For the past 24 hours, two prominent athletes have been taken behind the barn by sports fans and beaten senseless. Talk about a hate-fest, we’re in the middle of one right now.
The two victims brought the wrath of sports fans down on themselves, but maybe I’m getting soft. Maybe, after two days of this relentless thrashing, LeBron James and Roberto Luongo deserve a break.
After all, both led their respective teams to the championship round of their respective sports and while one lost, the other one is very much alive.
LeBron has taken an incredible beating over the last 48 hours and he’s taken that beating for two reasons: 1) He told the world on a TV show last summer that he was leaving Cleveland and taking his talents to South Beach and 2) he and his new teammates celebrated winning a championship before they’d even had one practice together. Bad form on both counts.
Certainly, LeBron was not good in the championship final, but he didn’t really deserve the length and breadth of the hate that was heaped upon him. For instance:
1) John Kasich, the governor of Ohio named the Dallas Mavericks honourary “citizens’ of Ohio for avenging James’ defection and praised Mavericks’ series MVP, Dirk Nowitzki, for “keeping his talents in Dallas.” Ouch.
2) Sommee Cards, an electronic greeting card company, offered this epithet for sale on-line: ”Thanks for being less disappointing at your job than LeBron James.” My goodness. That’s a greeting? In fairness, they offered up another one that read: “I hope to someday will myself to succeed as effectively as I willed LeBron James to fail.”
3) A large group of, what we’re told were originally Cleveland-based tweeters, proclaimed Monday to be “National LeBron James Day.” Anyone celebrating the holiday would be allowed to leave work 12 minutes early.
On Twitter it got a lot worse. At my radio station, Streetz 104.7, it was just one giant LeBron joke after another.
Granted, he brought it upon himself, but anyone who ran into him on Monday still wanted his autograph. He’s still a star and who knows, he might win next year. Maybe.
Regardless, he lost four basketball games out of six. That’s really all he lost. After awhile, all the hating, just seemed silly.
Meanwhile, poor Roberto Luongo couldn’t buy a polite comment after the Bruins beat his Vancouver Canucks 5-2 on Monday night. Of course, Luongo was yanked after eight minutes and 35 seconds, trailing 3-0. Frankly, I just get the sense he can’t see very well in that rink in Boston.
It got so nasty on Monday, there was even a takeoff of “The World’ s Most Interesting Man” going around that had Luongo pictured with his Dos Equis beer bottle saying, “I don’t always play like a bag of shit, but when I do, I prefer the playoffs.” OK, so it was funny, but the fact is, Luongo just came off a shutout at home and could very well get another one on Wednesday night. That would give Vancouver the Cup, for those keeping score at home.
Meanwhile, it’s nice that American hockey fans were ripping Luongo, but those people south of the border should have been less concerned about the Bruins clubbing the Canucks 5-2 and be more concerned about the fact that Monday night’s game on NBC was down 37 per cent in the ratings from last year.
And American hockey fans think Atlanta will be the only team to vacate? Right.