But I’m dubious about this: “The thing is, LeBron, we’ve come to expect more of you. You’re obviously an intelligent person, a compassionate person and a socially conscious person. At this point in your life and career, it’s part of your brand.”
I don’t have much experience with Mr. James, hating the sport that he plays as I do, but it is not at all obvious to me that he’s an intelligent person. I don’t think he’s getting the big bucks for his brain.
[Update a while later]
[Mid-morning update]
[Afternoon update]
Yes, Mr. James, all you had to say was that “America is a free country.” But you’re a dumb ass.
[Update a while later]
Treacher: Why should I care what he thinks about China, or anything?
I should have left my snarky comment here — look for it in the Sergei Brin thread
” I don’t have much experience with Mr. James, hating the sport that he plays as I do, but it is not at all obvious to me that he’s an intelligent person. I don’t think he’s getting the big bucks for his brain.”
Reminds me of movie, Bull Durham:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_Durham
With the “veteran” catcher [Kevin Costner] telling the hot shot pitcher which Costner was grooming for “the Show”, how to talk to the press.
Which basically is, just saying old cliches “doing it for the team”, etc.
In today press, they interview, as if, the members of the sports team have something important to say {they don’t- they are jocks playing at very high level of skill}.
But I guess since the media are dumber than bricks, and sportscasters are sort of like a “reality TV show” {of a bunch drunk jerks watching TV- and saying things which sport fans might actually say.
These “Reality TV” sportscasters should be allowed to drink beer to and eat hot dogs in order to make it more like “Reality TV” while they give their excessively uninteresting and dumb comments and dead stupid, unprofessional TV presentations.
Or simply, they are acting as skill-less twits- and if anyone actually wants watch these skill-less twits, at least, make the comedy show be less dull and boring- try to make it, more interesting, comedy.
Or if audience isn’t laughing their asses off, what is the point?
We had a TV show that was a panel discussion among local sports reporters — I think it was called “Sidelines.”
The participants were mainly columnists from local and regional newspaper sports pages with maybe some radio personalities included. I am not much on reading the sports page or caring about the sports coverage on the local TV news, but boy, did I find this program entertaining.
It was Siskel and Ebert on steroids. Siskel and Ebert were said to have “chemistry”, meaning that they disguised pretty well how much they hated each other, but the fun part of their program was how sparks flew when they took opposite opinions about a movie. Siskel and Ebert were newspaper columnists, and maybe the same effect was with Sidelines and sports.
The interesting thing is when they brought the head TV sports person from the station hosting the program to Sidelines. The guy was as dull as the paint on a 20-year-old car parked outside in L.A.. Having him there even put a damper on the repartee of the other participants.
Since then, I would read the sports page when waiting in the dentists’ office or in a McDonalds where I would stop driving up to where my parents lived, and I would read one of the guys from sidelines. He was just as interesting in print as getting into heated arguments with the other sports personalities on TV.
Movies are entertainment and sports is also entertainment and there are “Hollywood stars” who give cliché-ridden interviews too. But both have their practitioners of entertainment criticism. TV entertainment (apart from the old Siskel and Ebert program) is rah-rah-for-our-team, but the newspaper guys will express opinions that the quarterback is becoming a diva like the last guy, the defense is useless, and no, the Packers are not in all likelihood going to the Superbowl this year.
“Yes, we do have freedom of speech, it can be a lot of negative that comes with it.”
Sounds like LeBron has been reading the New York Times.
For what it’s worth, NBA fandom is very unhappy, at least the Reddit and Twitter parts of NBA fandom. This isn’t going to blow over soon.
The fans can express their displeasure in at least a few ways ways that might get the NBA’s attention. They can stop buying tickets to the games. They can stop buying NBA merchandise. They can stop watching their games on TV, jeopardizing their lucrative TV contracts by cratering their ratings. If the fans hit the NBA in their wallets, that might make an impression. If they aren’t willing to do these things, nothing will change. After all, the NBA is sucking up to China because of their lucrative contracts. Which will hurt them more – losing those Chinese contracts or losing their US fan base?
There is something I just don’t get about NBA merchandise.
In the late 1990s I attended a conference in Slovenia hosted by a professor from that country, who is avid about participant sports — a volleyball tournament was one of the “team building” exercises he organized among the international community of experts on robot motion control — and also a serious sports fan. A Croatian native and Olympic team member Toni Kukoc was playing for the Chicago Bulls alongside Michael Jordan during their NBA championship winning days, and this professor talked about staying up until 2 AM to see the NBA finals in real-time.
I looked high and low for a Chicago Bulls jersey with Toni Kukoc’s team number to purchase, take to Slovenia, and present to this professor at the next conference, but nothing doing. I guess Kukoc was soon after traded to Philadelphia, but I would have gotten a “Sixers” jersey and it would have been appreciated by the recipient just as much. The NBA would sell you an MJ jersey, but you couldn’t get the jersey representing any other player.
Kukoc wasn’t MJ, but I watched some of those championship games, MJ had to be rotated off the court for rest breaks, and Kukoc appeared to be holding up his end of the team. To receive a Kukoc NBA-merchandise jersey would have meant a lot to my robotics colleague and friend, but the NBA couldn’t offer such a thing for sale to save themselves.
Lebron James is very smart, about basketball. I’ve seen him do a play by play of the second half of a game he had just played – took him about ten minutes, but he remembered every pass, every basket. It was quite something.
You all expected Lebron to bite the hand that feeds him? Who is the idiot here.
LeBron exemplifies the rot of identity politics and cultural marxism.