Raised In The Wrong Era

Look, LeBron haters, there goes the last bullet in your gun.

With LeBron James finally winning his first NBA championship, his well-known vocal detractors will spend this offseason looking for new material to hold against the self-appointed "King".

No more witty Facebook/Twitter memes with Kobe and MJ about LeBron not having a ring.

No more talk about LeBron shrinking in big moments.

No more nonsense about LeBron James being Dwyane Wade's sidekick.

The Miami Heat is LeBron James' team and the NBA is now the property of "The Akron Hammer".

Of course, that didn't stop the anti-LeBron crowd from rushing to make excuses.

"Oh, it was a shortened season. They should have a asterisk."

Try telling that to Tim Duncan when he won his first title in the strike-shortened 1998-99 season. Also, would you be so quick to discredit this year's Finals if the Heat had lost? I'll answer that for you: No, you wouldn't.

"Derrick Rose was hurt. LeBron got lucky!"

Injuries are a part of the game. The Bulls were a 1 seed with last year's MVP missing almost half the season. Would having D.Rose have gotten Chicago out of the first round? Absolutely. Would it have guaranteed the Bulls getting past Boston? No. Lest we forget, LeBron beat these same Bulls last year in the Eastern Conference Finals, and did so by stifling Rose for most of the series. What exactly made this incarnation of the Bulls different from last year? The signing of Richard Hamilton?

"Well, it took LeBron much longer to win a ring that it should have. Kobe and Jordan did it way sooner."

Kobe had Shaq from the minute he laced up a pair of shoes for the Lakers. Jordan didn't win his first until '91, at the age of 27(same as LeBron), and needed a Hall of Famer like Scottie Pippen and one of the greatest coaches in any sport in Phil Jackson to do so. Maybe it's because LeBron blew through the regular season so effortlessly that we are lead to believe that those Cavalier teams he carried were stacked. Truth be told, neither Kobe or MJ would have beaten teams like the "Big Three"-led Celtics with guys like Mo Williams and Antawn Jamison as the leaders of their supporting cast. Jordan's last title came on a Bulls team with Pippen, then one of the NBA's 50 greatest players, and Dennis Rodman, one of the game's best rebounders and interior presences, entrenched as sidekicks. Those six Bulls title teams featured some excellent role players with guys like Steve Kerr, John Paxson and Horace Grant. Why are we so quick to assume Jordan was the sole reason for that Bulls dynasty. As for Kobe, he had the game's best big man and one of the five greatest centers of all-time in Shaquille O'Neal. His supporting cast had clutch shooters like Glen Rice, Robert Horry and Derek Fisher. When Shaq left, he was replaced eventually with an All-Star forward in Pau Gasol and eventually joined by Ron Artest, the game's premier perimeter defender. This wasn't two legends winning titles with school kids.

It's the Jordan comparison that brings us to why we are here. Since he was a junior in high school, the bar for LeBron James' expectations were to be the "next Michael Jordan", which is funny because we were always lead to believe there would never be another Michael Jordan. All of the criticisms laid upon King James could have just as easily be laid upon His Airness.

LeBron's a me-first showboat. He's selfish(not true on either side, but probably more true for Jordan as LeBron is one of the best passing forwards to ever play the game). He's too commercial, too focused on globalizing his own brand.

While, this piece will inevitably come off as another me resurrecting my role as a "LeBron apologist", I will say that LeBron did spend a lot of his career hot-dogging and being a bit over-celebratory for his achievements. I'll also re-state that I hated everything about the idea of "The Decision", which is something I wrote on here shortly after it happened.

With all that said, this is my retort. LeBron James came into this league as a 18-year old phenom. He grew up before our very eyes. He didn't have the luxury of going to a great basketball institution like North Carolina and being mentored by a legend like Dean Smith. He rushed into the NBA because that's what the people in his ear kept telling him he had to do. It turns out that wasn't a mistake from a basketball standpoint but it hurt him from a maturity standpoint. Michael Jordan would have never done anything like "The Decision" because he was smart enough and mature enough to know better. He didn't have people in his corner telling him it was a good idea when it wasn't. LeBron made a mistake. He apologized for it. Some may never forgive him and that's fine, but the reaction over that debacle, two years later, is a bit overblown.

My other response is two open-ended questions, which I am asking honestly to get an answer from the anti-LeBron movement, but also am willing to offer my own take on.

My first question is, if LeBron James didn't get his need to pound his chest after every dunk and market himself as a brand from the great Michael Jordan, the man he grew up(like most kids) idolizing, who did he get it from? Did he get it from the father that was hardly there throughout his life? His mother? His friends, who didn't possess an eighth of his talent?

