easy path to the top. Former Toronto Raptor star Chris Bosh, a talented 6-11 power forward, also joined Miami this year. James, Wade, and Bosh were looked upon as basketball’s version of the triplets, what Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, and Emmitt Smith were to the Dallas Cowboys of the 1990’s in the National Football League. Yet, at times, the Heat’s triplets were mere mortals.

Miami's LeBron James elevates for a jump shot over Corey Brewer of the Bulls during the Heat's game five win in Chicago on May 26 (Nathaniel S. Butler)

Despite being touted as the dominant favorite to make the NBA Finals and even win it, that threesome and Miami had more than one challenge, obstacle, and drought this season. After signing James and Bosh, the Heat’s season opened with huge expectations. However a season-opening 88-80 loss at Boston raised some questions. The Celtics were the defending conference champions and had won the 2008 NBA title. Many predicted that it would come down to Boston and Miami for the title in the east. With that on the minds of the players, fans, coaches, and media, the Heat were facing national scrutiny right from the very start of the season.

James led Miami with 31 points in the opening loss while Wade scored 13 with Bosh adding just eight points. The Heat never lead in the game and Boston showed why the experience of their key trio – Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett – made a difference.

The aftermath of that opening loss had the talking heads raising questions. Could Wade, James, and Bosh exist together and function? Was there enough points and plays to go around the three of them? What about the rest of the team? Every team, no matter how talented their top players are, needs supporting players to provide a cohesive nucleus. Forward Joel Anthony and guard Mike Bibby, the team’s other two starters in the opener against Boston, needed to mesh well with the trio. These were only some of the questions.

Additionally, there was the all-important issue of how the reserves would fit around Wade, James, and Bosh. Veteran centers Udonis Haslem and Zydrunas Ilgauskas each provided quality experience in the pivot. How would they adjust to the trio? Youngsters like Mario Chalmers and James Jones would have to find their niche as well. Read the rest of this entry →

You can’t blame LeBron James.

Seriously.

LeBron was born in December of 1984. Not two years later, Run-DMC covered Aerosmith’s 1977 hit, “Walk This Way.”

Those two facts are very much related.

See, everyone went up in arms when LeBron broke up the LeBronettes and decided to play backup guitar in Dwayne Wade’s band. But he really only did what successful athletes/artists/actors have been doing his entire life.

Prior to the mid-80s, it was rare to see anybody go to bat for one of their rival’s teams – figuratively or literally speaking. When DMC covered Aerosmith, suddenly collaboration became the thing to do. It was a surefire way of saying, “yeah, I know I’m good, but imagine how good I could be with somebody else whose talents equal mine in a complimentary manner.”

Bird never would have played with Johnson. Russell never would have played with Wilt or Kareem. But why would they? They were the best at what they did and who needed anybody else?

The Prince still has some work to do before NBA fans will anoint him King.

Elvis didn’t mix with anybody else, and neither did the Beatles or Beach Boys a decade after him. Steve Miller? Don Henley? Freddie Mercury? He shared everything else with the world, but not his musical talents. None of them collaborated.

What about Pacino or Stallone or Harrison? Or DeNiro? Not in the 70s, anyway. Ford and Stallone, now well aware that they’re past their respective primes, have done a great job in supporting roles in the last 15 years or so – the atrocious Rocky Balboa notwithstanding.

Not even in the 80s did movie stars go out of their way to collaborate. Bruce Willis, Nic Cage and Tom Cruise – all rising stars in their own right – carried their own films, some more admirably than others.

But around the mid-80s, right when Run and Aerosmith were changing the game for good, a young Michael J. Fox teamed with Christopher Lloyd for the trans-generational hit Back to the Future. Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman tag teamed on Rain Man. The rest of the 80s would see some classic teams produce epic hits: Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams (1988),  Costner and Tim Robbins in Bull Durham (1988), and Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally 1989).

It took longer for collaboration to catch on in music, primarily because there was such a divide in the 80s between the long-established Rock scene and the up-and-coming hip-hop genre. Ice Cube, Ice T, Eazy-E and Dr. Dre worked together late in the 80s in their N.W.A. project, but produced but one hit together, “F*ck the Police,” which earned a letter of warning from the FBI and will likely go down in history as the song that started the rap movement.

Dre and Snoop Dogg began the 90s by collaborating on a glut of hits that – mercifully – pushed MC Hammer and Right Said Fred quickly off the front pages of the Billboard charts. En Vogue and Salt-N-Pepa, two groups influenced by Dre, were no strangers to collaboration either. It was Tupac who made collaboration big in hip-hop, however, working with artists from different labels and pushing their careers forward. Read the rest of this entry →

Will it hurt LeBron James' legacy that he is no longer an individual superstar?

It’s hard to tell what is in store for Lebron James as he tries to change his sense of direction for greatness. He may have a plan to make himself known as a champion team player rather than leaving a legacy of individual greatness like Michael Jordan. In some respects, it seems like Lebron gave up on the Cleveland Cavaliers and instead took a shortcut to becoming a champion by joining Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat.

I am not taking anything away from James, because he is a great athlete with unbelievable skill and talent. I just think that leaving a legacy is more impressive than just being a champion with no sense of leadership. James was a great player for the Cavaliers, but he was just learning to show the type of leadership that you now see from Kobe Bryant for the Los Angeles Lakers.

Read the rest of this entry →

LeBron James is starting to get used to his new uniform and surroundings.

Now that the dust has settled on the LeBron James sweepstakes, let’s take a look at some of the key participants in his announcement and how they fared during a strange week that seemed to captivate the interest of the sports media as much as any game or event in recent memory.

LeBron James the Basketball Player:  A

You could say that the decision to take his talents from a Cleveland squad where he was the primary factor in whether they won or lost to a Miami squad where he will share the load with Dwyane Wade was a great move for LeBron James the player. I believe that had he stayed in Cleveland, James would have eventually led the Cavaliers to an NBA Championship. However, it would have been excruciatingly difficult and it is unlikely that he would have been able to lead them to multiple titles. He now joins a team that has a championship pedigree and three very talented players capable of building a dynasty. I’m not necessarily saying that the Miami Heat will create a monopoly on championships, but once Pat Riley has time to surround his three stars with some solid complimentary players they will certainly be in the mix every season. James knows that he must win at least one NBA title to be considered an all-time great and with at least 10 years left in his career, this should guarantee that he will get at least one ring.

LeBron James the Global Brand: D

Team LeBron has been force-feeding LeBron James commercials and his greatness to the American public since before he even graduated from high school. He has definitely become a powerful marketing machine – big enough to commandeer the largest sports television network for more than an hour in prime time. However, part of what has helped make James a national icon is the assumption that he is the heir to the throne as basketball’s next great superstar.

By leaving Cleveland, where he was undisputedly “The King”, for South Beach, James has in some respects abdicated his throne of greatness. His decision to go to a team with another nearly equal superstar has signaled that he doesn’t want/need to be “the man” on his team. That may help him win championships, but it is not going to help him build his global brand.

I predict that with the exception of fans in Cleveland, James will eventually overcome much of the negative hits he has received for leaving his hometown city at the altar. However, unless he does something quickly to distinguish himself from Wade and Chris Bosh, I also predict that many fans will lose interest in LeBron the individual talent. He will now become part of the “The Trio” and his individual prominence will diminish accordingly. Read the rest of this entry →