Just heard Jim Gray talking on Bloomberg Radio about how the Decision ESPN show came to be. It was Jim Gray that came up with the idea. He was the sideline reporter at game 2 of the NBA finals in LA and he ran into Maverick Carter and some other guy from Lebron's mgt team and said that they should consider buying an hour of broadcast time to make the announcement. Maverick and the other guy thought it was a great idea and then it morphed into a charity fund raising event, millions were raised from the broadcast for the Boys and Girls club. Jim Gray got the privilege to interview Lebron because he originated the idea. He also thought Dan Gilbert was bush in issuing that press release about Lebron, saying he was ready to offer 120M to a quitter 10 minutes before Lebron made his announcement. A lot of people didn't like the spectacle of the DECISION but it wasn't Lebrons idea and it was conceived to benefit the Boys and Girls clubs.
I'm giving LerBon some slack because, well let's face it... there aren't any good dancers on that squad. Wade is a maybe, Bosh is too stiff... LerBon is now a one-man dance crew. I feel for him actually.
I was actually pretty surprised about how low-key "The Decision" was. I expected some sort of contrived feel good stories to be aired about James helping out with the Cleveland community, some sort of video retrospective about how he loved Ohio and that it will be tough for him to leave even though it is the right choice for him, etc, etc. The typical ESPN feel good, faux-dramatic BS they run. However, it was basically just a 20-30 minute interview, and about 20 minutes of analysis, which is probably pretty similar to what he would have to give PR-wise anyway to explain his choice to leave Cleveland. Not a bad idea in theory to get it done with right away while parlaying the interest into millions of dollars charitable purposes.