You see, we spent so much time during the 90's being in awe of the greatness of "Air Jordan" that we never contemplated the effects of the seeds that were being planted. We never thought about what kids growing up emulating their role model would be like when they become adults who follow the same path to the NBA. LeBron James is a product of the Michael Jordan experience. So was Kobe Bryant. So was Harold Minor, J.R. Rider, Tracy McGrady, Gerald Green, and a slew of other young athletes who grew up wearing Jordan's sneakers and working on their vertical while sticking their tongue out during every jam, They are like his illegitimate children. Some went on to lengthy careers. Some flamed out. But they are all trees that grew from the seed of America's Jordan obsession.

Now, Jordan wasn't a complete hot-dog. Sure, he stuck his tongue out a lot and shrugged his shoulders when he put up ridiculous shooting performances. He raised his fist in the air after clutch moments or jumped into the air swinging his fists like after he hit "The Shot" against Cleveland, but Jordan mixed a whole lot of flash with hard work and professionalism. That's why Kobe draws more of a comparison to MJ than LeBron does. Kobe has made a career of walking like Mike, talking like Mike, acting like Mike, cheating on wife like Mike and using Mike's career as the bar he tirelessly works to surpass. LeBron took the other stuff from Mike. He plays with his mouthpiece, yells to the heavens after thunderous dunks and seemingly does everything with the idea of the best possible marketing effect in mind, hence "The Decision".

However, from a potential standpoint, LeBron has a chance to surpass Kobe and even "His Airness" in terms of legacy and THAT is why LeBron haters(who are also Jordan lovers) come out of the woodwork to take shots at King James whenever they get a chance. They see him as a threat, a threat to a throne that seemed unreachable. LeBron James is a bigger, stronger, faster, equally(if not more so) athletic version of Jordan. The way the NBA sits right now, he has a chance to win at least the next three championships if he and his team continue to mature. He's been to three NBA Finals and he's just 27. He has three MVP's and, unlike Mike, he shows no interest in leaving the hardwood for the baseball diamond. Six rings seems like a stretch for King James but how LeBron dominates the league during his prime will determine how he stacks up against MJ. After all, Jordan's prime coincided with Larry Bird's back failing him and Magic Johnson getting infected with HIV. The level of competition was relatively low beyond the Malone-Stockton Jazz and some spirited efforts from Patrick Ewing's Knicks and Reggie Miller's Pacers, among others. As for LeBron, Kobe may be fading into the sunset as are Boston's "Big Three" as well as Time Duncan, but he still has guys like Derrick Rose, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard, and Kevin Durant to compete with. If the path back to the Finals seems easy for LeBron going forward, the same can be said about Durant's ownership of the West. Who really stands in either two's way in the next couple years?

LeBron James is the mutated version of Jordan's seeds. Michael Jordan was the father of flash and marketing and he himself was a product of guys like David Thompson and Julius Erving, athletic showmen who didn't have the marketing vehicle that Jordan did to become worldwide phenomenons. MJ's two greatest sons were Kobe and LeBron. Kobe followed Dad's orders and became a spitting image of his legendary father(Jordan, not his actual father "Jelly Bean" Bryant). LeBron was more of the rebel, taking aspects of his father's infamy but realizing that he was too big, fast and strong to follow a career similar to his smaller younger brother and father. If Jordan is Biggie, Kobe is Jay-Z and LeBron is Kanye. Jay-Z clearly is a Biggie clone, but became his own entity by benefiting from the technological advances at his exposure(and also by not getting killed in Las Vegas).  Kanye followed Jay-Z, but eventually realized that he was different and set out to make his own mark in his own way by being rebellious. People used to hate Jay-Z for being a Biggie wannabe but Jigga earned their respect and flourished as a master of his craft and a businessman. Jay-Z's "retirement" is like Kobe's sexual assault charge, a dark spot in a brilliant career that he had to bounce back from. LeBron's first NBA Finals was like Kanye's "College Dropout", a masterful performance that showed a young star coming of age but showed that he wasn't quite there yet. His first MVP was "Late Registration", a sign of great things to come. His Finals loss to Dallas last year was Kanye's outburst at the MTV Awards, a shocking disappointment that brought the vitriol of his detractors out in full force. Obviously, Kobe and LeBron will never come together to "Watch The Throne" but it would be just as astounding of a collaboration if they do. The bottom line is, if you're going to knock LeBron for his faults, you should also criticize who he got it from. Like any unruly child, eventually you have to blame the parents.

My second question doesn't really have an answer so much as it a starting point for a hypothetical debate. The day after the Finals ended, I posed this question on Facebook: If we had Facebook and Twitter and the round-the-clock media access and technological advances we have now back in the 90's, would we have rooted as hard against Michael Jordan getting his first ring as we did against LeBron James?

