The media creates the LeBron beast and then turns on him

The media’s been on LeBron James’ jock since his JUNIOR year of high school.  If you’ll recall, LeBron was the guy who petitioned the NBA to torpedo its rule requiring that a kid needed to have a high school diploma in hand to get drafted.

I don’t recall that much in the way of hemming and hawing back then from the pundits over a crazy notion like not even bothering to graduate from high school. People weren’t lining up to label him as a narcissistic prick.  On the contrary, a prolonged period of hero worship was just starting.

In James you’re talking about a guy whose ego was stroked at an age when most guys are still trying to figure out the mechanics of undoing a chick’s bra strap. Nike was throwing tons of cash at him while his classmates were making minimum wage at the Piggly Wiggly or whatever crappy supermarket chain there is in Akron.

The media turned the dude into the most hyped draft pick in the history of recorded time. Michael Jordan?  Hell, he wasn’t even the first pick when he came out of North Carolina.  Kobe Bryant?  He was still Joe’s kid when he got drafted and then subsequently traded to the Lakers.

No basketball player ever had that kind of publicity before even so much as dribbling a basketball in an NBA arena. And lo and behold, James pretty much lived up the hype. Few things in life are as good as advertised, but in his rookie season, he was.  And that only fueled the demand as he dominated highlight reel after highlight reel.

Has it gone to his head?  Of course it has.  Should you be surprised by the fact that it has?  Well, if you happen to be, then you’re one giantly naive douchenozzle.

Commercials, billboards, cereal boxes, you name it and his likeness has been on it. Jesus, this dude has hosted friggin’ “Saturday Night Live” for Christ’s sake. Put into a similar situation, how many of us might get a little streak of self importance going? We demand that our celebrities be humble and then recoil in horror when we discover that they aren’t.

This free agency freak show put on by LeBron and his posse has been the poorly handled work of a guy who never learned how to be humble. You start learning those lessons when you’re a teenager, but LeBron never did. Why? Because he had too many cameras and microphones in his face.

Reaction to this LeBron saga is pretty much along the lines of what the Big Lead has posted here:

If LeBron had Jordan’s gravitas, he would have disappeared. He would have created that twitter account, would have left it sitting there for days, would have tweeted “Miami” and would have chortled as the story erupted live on ESPN. Jordan would have handled this masterfully. LeBron has gone from zero to Favre on the hatred scale in less than 24 hours.

He’s not manipulating the hysteria. He’s actively hyping it. Making cryptic remarks for years. Holding court for the supplicants from various teams. Renting out ESPN for an hour. It’s as forced as the Cavs’ stadium antics. LeBron isn’t the baddest guy in the bar. He’s the guy in the smedium flexing. (The Big Lead)

Oh Jesus, when our current heros let us down for being the rich, spoiled pricks they really are, we turn to our past heros like Michael Jordan.  You know, a degenerate gambler who had the good fortune of playing for a better run franchise during his days in the NBA.  Guess what?  He’s a rich, spoiled prick, too, he just happened to hire decent PR people.

If anything, King James should have been scolded to this degree when he desperately wanted to skip his senior year of high school.  But instead, the opposite happened, and the nation is all butt hurt that it’s led to this.

Give me a fucking break, people.  Don’t expect to find the salt of the earth traits that common folk possess in LeBron James.  Like Fitzgerald said, the rich are different from you and me.  And an SNL hosting basketball superstar is WAAAYYYY different from you and me.

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