Akron Marketing Firm Tells LeBron He Can't Come Home Again

The owner's classless, juvenile rant was enough to remove any sympathy I had for Cleveland.

 

If you were a Cleveland fan you'd love him for it. I'd want my team's owner to react the same way.

 

Maybe Lebron was annoyed by this:

Spoiler

This marketing firm is just taking advantage of the current emotions of Cleveland. The manner upon which Lebron chose to leave was bad but geez, it's just basketball. Cleveland should take this setback with dignity and move forward and live life to the fullest

 

But this is nothing compared to NBA players with drugs and guns. For all the crap Lebron gets as a person, he's done a great job of staying out of trouble.

 

I hope you still attend games with or without Lebron.....I doubt it.

 

I'd tell cav fans to get a life, but thats probably hard to do when you live in cleveland.

 

What does that have to do with anything?

Rockets attendance started dipping after the championships, when the team wasn't very good. The Cavs will too.

 

Me too. The Oilers loss, Pujol's homerun, and Stockton's 3.

 

At least they still have the Browns.

 

You'd want him to react that way even though it apparently turned off a lot of players, making it even harder for them to land any good free agents in the future?

 

LeBron ad thanks Akron, but no mention of Cleveland.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=5433205

 

I'll give you Stockton's 3 and the Oilers loss, but how can you not get over Pujols' homerun after we won the series in the very next game?

I don't mind thinking about the homerun because what comes with it is thinking about how Roy-O shut them down in game 6 and closed the doors on the old Busch stadium.

 

I don't really think that has any effect. Kind of like all the people saying the Rockets are going to have trouble signing free agents because they treated Tracy so bad. I just don't see it happening.

 

How Lebron left was wrong and how Cleveland acted was wrong
Two wrongs dont make a right .. I hope they support the Cavs the same
But I highly doubt it ..

 

I would LOVE to be in the arena when the Cavs host the Heat for the first time. National Guard will need to be on hand. What slap in the face.

 

in absolutes, no. Teams do take slack when appropriate and players sometimes don't take heat. Olajuwon would have taken a ton of heat had he forced a trade in the early 90's. When he left to join Toronto at the tail end of his career, nobody really cared. It is very situational.

Moreover, from the fans perspective - or to keep it a business, the customers perspective, the team and the player are two separate things.

The team / organization takes heat for not making smart organizational decisions. Those decisions are irrespective of the "loyalty" to certain players, unless showing extreme lack of loyalty hurts the teams ability to sign players down the road. Drayton, for example, is bashed because of the stupid organizational moves he's made the last 5 years.

Players take heat for being disloyal, dishonest, for disrespecting [fill in the blank], for perhaps mailing it in the playoffs, for forcing a trade, etc.

As a fan, I am loyal first and foremost to the team as a whole - not necessarily the organization (the team could be sold, GM's get fired and hired), and not to players.

see above. it's not about treating one group one way and another group a different way. it's about my interests as a fan. my interests are in the Rockets. I want them to win. If that means trading Carl Landry, fan favorite, playing on a shot up leg, or getting his teeth knocked out, etc....well that happens. But if Carl Landry effectively forces his way out of town through temper tantrums or bad behavior or disloyalty or disrespect (just making some stuff up here), then damn straight....f'him. If Carl Landry is a free agent, and is upfront and honest about the whole process and does it in a professional way and leaves for more money...fine.

With Lebron, it was none of those things. He wasn't upfront, or honest. He milked the situation. He did no favors to the Cavs organization by not giving them even a days worth of advance notice. He had Cleveland fans on the edge of their seats for no reason. He continued to pretend like he just made up his mind that same day. he didn't leave for more money. he completely bombed in the final 3 losses to the Celtics - worst 3 game stretch of his career type suckiness.

he could have found a way to leave without alienating himself to his home town - it would have been a devastating loss, but the fans would have gotten over it eventually. instead, he went out the way he went out.

and? doesn't mean he didn't screw cleveland over.

- led Cavs fans into thinking they were seriously in the running
- dragged out the process unnecessarily
- hosted a unprecedented never before done hour long FA special
- revealed to not just the fans but the organization for the first time on that special that he wasn't coming back
- quit in the playoffs (questionable - I didn't think so when it happened, but very very hard to discount going forward)
- pretty much had his every wish for taken care of over his time with the Cavs, from them hiring many of his friends, to Lebron nearly playing co-GM with Danny Ferry.
- after leaving, continues to make questionable decisions/moves, including a glorified odd press conference introducing himself in Miami to the seeming lack of respect for Cleveland proper.

he didn't quite pull a boozer. the cavs owner was moronic (though perhaps gained some local loyalty) for his comments.

but Lebron absolutely screwed over the Cavs. He never said outright he was resigning, and teams were always positioning to make room for him...and the Cavs would likely have never traded him anyway...but with Bosh, you basically always knew he wasn't staying in Toronto, with Chris Paul, he's given the Hornets plenty of warning and opportunity to trade him, even Melo has put the Nuggets on alert.

Look to Dirk as someone who handled his situation professionally...NOT because he resigned with the Mavs (though he did, oddly, despite having basically the same amount of success - or lack thereof - as Lebron, and Dallas not being his hometown), but because throughout the process it was all done professionally.

I think it comes down to the perspective of - player loyalty versus team loyalty.

i grew up being loyal to the team - loved the players, but kept going to and watching games when the championship teams became the dribble-fest of the Francis era. Certainly moreso than in the past, the NBA today is about players instead of teams, and from that individualist perspective, I guess it doesn't look as bad.

 

One big difference, of course, is that Cleveland was already a place nobody wanted to go.

 

^ led the cavs into thinking they were seriously in the running? a few days before "the decision," reports from multiple respected media stated that lebron called and pleaded to bosh to come to cleveland. bosh declined.

i think the fact that no star wants to come to cleveland (or lack of another all-star to play with him) is the reason that caused him to leave cleveland.