Greg Price

I don’t think the latest Taber Times Sports From The Stool is going to have the Academy Awards board giving us the nod any time soon.
But perhaps the low-grade quality of the production, which included me showcasing the Times’ first-place overall finish for 2009 in the Alberta Weekly Newspaper Association awards, which I showed off upside-down, while the large trucks drowning out sound in the background at the M.D. Park, and my Megan-Fox-esque range in acting was quite poignant in mocking the recent LeBron James announcement in signing with basketball’s Miami Heat.
Despite James having millions of dollars for his production, he was just as unprofessional.
I still have to take a few more showers after getting caught in the crossfire of the stench of James’ one-hour special on ESPN to announce who he was going to sign with as an NBA free agent.
Of all the natural disasters around the world, I bet you emergency services were working overtime after LeBron’s announcement, rescuing all those small children from the rubble of James’ enormous ego.
In the history of sport and all the big names that have made their passages through the halls of greatness, be it Wayne Gretzky, Joe DiMaggio, Walter Payton or Magic Johnson, no one has felt the need for an one-hour special to announce where their next millions are going to come from.
Even Greztky’s tear-soaked conference being traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings, or Lou Gerhig’s heart-felt message to his fans as “the luckiest man on the face of the earth” while dying of the neurological disease named after him did not have LeBron’s build up.
That was because those moments were spur-of-the moment of men who loved the game and their fans, with James only loving the attention he gets individually.
The reasoning he did it to raise money for the Boys and Girls Club of America is laughable, considering he easily could have cut the cheque himself with the money he has made, including a $90 million shoe contract with Nike before he even dribbled a ball on an NBA court back when he was 18 years old.
Even the tax break he receives moving to Florida with his latest contract, where there is no state tax, would be more over the length of his contract than was raised selling “advertising” for the one-hour special.
In a free-market system, after their contract is up, a player has every right to go to any team they wish, and those crying about the Miami Heat making an unfair super team are way off. But, the fans who have problems with the way James did it have every right to be angry.
There should be honour in business, just as there is in sport, and James has shown none in either avenue.
A courtesy call or face-to-face meeting with Cleveland ownership hours before his televised announcement would have been nice, considering Ohio will “always be home” to LeBron. Instead, LeBron took the coward’s way out, instead of manning up and looking his fans’ eyes in private with the respect his hometown state deserved.
But doing things behind closed doors has never been LeBron’s style — you can’t market your brand that way.
This is a guy that is still only 25 years old and still fills the need to try and pitch a one-hour special to ABC along with Ice Cube based on James' life, in which James would act as executive producer.
Because of course, with James as executive producer, I’m sure it would be a well-rounded and thought-provoking piece with plenty of product-placement shots in it to up revenue.
This is a guy who has “Chosen 1” tattooed on his body. In 2009, he courted controversy when he ordered organizers to confiscate CBS video tape of him being dunked on by Xavier University's Jordan Crawford at the Nike LeBron James Skills Academy, because you can’t dare disrespect LeBron James, despite him having dunked on numerous people himself.
This is a guy who petitioned the NBA to enter the draft before he had even completed high school.
Yes, all these actions scream to me that he truly believes there is no “I” in team.
Seeing his list of accomplishments, I scratch my head wondering why his free agent signing is any more important than any of those high-profile free agents before him.
His individual statistics are mind boggling indeed, but his team accomplishments are merely ordinary.
I have yet to see an NBA championship ring on him, and there have been whispers by sports analysts and pundits that he quit on his team when the going got tough in 2010 against the underdog Celtics in the playoffs.
Despite an NBA-star laden lineup, he managed only bronze in the 2004 Olympics for the U.S. In 2006, when he was one of the team captains of the USA men’s world championship team, his team turned in another bronze-medal performance. The lone bright spot team wise was in 2008, when his USA team beat a “powerhouse” Spanish team 118-107 in the  Olympic gold-medal final.
His high school title was Division III, which is like the equivalent of a small-town Taber title. Name me the last time W.R. Myers has had to go up against  a player of James’ calibre — never, so it’s a major accomplishment to win a title at that level?
A sport where there is only five players on the court at a time on a side can easily be swayed by a megastar, especially at a lower level in which James’ played his high school ball.
When his St. Vincent–St. Mary High School team had to go up a division because of enrollment, James failed to defend the title despite being “the Chosen 1.”
What James’ individual accomplishments, oops I mean team accomplishments, have been are endorsement contracts with Nike, Sprite, Glacéau, Bubblicious, Upper Deck, McDonald's and State Farm.
In short, a one-hour special was produced for a player that has yet to accomplish anything team wise at the highest level of his chosen sport.
King James surely deserves his moniker when it comes to individuality and narcissism, but when it comes to team accomplishments, he is more the court jester.
Did you hear the latest James’ joke circulating around the internet?... Have you heard there’s a new LeBron James’ iPhone out there that is being marketed? The problem is it only vibrates, you need to move to Miami to buy the rings for it.
Now that my rant is over, I have to move on to more important things, like finding out if things are really over between Brad and Angelina — for the 487th time.