On my way to pick  up my lunch day, I briefly caught the beginning of the Jim Rome show. Rome was, as could and should be expected, lacing into the Cavs. But specifically, he was lacing into LeBron James for something he said. He seemed to imply that LeBron called the fans spoiled. That can’t possibly be right, though. By that time, I was back at the office, so I didn’t hear the rest of the take.

I decided to follow up by checking out Brian Windhorst’s Twitter and sure enough, I found these gems:

LeBron: “I spoil a lot of people with my play. When you have 3 bad games in a 7-year career, it is easy to point that out.”

and

LeBron: “I put a lot of pressure on myself to go out be great and the best player on the court. When I’m not, I feel bad for myself.”

Is that so, Mr. James? Well, consider this an open response from the fans you play for.

Spoil? You SPOIL us? Spoiled would be if we got your level of performance out of a guy we gave the mid-level exception to. Last time I checked, the Cleveland Cavaliers pay you every last penny they are allowed to pay you under league rules. They pay you like a superstar, like you’re the best of the best. You are EXPECTED to be GREAT night in, night out. Yeah, we get it. The shots not always going to fall, not every night’s going to be a triple double. But you know what last night was? It was just pathetic. You were lazy and inefficient on defense, you were slow or sloppy when passing the ball, you were uncommitted when driving the lane. You did NOT earn your game check. I found this video on ESPN.COM to sum it up better than I could:

You played soft in every aspect of the game. You were slow, you were sluggish, you seemed disinterested, and unmotivated. You did NOT look like a champion. I was pretty young when Michael Jordan was in his prime, but I remember enough about those days to know that MJ never, EVER would have let a game like last night’s happen. He would hold his team accountable, he would hold his coach accountable, and most importantly, he would hold himself accountable.  He wouldn’t shrug his shoulders and say, and I quote, “I feel bad for myself.” That’s what makes it so very much worse.

You should feel bad. You should feel terrible. You should feel ashamed. But you should also feel sorry for letting down your team, your coach, and your fans. You should have come out first, before Mike Brown, sat down, and apologized. For letting someone come into OUR house and embarrass us like that. For not giving 100%. For not being a max-contract player. Because all of those things are YOUR responsibility. We show up, we buy the tickets, we wear the gear, we patronize the sponsors, you play winning basketball. That’s the deal. No one expects you to go “fo’, fo’, fo’, fo’”, but last night was unacceptable.

I’m not usually ‘get angry about sports’ guy. Today I am. I don’t take kindly to being called spoiled by millionaire athletes with McMansions and shoe deals. And you shouldn’t take kindly to being punked in your own house. But you were, and you rolled over.

Grow up. You wanna be like Mike? Be like him. Be a man. Be angry. Get fired up. Be aggressive. Just… do the opposite of whatever dreck that was you pulled out last night.

Edit: LeBron spoke again today, so I figure I might want to give a look at what he said 18 hours later.

So LeBron attributed last night’s abomination to an “off” night. “Off?” Apparently, he also has a talent for understatement. He went on to imply that the issue wasn’t effort, but possibly poor coaching:

“We tried to do the things we wanted to do with the gameplan that was given to us but it just didnt’ work.”

Welp. That definitely doesn’t sound like Mike, Kobe, Magic, or any of the other greats. The only true voice of reason about the whole thing has been Dan Gilbert. The following quotes were from an interview with Brian Windhorst of the Plain Dealer.

Our entire franchise has done everything in its power to put all of our players and its coaching staff in the best possible position to execute when it counts. And to deliver to the highly supportive fans of Cleveland a proud, intense, impassioned all-out drive to achieve a championship.”The last two home playoff losses and the manner in which we lost these games does not come close to being anywhere near the high expectations all of us have of our organization. Our fans and supporters deserve more. Above all, the fans of the Cleveland Cavaliers, as well as the entire franchise, deserve and need our players and coaches to dig deep within themselves. We have to ask ourselves two questions. Will we remember who we are and choose to impose our will on our opponent for the remainder of this series and beyond? And how much do we want it? I believe in our players, our coaching staff and our entire franchise. This series is not over.

That right there is what we needed to hear. But NOT from the Owner. Our Franchise Player needed to drop that knowledge, and he didn’t. He shrugged it off, threw out some soundbites about everything other than the issue at hand, and took off.

I hope, at the very least, that he was paying attention to the man who writes his checks. Because if not, might as well call it a year.