Displaced Cleveland Fan

There’s been a lot of talk about LeBron James’ actions following Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals when the Orlando Magic eliminated the Cavaliers to reach the NBA Finals. James didn’t talk to the media afterwards. In fact, he didn’t bother to hang around long enough on the court to congratulate the Magic team. Many have criticized him for poor sportsmanship and showing no respect for his opponents. Is this a fair criticism?

First, I have to admit that my judgment of the situation is somewhat hampered by the fact that I did not see Game 6. TNT, the cable network that carried the entire series, is not part of our package. So I didn’t see the games, just followed them online as they were happening.

First of all, regarding James not talking to the media, who cares? That is a non-issue.

But the issue of James walking off the court without congratulating the team is another matter. Traditionally, that’s what you do. A team beats you, you shake their hands and tell them, “well done.” But instead, LeBron walked off.

I saw a poll on Cleveland.com that asked the question, “Did LeBron James show poor sportsmanship for not congratulating the Magic or talking to the media immediately after Game 6?” At the time of this post, 50% answered, “Yes. He should have handled it better.” 31% said, “No. I can understand his frustration.” 17% chose “Who cares?” (I don’t know what happened to the other 2%.)

The problem with the choices is that I could pick any one of them. Could he have handled the situation better? Sure. Can I understand his frustration? Absolutely. But this was one time when his emotions got the better of him. So I say, “who cares?”

If James had been displaying a pattern of poor sportsmanship, that’d be one thing. But if something like this happens one time, I’m inclined to cut him some slack. Hopefully this is a learning experience for this young man and he handles situations like this better in the future (though I hope there’s at least one year where the Cavs make it through the playoffs without being eliminated). But for now, I’m willing to let this go.

Hopefully this time next year we’ll be talking about whether or not Dwight Howard walked off before congratulating the Cavaliers.

Tags: LeBron James

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 10:43 pm and is filed under Cleveland Cavaliers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.