It’s not clear whether LeBron James is having trouble expressing his opinion properly or the press is just misconstruing his words. Either way, the forward would probably be better off if he avoided microphones and recorders for a little while.
On Thursday night, after playing 44 minutes in a tough loss to the Boston Celtics, James said that both he and Dwyane Wade played too much to have any energy left down the stretch. It was hard to take that quote in a positive light, and the media roasted him for it.
Since upsetting the natural order of things on July 8, 2010, by announcing his intentions to leave Cleveland and sign with the Miami Heat on ESPN, James has been lambasted by MSM on more than one or two occasions. And now, it seems, James is growing tired of the backlash. Tired of having his every sentence chopped to bits with a ginsu knife. In speaking with Mike Wallace yesterday before defeating the Toronto Raptors, LeBron pretty much made that clear.
It got blew up out of proportion, saying that I told coach Spo [Erik Spoelstra] that he’s playing me too much and he’s a bad coach,” James said before Miami’s game Saturday against the visiting Toronto Raptors. “You kind of understand sometimes what Randy Moss was talking about when he said, ‘I will not be answering any more questions.’ Because every time I say something, it gets turned out of character.”
Frankly, James isn’t wrong. Some of what he says does “get turned out of character”–though the majority doesn’t.
A part of the media, for whatever reason, currently is not giving him a fair shake.
So maybe James, a 25-year-old two-time MVP, should pull a Randy Moss, let his play do the talking for him, and accept whatever fines the NBA throws his way for shunning the press.
It may be an overly simplistic response to the situation, or it may just be the best decision he’s made this year. Either way, it couldn’t really make things worse for him.
