The battle for LeBron James gets going

i dont mind his decision to leave, but the way he went about it was tasteless, disappointing and surprising. In my minds eyes all comparisons and hopes and dreams for lebron to be jordan should stop now. Yes he is a freak, he is athletically more talented then anyone in the league, and may have the potential for greatness, but he lacks what jordan had, the insane non-human will to win, the competitive drive that has not been surpassed and a never say die attitude. I dont think jordan would ever have quit on a team that won 60+ games 2 seasons in a row. i dont think he would have said, this is to hard, im going to go play with wade so he can win me a championship. Instead, jordan would have wanted to play them in the finals, wanted to compete against them to show hes the best. For Lebron to leave the cavs & play second fiddle to Wade is very surprising. i cannot ever see MJ or Kobe doing this. Hell kobe didnt want to play second to shaq. Secondly, the way he dragged this out since announcing a couple of years ago that july 1 2010 will be a big day was just wrong. If he knew the decision he should have come out with earlier, and the way he delivered bad news was just in bad taste. If dan gilbert is to be believed, no contact from lebron was had until the decision aired. I dont feel for the owner to much, but if i was a cavs fan, and the best athlete ever to grace my team announced the decision on national TV, then i would be pissed. Its a kick in the guts, and very classless way to deliver news. When michael jordan returned in 1996, he simply sent a fax that read "im back". i felt lebron made it so much about him, that it was so egotistical and narcissistic with his 1 hour ESPN special that it turned me of him completely. As sports fans we tend to hold our superstars up high on a pedestal, and i felt for whatever reason, lebron lost a bit of that "jordan" touch, where you thought he was such a supreme athlete and competitor that no one could come near his greatness. I just dont think lebron has that for me right now, it may change, but right now theres no other way of defining it. A bit silly to think changing a team can do that to you, but its just how it is.

The Lebron James heel turn is incredible and all of the nWo jokes are priceless.

Looks like it was a long term plan for Wade, Bosh and James to play together. All drafted 1st round same year, all signed exactly the same length of contract so they would become free agents together. I think this decision was made a long time ago. It seems to have been the pattern over the last decade or so though, that previously No.1 players for a team are willing to play second fiddle or share the limelight in order to get a championship ring.

miami...wtf

So we find out in probably 4 hours who wins the sweep stakes

looks like amare is of the list to: http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=AvGxO0bH2D..dpXWWFy0YWy8vLYF?slug=ys-stoudemireknicks070210

TSG What was Dwayne Wade doing in Boston for Game 3?, with his kids?

Looks like Gay and Johnson are going to be off the shopping list. Don’t understand the huge sum for Rudy Gay when they had the right to match but hey this is Memphis they stopped making sense along time ago. Leaves realistically Bron, Bosh, Boozer, Amare as the guys gunning for 10 max contract slots Lots of guys are going to get over paid this summer

Miami will be tough also because they don’t have room for two max contracts and no assets to trade Toronto who’ve said they don’t want Beasley or Chalmers.

miami as a lead contender? nobody knows anything, thats all media speculation and opinion... they know about as much as we do. bron and bosh aren't saying 'miami' to anyone right now... or any other team for that matter. still, i love the speculation... even if everyone stays where they are, this has been a fun couple years (oh, love that espn tells us LeBron got to his business manager's office "8 minutes" before the Nets delegation)

Have a look at these stats across the two series versus Boston: TS%: 52.8 v 55.2 Avg FTs: 8.6 v 11.7 Reb: 8.0 v 9.3 Ass: 3.9 v 7.2 Ppg 28.6 v 26.8 TO: 3.9 v 4.5 “Games score” 18.7 v 22.0 Player one finals MVP player 2 lambasted loser who couldn’t figure out a way to get it done.

oh great, here come the laker haters. being a laker fan i obviously want them to repeat, but with all the big changes being made today, its hard to tell whats going to happen. out west, potentially 3-4 of the contenders will change the makeup of their team. Dallas / Suns / Utah/ clippers?spurs? its become even harder to predict a champion on either side of the conference now, way to difficult to tell. Latest news on draft: Chatter on the airwaves now has miami as lead contender for bron & bosh.