This question kind of speaks to the last one, in that we never knew what glorifying the greatness of a guy like Jordan would mean for the future. We never realized how lucky Jordan was and, really, neither did Jordan(although he's finding that out now as failed office exec). Jordan didn't have the prominence of YouTube re-capping all his hits and misses on an endless loop. He didn't have bloggers throwing daggers at him on a nightly basis. Hell, he didn't even have writers throwing darts at him because they were all so enamored with him. SportsCenter wasn't the entity in the 90's that it is today. He didn't have guys like Skip Bayless endlessly bashing him on a national television show like Bayless does to LeBron every chance he gets. He didn't have every play he made analyzed on Twitter. He never had to worry about "trending". He didn't have to worry about Facebook groups being made about him. There were no funny memes taunting his failed achievements. There was nothing more than some beat writers singing his praises in articles and occasionally on "The Sports Reporters". LeBron doesn't have a guy like Ahmad Rashad being the Fonsworth Bentley to his Diddy like Rashad was for Jordan. LeBron's "yes men" are in his entourage. Jordan's "yes men" were in the media and the league offices. If Michael Jordan thought the pressure of being a global superstar was too much and he had to take a sabbatical and go play baseball in the mid-90's, imagine how tough it would have been for him with 24/7 news coverage and networks needing to fill air time by posing endless rhetorical questions or displaying meaningless stat comparisons. Imagine if Jordan turned on the TV every day to see him being compared side-by-side to Magic or Bird or watch writers blast him on "Around The Horn" or "PTI" and question whether he's clutch or if he can "win the big one". Jordan had it relatively easy. By time we had the vehicle to criticize him, he was long gone from the NBA and wearing a suit and tie as an owner. That's why writers go so hard on Jordan now as he's ruining the Charlotte Bobcats and after he ruined the Wizards. They're making up for lost time and missed opportunities. All that time they spent kissing Jordan's ass, they could have spent kicking it. That's also why they ridicule LeBron so much. Somebody has to suffer for the sins of the father.

It's a hypothetical question with no real answer. We can't put LeBron in a time machine and zip him back to the 90's so he can dominate during easier times, both from a competitive standpoint and a media standpoint. We also can't make Jordan relive his prime in today's world. But the purpose of the question is to offer perspective. It's hard to be a great athlete in today's society because fans have an almost insatiable need to be loved and their expectations are far too lofty. Try telling Charles Barkley it took LeBron too long to win a ring. Try telling Karl Malone that LBJ disappears in big moments. Try telling Patrick Ewing that LeBron's career has been disappointing.

LeBron James is a champion now. He's leaped over the hurdle that all the Negative Nellies in the country have feverishly tried to raise higher and higher. I'm not demanding you love LeBron because, Lord knows, I don't love Michael Jordan but I do believe you have to respect him. Don't hold LeBron accountable for being like every other kid in America who wanted to "be like Mike". Don't hate him because he gets too much media coverage because he's not the only athlete to dominate SportsCenter. Look at Brett Favre or Tom Brady or Peyton Manning. He's a product of a legacy we built. We helped create LeBron James.

Instead of finding reasons to pick him apart, why not just sit back and enjoy? Trust me. He's just getting started and he's gonna be here awhile.

Fake NBA Headline of the Week: Boycotting His Airness

Throughout his illustrious career, Micheal Jordan was as synonymous with selling sneakers as he was winning championships and dunking from the foul line.

That distinction seems poised to take a hit. Fourteen current NBA players signed to represent Jordan's clothing company have announced that they're done with being a part of the Jordan brand after the legendary Chicago Bull-turned-Charlotte Bobcats owner "turned his back" on the players at labor negotiations during the NBA lockout.

Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony, Miami Heat guard Dwayne Wade, Celtics guard Ray Allen, Hawks swingman Joe Johnson and new Clippers point man Chris Paul were some of the more notable names to pull their names off Jordan's roster. Others include Rockets shooter Kevin Martin, Blazers forward Gerald Wallace and a man who currently finds himself the awkward position of working under Jordan in two capacities: Bobcats point guard D.J. Augustin.

Said Augustin of the possibility of backlash from MJ over removing himself from Jordan's clothing company: "Maybe he'll trade me for peanuts like he did everybody else on this team."

The players' argument is that Jordan, who endured the same labor strife prior to his second retirement in 1998, flipped on the player's union he was once the most popular member of by publicly championing the owners to remain vigilant in their stance against the players, even if it meant the loss of the 2011 NBA season. Because of that, they are done with the Jordan brand and asking fans for a nationwide boycott of His Airness' gear as a sign of solidarity against the man who they feel, not only wronged the players, but hurt the fans as well by keeping the lockout alive.

"He wants us to go out there and represent his clothing line and make him some money and then, at the same time, he's whispering in David Stern's ear to try to keep US from getting paid? It's crazy, man." said Carmelo Anthony. Added D-Wade: "Would MJ the player still wear Nikes if Phil Knight was telling Commissioner Stern to keep the lockout going and take food out of his family's mouth? I bet not. His ass would probably retire again."

The most visibly upset of the departing stars was Paul, who not only blames Jordan for his role in maintaining the lockout but also in shutting down last week's potential three-team trade that would have sent CP3 to the Los Angeles Lakers. "It's hard for me, man." said Paul. "First he tried to kill the season. Now.....I mean, I might have been a Laker if not for him. Nothing against the Clippers. I'm happy to be here and L.A. is L.A., regardless, but what he did to us was not right." continued the former Hornet.

