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The reaction to LeBron is a reaction to his marketing. From day 1. It was like Kobe's on steroids. And the more LeBron's hype seemed to be justified, the more intense it got. Not even Kobe, at his most marketed, and at his corniest, could compare.
LeBron himself essentially started to feed into it. The dancing on the sidelines, the Peyton Manning moments in the playoffs, and the ultimate Favre Milestone of his career: The Decision.
It's not that he left to go to Miami that he earned such wide-spread hate. The world, at large, really doesn't give a fuck about Cleveland THAT much (one reason, I made it my home in 2003). They might now, that he's here again, but nah.
LeBron's not the first free agent to choose his own destiny in pro-sports. You don't have to look any further than to SHAQ, whose first years in the NBA and exit from the team that drafted him are not all that different from Shaq.
(really, we don't talk enough about Shaq. He might have been the first star-post Jordan to really get the marketing blitz. He had rap albums, some legit tracks, video games, movies... Shaq was EVERYWHERE. And he dominated the NBA in a way we still haven't seen since.)
The only difference, LeBron, being the first star of the instant-gratification/social media era... had to go overboard with it. Turning a routine free agency signing into a public "Favre Moment" basically turned what should have been a Cleveland-only sodium infusion into a league-wide hate fest. Only went further when them dudes tried to be the nWo and shit, with the "Not 3, not 4, not 5..."
LeBron was at that point, and in many ways still is, the Peyton Manning of the NBA. He will sit in the record books for a LONG time, and has at least championship wins to at least escape the fry pan, but some of his playoff losses (2011, 2010 (NOPE), 2009) get way too many passes, and really, his Finals record does matter, even if you have to asterisk 2 of them.
And please note, I don't blame him for this Finals loss. Or even the last one with Miami, even though I found it funny as fuck if only for the LeBronies copping pleas. I don't even blame him for leaving Cleveland.
I do have a few minor personality-related issues with the dude ("Favre Mode", "Chill Mode", his occasional sips of Vicks 44 during high-pressure moments), but we gotta be real about why he gets SOME of this blowback, especially from Kobe fans who have to hear about how he's a volume-shooting cancer and a "cloak of darkness" upon the Lakers and their ability to move into the future.
"6-24" was a thing here.
LeBron had a few of those games these playoffs (perhaps due to necessity), most notably in the Bulls series where he hit the winning shot to take the Bulls out of a potential 3-1 situation.
Not a peep out of the usual suspects.
The whole "Chill Mode" moment. If that were Kobe? OKS would crash the servers.
Not a peep out of the usual suspects.
LeBron does a lot of the same bad shit that Kobe does, he just does it in such a lowkey manner, and he can hide behind being the best player on the planet often. He's still doing it.
Kobe fans are just asking you to keep up the same 'tensity when Bron does the shit.
In retrospect, I'm glad LeBron went to Miami and took those carpetbaggin' ass LeBronies with him. Having the opportunity to play with a good team (and a proven winner in Dwyane Wade) allowed him to keep away from the Vicks 44 and be himself. To learn a life outside of the ISO. Even if he won no titles, it was a good thing.
Fuck the Heat though, for life. Yes, I'm mad. Let's move on.
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