Switch pau for jamison, bynum for the corpse of shaq, parker for artest and mo Williams for fisher and the lakers don’t even get past OKC and everyone is talking about what a winner paul perice is, who of course couldn't win without KG, rondo, allen... Everyone seems to think only the best player on the floor matters, kobe went 6-24 in a game 7 and got bailed out by Gasol that's why it is considered a team sport.

Who cares. Just stop the Lakers from three peating. Please.

I think for the fans sake he should stay in Cleveland, but i recommend Miami. With Wade there you have a player that can get points when LeBron is off the court. What Cleveland and LeBron showed me the last couple of years is that LeBron isn't as good as Kobe and probably never will be. Kobe can make his team win where the pressure is on (perfect clutch player) LeBron uses physical presence and if that doesn't work then he will hope someone else will do it.

I'm an insider but have never seen the article, mind you there are a couple of writers I ignore because they don't put anything up to support their statements. I just can't see how they can reconcile that against the jersey sales/alls tar votes that clearly favour exposed players over the more successful ones. Predictions on where someone is going is tough. A lot more plays into things than just winning you’ve egos (see Kobe, Shaq, Kidd, Carter, McGrady, Marbury etc) city and friends etc etc. Morey just met with Bosh could offera sing and trade with brooks/hill/ballast/right to swap picks with the knicks Bosh gets more money and goes back home (plus texas state tax is lower I think) Starting 5 of Ming/Bosh/Ariza/Martin/Lowry then battier/Scola/Hayes/Anderson/budinger off the bench

looking for that article now mushi. Are you an espn insider and subscriber? quite sure it was on there. less then 24 hours to go and check out all the activity (and predictions) Lebron & bosh to cha-town. Amare & johnson to NY to reunite with d'anton and have a backcourt of johnson & crawford agani David lee or boozer to miami with wade resigning. Dirk getting stolen from the mavs to go to suns (like back in 04 when suns took nash away, i wish anyway!) Pierce to remain in boston with ray allen getting moved out to maybe clippers spurs to make a move with jefferson & parker. they will not be quiet during trades. Lakers famar to go elsewhere, with lakers looking at other point guards, felton? duhon? nate robinson? wizards: talk of hinrich arriving from bulls, howard, miller & foye all free agents. Knicks : lee & mcgrady free agents. and iverson to play again :) lots and lots of activity, lebron & wade aside, this is the biggest free agency i can ever recall just because of the sheer amount of quality players available for selection. Either way up to about ten teams will be effected by this class, some teams will change dramatically and the power of the main teams could change! Cant wait.

If there is a riot in Cleveland, and no one cares, did it really happen…

All for some vigorous debate.. On cap space ESPN have an article posted today on the positions, they are third following the Yi trade and only have enough for 1.76 max players, only the Knicks have presently room for two without one of them sacrificing multi-millions (which for all the talk of winning being important no player has in their prime). The next year plan for the Knicks was more to the point that they can add two max players this year AND (not or) then either switch hamburger Ed for talent whilst facilitating a salary dump or be a major player next as well. So Lebron and one other can join the Knicks and then either recruit another major player next year or make moves for one or two talented players at the deadline. On the Bulls fit. Just because James is there doesn’t mean he makes it up tempo. The coach’s system decides the tempo. James was just playing on a team that seemed to allow him to make personnel decisions and still couldn’t get an up-tempo offensively oriented team. Why would this change at another team with a defensive coach and a front office which has a reputation for not exactly heeding players thoughts (and rightly so)? With the rose scenario you talked about you are still turning James, arguably the best player in the league, into a secondary option on offense and taking away his superior play making. If the defence has you running the play through rose, rather than James, then they’ll take that every day of the week. And that is assuming James coming over transforms Rose from a scorer first and second to a distributor despite rose having an assist rate that was 56th amongst point guards in the league – 56th! There were 4 centres, 4 small forwards, 3 power forwards and 5 genuine shooting guards and 5 combo guards that had higher assist rates than Rose. On the shooting front, sure every team could do with a few more 3pt gunners but with Chicago languishing at 28th in the league last year with a paltry 33% from deep, their need is probably greater than many other teams.

I'd like him to stay in Cleveland, but the glamour of him playing for the Knicks would be pretty cool....from a humanatarian point of view I reckon he should go play for the Clippers.