Paul, one of the classiest and most mild-mannered men in the league, couldn't control his anger from goating him into taking one last swipe at his former boss and mentor: "I guess a man who never made a good trade in his life wouldn't know one if it was staring him right in the face."

The story first came about during the photo shoot for SLAM Magazine's 2011 NBA preview. On the controversial cover, Paul is flanked by Anthony and Wade and seen ripping a Jordan poster in half. The interview with the three stars featured quotes taking shots similar to the previous quote from Paul, with the trio weighing in on everything from Jordan's alleged betrayal to MJ's lack of success running not one, but two NBA franchises into the ground while calling the shots in the front office. "He crushed the Wizards. He's crushing the Bobcats and now he's crushing his own brand by turning his back on the guys who helped build his label. Maybe he should have just stuck with playing basketball." Wade says in the interview.

When asked for his opinion on the matter following the boycott and the SLAM interview, Ray Allen offered some insight....and then took a jab of his own: "For us, it's like we were stabbed in the back by one of our own. Mike's been through all this before. If anyone should understand what we were going through being locked out, it should be him. I understand he has to look out for the owners because he is one, but rather than be the voice of reason for us, he was trying to shut us down." said the all-time three point leader "If he was betting on us still working with him after that, then maybe he's as bad a gambler as they say he is."

The stars didn't offer up what they plan to endorse now that they've left Jordan, but Wade said that he'd had talks with teammate LeBron James to start his own clothing line through his deal with Nike and build it with the guys leaving Jordan when their contracts are up and then joked: "But according to ya'll, 'Bron ain't enough of a leader to do all that."

Jordan couldn't be reached for comment when asked for his reaction to the boycott. A Jordan spokesperson also declined comment beyond a reminder that the players were under contract with Jordan and that they would handle the matter internally. Commissioner David Stern called it a "business matter" and "not something the NBA's concerned with". He also added "It took us five months to get the players on the court. What they wear once they get there is the least of our worries."

New Rules 2011

With football over and baseball still a month away, it's hard finding a single topic to dedicate a decent amount of my trademark snark towards. I mean, look at our choices: Last Saturday's Slam Dunk Contest? Meh. NBA All-Star Game? Can't say I watched it. NASCAR? Not a sport. The pending NFL lockout? Too depressing. There were a few things that caught my eye over the last couple of weeks and I figured "Hey, it's a new year. Let's break out some New Rules!".

Done and done.

NEW RULE: Denver Nuggets management has to admit they don't know what the hell they're doing. Look, I'm Melo'd out(See what I did there?). First, the Nets are in. Then, they're out. Then, 'Melo might stay. Then, he wants to go. Here's what I know, as a man who has no inside ties to NBA front offices and gets all his news from the occasional SportsCenter segment and Twitter: Carmelo Anthony wants to be a Knick. Yes, the Nets offer up a superior deal to the one New York is offering....except for one key component: Anthony's signature on a contract extension. So, what's with all the pussy-footing, fellas? Melo wants the Knicks. The Knicks want Melo. The Nuggets want something back for their soon-to-be departed franchise player. Let's make a deal already! The Nuggets price is a bit extreme, as they are asking for damn near every Knick short of Chris Childs. If something is going to happen, Denver has to settle for about 75% of what they are asking for(maybe less) from New York. Still, that's better than zilch, right? In the time it has taken for the Nuggets to make a Melo trade, the Hornets have made four deals. FOUR! And they would have had a fifth if Milwaukee didn't shut the door on a trade for Corey Maggette. Four trades by a team that, just this summer, was also thinking of shopping its franchise guy(Chris Paul).

I wrote this a month ago and it still holds true now: The Nuggets have two choices, send Melo to the Knicks or keep him and force him to walk out on them this summer. That's it. He's going to brush off any deal on the table with anybody else because, as he's said 100 times, he wants to be a New York Knick. He wants the Garden. He wants Spike Lee doing the Dougie in the front row during the playoffs. He doesn't want to tag team with a walking stiff like Brook Lopez and what's left of Chauncey Billups. He doesn't want to wait two years to play in New York when he can do it right now. So, let's make this thing happen already, people.

NEW RULE: Michael Jordan has to come out of retirement again. Sports media types around the country pissed their pants a couple weeks ago because His Airness decided to come down from his ivory tower to scrimmage with the team he's helping destroy. To further add fuel to the "MJ's playing ball again!" fire, interim coach Paul Silas spouted off not too long after Jordan's run with the whippersnappers and declared MJ could still drop 20 on these young guys. The sad part is, Silas is probably right. At 48 with Joe Namath's knees, Jordan might be the physical equipment of that ashy dude at the park with the Horace Grant goggles and his knees wrapped like a mummy but, given how defense is played(or, not played, to be precise), is it farfetched to think Jordan couldn't come off the bench and drain a few shots against defensively-challenged opponents?

