LeBron James, a true sportsman as long as he wins

[sigma7]

“It’s hard for me to congratulate somebody after you just lose to them,”¹ he said, the Associated Press reported. “I’m a winner.² It’s not being a poor sport or anything like that.³ If somebody beats you up, you’re not going to congratulate them.⁴; That doesn’t make sense to me.⁵ I’m a competitor. That’s what I do. It doesn’t make sense for me to go over and shake somebody’s hand.⁶”

¹Yeah, I can imagine having your entire season flushed down the drain's gotta suck, and you know what? That happens to every team in the league -- except one -- every year. And yet they find just a touch of grace and class in their defeat.

²No, actually, you're 13 points away from being a winner, bud. Unless you mean in the general sense, in which case you need a hell of a lot more than just ticks on a scoresheet.

³Actually, yes, that's pretty much the textbook definition of being a bad sport, to stomp your feet and put on your headphones and petulantly ignore the rest of the world because, as it turns out, your basketball team needs slightly more than one superstar to win a championship.

⁴Did the Orlando Magic beat you up and take your iPod and lunch money? Figuratively, well, of course they did, and came one lucky basket from bouncing you in five games, sparky. But not literally, and let's try not to equate a mugging with getting paid $14 million to bounce a ball, toss it through a hoop, and occasionally get shellacked by teams with a better supporting cast than yours.

⁵Honestly, I'm not surprised.

⁶And that's why you lose.

⁷And this reminds me why I don't do HTML superscript anymore..

Comments

[patchsassy.livejournal.com]

The ONLY reason why I was rooting for LeBron and the Cavs...okay, there's two reasons:

A-so we can stop hearing about how pathetic Cleveland is and how LeBron is the best player to have never won a championship.
B-So the fucking Lakers won't walk away with another championship. I cannot STAND Kobe Bryant.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Both very, very good reasons. Right now I'm rooting for the Indians or the Browns, though, just because I like teams more than superstars -- even before his little tantrum, I wasn't much fond of LeBron. I'm looking forward to seeing how the off-season goes, if the Cavs lose LeBron or if they compress the roster into spare change under the cap to keep him around.

But this season I'm both feeling good about the Magic (which is an odd thing to say, I know) and pleasantly bad about the Lakers to say Orlando in six. If it'd been Cleveland/LA I would've been well and truly vexed.

[rainfletcher.livejournal.com]

I was really pulling for a Denver/Orlando finals, just to see the apoplectic expression on David Stern's face.

And also because I was tired of hearing about how it was going to be Lakers/Cavs since the first round. Two teams hailing from the fair cities of Kobebryantandthe and Lebronjamesandthe, respectively.

I will hope for your predicted Magic in 6 (or even in 4, 5 or 7, naturally).

[erica-roo.livejournal.com]

Aaaaa! Your icon... it brings back supressed childhood traumas! *curls up into little ball and rocks back and forth* "Look at the field... it's covered in blood!"

[beagle1971.livejournal.com]

Your post is better than 99% of the columns that will be written about him and the game.