After two years of speculation the wait is over. Tomorrow night at 9 p.m. Lebron James will officially decide where he’ll be playing basketball for the foreseeable future. By all accounts Chris Bosh has turned down an opportunity to join James in Cleveland and he’ll join Wade in South Beach. That leaves King James with the options of pairing with Amare and a nice young core in New York, forming an unholy tripod of greed in Miami, playing with Derrick Rose and maybe Carlos Boozer in Chicago, or going back to the same flawed Cleveland roster and being loyal.
I got to tell you the suspense is killing me. I’m refreshing realgm.com, theknicksblog.com, and espn.com at a clip that may lead to a serious obsessive compulsive disorder. Every 10 minutes my mood changes. Every pro Knick report is followed by about 10 reports (mostly from those ESPN assholes) that continue to give the Knicks no chance. The whole Lebron sweepstakes has turned into an ass backwards version of The Bachelor. He’s flirted with them all but in the end he’s only got one last rose to give.
Some thoughts before the biggest sporting event in the last 10 years;
Would Lebron and his team really make a prime time special just to announce he’s staying in Cleveland? That would be as anticlimactic as Geraldo Rivera entering Al Capone’s vault just to find an old cigar box.
Doesn’t it seem like this hour press conference somewhere in the Cleveland area would be a nice way for him to attempt to let the Cleveland fans down easy? There is absolutely no chance that the Cavs fans would ever forgive him but having an event where all proceeds benefit the Boys & Girls Clubs of Cleveland would be one of the better send offs he could have. He’d have an hour to apologize to the fans and confess his never ending love for them before slipping out the back door.
Lebron can now deflect some of the blame on Chris Bosh. Lebron tried to get Bosh to come to Cleveland. The trade was worked out, but Bosh said he had no interest in playing in Cleveland.
Sticking with the Bosh theme, doesn’t this make it completely clear to Lebron that he’ll never be able to build a dominate team in Cleveland. Nobody (Bosh would have made close to 130 million in Cleveland as opposed to 100 in Miami) wants to play in Cleveland.
The marketing machine that is Lebron James and his team has played this absolutely perfectly. He was visited by 6 teams; (coincidence that he’s changing his number to 6 next season) launched a brand new website, and opened up a twitter account while keeping one of the most logical landing places on the back burner. ESPN has always said Chicago, Miami or Cleveland while always giving the Knicks little to no chance of getting any free agents. It’s been ridiculously obvious how well this guy can market his brand; just imagine the money he could gross in New York.
Other then Miami the Knicks have the best supporting cast to offer. Amare, Gallo, and future cap space is better then what the Bulls, Nets, or Cavs currently have to offer. That’s just a fact at this point.
Come 9 p.m. we’ll find out. But my gut is telling me I’ll be pre-ordering a Lebron Knicks jersey come 10 p.m. that night.
Amare Thoughts
To be honest I’ve always thought Bosh was a better player then Amare and he probably is. But if I had to choose between the two I’d probably go with Amare.
Amare took on the challenge of coming to New York by himself while Chris Bosh has made it perfectly clear he wants to be a number two option. Not only did Amare sign on the dotted line without any help he proclaimed to the media that the “Knicks are back”. That took a lot of guts and that’s something Chris Bosh would never have done.
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