That's the question that needs to be answered. Look, I'm no Jordan fan, but this NBA season has been dominated by three stories: 'Melo's trade options, the Miami Heat, and the decline of Kobe and the Lakers. People aren't talking about Derrick Rose putting up MVP numbers in Chicago. People aren't hyping up the Spurs, who only have the West's best record. We need a new wrench thrown into this season. Brett Favre has already set the bar for once-great, past-their-prime, ego-driven icons making ridiculous comebacks. Jordan can shatter that. Who doesn't want to see Jordan's knees buckle trying to stand in front of a 270lb freight train like LeBron? Tell me Jordan carrying Charlotte to the 8th seed in the East won't make that first round matchup with Miami(or Boston) much more entertaining. Give us something new by giving us something old. Give us MJ.

NEW RULE: No more free-throw dunks. It's 2011. Surely, evolution has proved that today's athletes can come up with better ways to thrill us with their above-the-rim affairs than recycling a dunk made famous nearly forty years ago. When Dr. J did it, it was astounding. Then, Jordan took it to another level. Now? Every dickhead with a 40' vertical is doing it. Just as a rule of thumb, Slam Dunk champion hopefuls, if Brent Barry can do it, it's not cool.

Personally, I'd like to see the Slam Dunk contest abolished because they can never reel in any of the marquee names and we're left with 7-footers getting bush league perfect scores because they can do windmill dunks on a rim three feet above their heads. We used to be able to see 'Nique and Vince Carter and Kobe and Jordan.....now, we get Serge Ibaka. Alot of people think JaVale McGee got robbed in his loss in the Finals to Blake Griffin in Saturday night's Slam-boree. That may be true. After all, Blake dunking over the hood of the car may sound impressive, but call me when he's going over the roof of an Escalade or even this.

You know the real reason McGee lost to Griffin Saturday night? BECAUSE HE'S JAVALE MCGEE! He's the 3rd best player on the 2nd worst team in the Baby Brother Conference. Fans are supposed to vote for THAT guy over a man they've watched tear down the house on Sportscenter all season? In Griffin's backyard? Back to the free throw dunk, let's retire it. If we are going to continue to go with this charade of a competition, we should retire a famous dunk every year. This year, it will be the free throw line dunk. Next year, it can be Jordan's cradle dunk. After that, we can retire Vince Carter's 2000 Slam Dunk Contest, if for no other reason than it will be the only thing Vinsanity will be enshrined in other than a Tampax Hall of Fame.

NEW RULE: Albert Pujols can't get $300 million from the Cardinals unless he breaks both Roger Maris' 61 home runs record AND Hack Wilson's single-season RBI record(191 RBIs) THIS SEASON. I know, I know, "Terminator"(as he was aptly re-named in this space last year) deserves to be the league's highest paid slugger, but it's a recession, you animal! There was a 9.0 unemployment rate in this country last year(don't hold me to that. I Wiki'd it.), and we're supposed to sit back and accept a man getting $300 mil to work 6 months out of the year? Wasn't the last two A-Rod contracts hard enough to digest for blue collar America?

On top of that, Pujols is 31. Assuming he gets 10 years from St. Louis(a far-fetched assumption, but bare with me), he'll be making $30 million a year deep into his late 30's and as he's kicking 40's door down. Guys like Vlad Guerrero and Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez are struggling to find work in their late 30's(let alone $30 million a year), and Pujols(while, admittedly, better than all three) isn't head-and-shoulders better than those guys were in their primes. I agree Pujols needs to get paid and I'm sure fantasy baseball fanatics will be salivating over the words "Pujols" and "contract year" this season, but we have to draw the line somewhere with these exuberant contracts. Is it unfair to the best slugger of the last 40 years that the gluttonous paydays had to stop with him? Absolutely, but the alternative to that is Pujols not getting the money he wants from the Cards and we spend next winter watching Boston and New York(both the Mets and Yankees) battle over Phat Albert like two Kardashian sisters over Cam Newton while baseball in St. Louis(one of the best sports towns in America) dwindles into obscurity and irrelevance. That being said, if Pujols puts on a contract year statistical beatdown for the ages, it will be hard to justify NOT backing up a fleet of Brinks trucks in front of the man's feet. Still, that's where the bar should be set. Either set the world on fire, Albert, or quit reaching for the stars with these contract demands.

NEW RULE: It's time to lay pro wrestling to bed. This next paragraph or two will inevitably get me made fun of by Gabe and, if you have absolutely no interest in pro wrestling, you are more than welcomed to skip out on the blasphemy I'm about to spew. In the last few weeks, I've had a sort of wrestling epiphany. I re-watched "The Rise and Fall of WCW" on DVD, and even caught a glimpse of Monday Night Raw for the first time in ages. It was a clip of The Rock's return to the WWE. Within those two moments, I had two separate conversations with my friends about the glory days of wrestling that we remember and how it translates to what we have now. The consensus? Wrestling is dead. Now, I know pro wrestling still resounds in the hearts of so many in various regions throughout the country, but you know what, so does NASCAR. So does boxing. So does bowling, and cricket and soccer. If you're a fan of pro wrestling, you'd be a damned fool to say that what is being pawned off on us as "sports entertainment" is anywhere close to what we grew up with during the 90's(I'm assuming, of course, that you are around my age range, in your late 20's). I watched The Rock go into his usual gimmick and, while entertaining, it made me sad for the state of affairs wrestling now resides under. In the post-Nipplegate Era, entertainment can no longer be risky. Sure, you can have some off-color jokes like you see on South Park or Family Guy, but what made wrestling enjoyable a decade ago won't fly in the PC world we now live in. That's a strong reason for the decline in pro wrestling's entertainment. Another big reason is the lack of competition WWE now faces. After WWE chairman Vince McMahon bought out its main competitor, WCW, there was no rival to offer up a counter punch. WWE's attempt at trying to assimilate both worlds failed because there's only so much room for so much talent, and when Chris Benoit went off the deep end, pro wrestling as a whole had to reassess how it did business. What we have now is a scaled down version of what used to be "sports entertainment". There's no DX chops. No Austin 3:16s. No middle fingers. No sexual innuendo. It's become Sports Illustrated for Kids. In the late 90's, we had Rock, and Austin, and Undertaker, and what was left of guys like Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan. Now? You have John Cena, who used to be so popular that he became unpopular. People got tired of liking him so much(except women, of course). Perhaps it's that I've matured so much in my prime years that I now find what the WWE offers to be foolish, but there was a certain charge that flowed through me watching the old WCW glory days and watching The Rock go into his schtick. It was a feeling of nostalgia combined with the fact that we will never get to that point again. The once self-proclaimed "male soap opera" will never match the edginess and violence and envelope-pushing of 10-12 years ago.

....And that's why it should end. If there's anything I've learned over the last few episodes of WWE's offerings that I've seen, it's that the biggest draws the WWE has to reel in its former hardcore fans is when they bring back guys like The Rock or like they did a year ago in bringing back Bret "The Hitman" Hart. In other words, they've become a business banking on "Old Timers' Night". WWE will still generate money with people who refuse to give up on it and will go down as the ship is sinking, but there's something to be said about quitting while you're ahead. Most of your marquee superstars are making side money doing movies these days anyway. If The Rock was ballsy enough to give up on a wrestling career that saw him make his mark as one of the 5 or 10 most popular wrestlers of our generation to go film tankjobs like "Gridiron Gang" and "Fast Five", it has to tell you something about how he saw the future of pro wrestling. That was almost a decade ago. Here we are now. Pro wrestling still catches a few eyes, much like a Manny Pacqauio fight will get hardcore fans of the sweet science to break out their wallet, but it's a shell of what it once was. So, my proposal to WWE is this: Either go back to being crotch-chopping, bird-flipping, chair-swinging, swearing rebels that made censors sweat and put fear into sponsors........or give it up. Nobody wants family-friendly pro wrestling and the people that do need to stop kidding themselves. Wrestling was once a threat to Monday Night Football. Now, it's hardly more entertaining than an episode of SVU.

No Air

Kobe Bryant's legacy.

That was the selling point of this year's NBA Finals. It was all the media talked about. It's why Gabe tuned in. Kobe Bryant trying to add to his resume was supposed to make everyone forget that we saw this movie between the Celtics and Lakers two years ago. It was supposed to make us forget the media's 180 on "The Black Mamba". It was supposed to make us forget everything. Who cares about everything else? This series was about Kobe.

And you know what? In the process of watching Kobe do work, we got a somewhat entertaining NBA Finals(or so I'm told, since I stayed true to my word of boycotting the Finals). Kobe Bryant showed why he is the best player in the game for the first 6 games of a back-and-forth championship series.

Then, Game 7 came along....and Kobe shit the bed.

Now, I know Laker fans and Kobe slurpers are going to point fingers at me and go on one of their "You're a Kobe hater!" diatribes. I assure you, as I've said many times, I do not hate Kobe Bryant. I think his 2003 sexual assault charge shouldn't have been swept under the rug by reporters and, at times, I think he tries to disguise his selfishness on the court with a PR-cultivated phony persona off of it in front of the flashing lights, but for the most part, I like Kobe Bryant. He's among the top five guys I enjoy watching in the game right now. He's one of the 15-20 greatest basketball players of all-time and he was spectacular in both the first six games of these Finals and throughout the postseason(especially against the Suns).

That being said, for weeks, we got fed the storyline of Kobe's chased of the great Michael Jordan. It's all we heard about. "Kobe's trying to pass Mike. He's only one ring away.....blah blah blah." Then, in the biggest game of his life, when the stakes were high and everything was on the line, Kobe Bryant went 6-for-24 with 23 points(led all Lakers scorers) and 15 rebounds. When the game was down to wire in the last few minutes, it was Ron Artest's shooting, Pau Gasol's rebounding and Sasha Vujacic's two clutch free throws that helped put championship banner #16 on the rafters of the Staples Center. Kobe's excuse for his poor performance? He was tired. Spent. Exhausted. I'm sorry, did you say you were tired? The biggest game of your career and you needed 40 winks? Weeks of stories about your legacy and you fall flat in the end? Really? THIS was your selling point, America!?

I said before Game 1 tipped off that we will learn nothing. That the teams were evenly matched and the Lakers will win in 7.....You can thank me later. When the clock hit zero, the big stories after the game were Ron Artest being Ron Artest and thanking his shrink and promoting his single at the same time during the biggest postgame interview of his life(Hey, whatever keeps him out of the stands and away from robbing liquor stores is OK by me). Do you think that would happen if this was Jordan's Bulls winning a close Game 7 for the NBA championship? Do you think His Airness would be taking a backseat to Dennis Rodman in the biggest game of his life? Do you think Jordan would be too tired to carry his team across the finish line? Jordan once dispatched the Utah Jazz while being sick with the flu. That game, Jordan went 13-27, played 44 minutes, scored 38 points, had 7 boards and 5 assists. Scottie Pippen and Luc Longley chipped in. They didn't steal the show. He didn't use the flu as his excuse because he didn't have to. He brought Chicago back from down 16 and the Bulls won by two. He willed himself and his team to victory. He didn't sit back and prayed his teammates would bail him out. He didn't pull a Kobe Bryant.

Is Jordan's Game 5 of the '97 Finals vs. Kobe's Game 7 last night an unfair comparison? Maybe. But you brought this on yourself. We always put things in front of Kobe Bryant for him to destroy. We always give him obstacles. After the breakup with Shaq, we all made a big fuss over Kobe not being able to win one without "The Diesel". So Kobe went out last year and won a ring without Shaq. This year, we had no real obstacle for him, so we put the best basketball player of the last 12 years against a ghost. We told him to go out and surpass Michael Jordan. Instead of asking Kobe Bryant to be his own stand-alone legend, we, like we have so many Jordan clones over the years and like we will do for decades after with LeBron James, asked him to slay the giant. Michael Wilbon made a point in the post-game discussion about how this generation only remembers the great players of now and forgets past legends so easily. He said Kobe was in the Top 20 ever, while Stuart Scott(the hyperbole king himself) tried to bait Wilbon into pushing him into the Top 10. Wilbon's point was never clearer than when moronic Lakers fans booed former Celtics legend Bill Russell(only the greatest big man this game has ever seen and perhaps the sports world's most accomplished winner) during the MVP coronation(which, of course, went to Kobe). Phil Jackson, Kobe's coach for all five titles and Jordan's coach for all of MJ's six, wouldn't go as far as to say that Kobe is the best player he's ever coached. Rather, Dr. Phil said "he's right up there". Translation: Jordan is still King. Kobe's still a prince.

Look, I despise Michael Jordan and I like Kobe. I could have easily banged the drum like so many will do these next few months that Kobe has dethroned MJ. Certainly, Kobe has dominated a tougher era and has managed to do so without even going to college. The acceleration from plucky young gunner to seasoned winner was almost instantaneous. He didn't have to wait nearly a decade to taste a championship like Jordan did and like James inevitably will. That being said, he's not Michael Jordan, and he never will be. Jordan vs. Bryant will be the Louis vs. Ali of our generation. Diehard Jordan fans will NEVER put Kobe ahead of MJ even if Bryant wins 12 championships and Lakers fans will always opt for their guy over Jordan, even when evidence like last night's stinker clearly shows that Jordan is still above Bryant. It's a neverending debate.

These Finals were supposed to be about Kobe's legacy, Kobe's chase of Jordan, Kobe's 5th ring. Instead, it should be about Kobe choking when it matters most. Of course, lucky for Lakers fans and Bryant himself, nobody is crazy enough to tell THAT story.

That's why I'M here.

Don't Hate The Hater, Hate The Game

Hater: A person that simply cannot be happy for another person's success. So, rather than being happy, they make a point of exposing a flaw in that person. Hating, the result of being a hater, is not exactly jealousy. The hater doesn't really want to be the person he or she hates, rather the hater wants to knock someone down a notch.

Realist: Realists have a firm grip on reality and can see things for what they are, not what they are told they are. Realists have their own views and do not fall victim to propaganda, misconception or titles. (Both definitions provided by urbandictionary.com)

Hater. Realist. Pessimist. Devil's Advocate. I probably fit the bill on all of those terms. Why? Because I believe, in my heart of hearts, that 90% of everything we read, hear, see, watch, and are told is bullshit. Gabe described me as an "all-purpose hater". By definition, that may very well be true. I'm just the type of guy who likes to go left when others go right. It's just my nature. You may say that makes me a hater. I may say I'm just a realist. It's a neverending debate.

In the definition of "hater" above, it says that the "hater" makes a point of exposing a flaw. So, in typical hater fashion, allow me to do so. I'm not going recycle my thoughts on the NBA Finals. I've said my piece. Gabe has said his. We agree to disagree on this one. However, in the coverage of these NBA Finals, I find a common thread: Kobe Bryant's legacy and his pursuit of Michael Jordan.

Now, if you've heard my thoughts on Jordan, you will DEFINITELY think I'm a hater. Personally, I find that the man feasted on weak competition and the media glossed over his fatal flaws (selfishness, huge ego, extreme gambling problem, etc.) because he a. was a consistent winner and b. a endorsement cash cow. You didn't want to have opposing thoughts on Michael Jordan because you would lose money. His face and persona sold magazines, sneakers, hot dogs, soft drinks, underwear....the whole nine. You didn't want to go up against that.

The same now holds true with Kobe Bryant......and that is where my issues lies. Seven years ago, the same media that now fawns over Kobe's thirst to top Jordan were ready to throw "The Black Mamba" to the wolves. In 2003, Kobe Bryant was in the same situation that Tiger Woods and Ben Roethlisberger are currently in. He was a superstar athlete taking a public relations ass-whooping because of a well-publicized tawdry sexual encounter with a woman who was not his wife. Kobe got the two-for-one special back then. Not only was Bryant being pummelled for being an adulterer, but he was being accused of being a rapist. Endorsements dropped Kobe with such speed, it would make C.J. Spiller's head spin. The media had a field day. Kobe's jersey sales plummeted. Sure, the case never went to trial because the accuser wouldn't testify and Kobe did admit to having an affair (claiming, however, that the sex was consensual) and Kobe stole a page out of the Tony Soprano handbook and wooed his wife with a overdramatic apology and a big, fat, gawdy ring (Although, Tony never cried. Why? Because Jersey Italians don't cry!). Still, much like most celebrity rape charges that never see the light of day in a courtroom, we don't know what exactly went on in that room. All we know is Kobe inevitably reached a settlement with the victim in her civil suit.

Then, a funny thing happened on the way to reporters asking questions: Kobe became a Jordan-esque winning machine. After a couple years of a PR nightmare that included Kobe demanding out of L.A. like a spoiled brat, Bryant ended up getting everything he wanted: some quality role players (Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, and later on, Ron Artest) and, most importantly, the media off of his back. After all, much like Jordan in the 90's, nobody wanted to risk irritating the game's biggest star by delving into controversy. So everyone agreed to just drop it. It's a thing of the past, right? Winning cures everything! Who cares that this man may have forced his way into a woman that wasn't his wife, then had his well-paid attorneys and PR people apply an asphyxiating hailstorm of pressure on the victim until she tapped out? Do I think Kobe raped Katelyn Faber? I don't know, and you know what, neither do you. However, it's easier to take the path of least resistance and get on the good side of the man who is dominating the NBA like his mentor did a decade or so ago.

Look, I don't hate Kobe. I'm just enough a realist to know that the same media that pucker up to his million dollar ass now were hurling daggers at him seven years ago. Now, it's all about Kobe's legacy. Seven years ago, it was about locking the guy up. I've chosen to not forget that, even if some have. What does this have to do with my lack of excitement over the Finals? Well, nothing. There is a small part of me that has a hard time rooting for someone who may have committed sexual assault not so long ago and the only thing keeping that part from amplifying is my utter dislike for Jordan (I grew up admiring Magic Johnson. Yes, the same Magic Johnson whose philandering gave him the HIV virus and ended his NBA career. Stars aren't perfect. I get it). You may say "But Dave, that was seven years ago, he wasn't convicted...blah blah blah." Tell that to O.J. Even before he got locked up for being the ignorant goon we always knew he was during his famous double murder trial, O.J. never seemed to get the benefit of the doubt. There were people who thought he did it and got away with murder (like myself) and people in denial. People who genuinely thought O.J. was innocent and were not only supporting him because of racial solidarity were few and far between. He never experienced the type of public relations 180 that Kobe got (and that's not to say that he should have. Frankly, the world's a better place with that asshole behind bars).

Similarly, there are two schools of thought regarding the Finals. There are guys like Gabe, who loves the sport of basketball and sees this Finals matchup as a furthering of the sport's greatest rivalry as well as yet another chance to see one of the three greatest players of all-time "do work" in hopes of another championship ring. In the eyes of BoomRoastedSports' "all-purpose hater", it's the continuation of the pursuit by a man, once considered the most hated man in the sport, of surpassing the legacy of his legendary mentor, who proved to be the cocky, arrogant, self-centered jerk that I always thought he was during his Hall of Fame speech.

That may make me a hater, but I think I'm just being a realist.