Sportstalk radio – All LeBron All The Time – until the puffs of white smoke appear

I was driving through New York last night on my way back to Shelter Island from the AT+T National sort-of-hosted by Tiger Woods golf tournament and, as always, I was spinning around the radio dial.

The Mets and Yankees are both in excellent pennant races right now—the Yankees to no one’s surprise; the Mets to most people’s (myself included) surprise. The Mets have pitched a lot better than anyone thought they would and have actually produced some good-looking young players who have filled in well for Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes and Luis Castillo. Beltran has been out all season, Reyes and Castillo for lengthy stretches. And yet there are the Mets, hanging in there with the Braves and Phillies.

And so, as I made my way up The New Jersey Turnpike—the traffic wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected—I looked forward to hearing talk about the Mets and Yankees.

Not so much.

Both sportstalk radio stations were All LeBron All The Time. In fact, during Michael Kay’s, “New York Baseball Hour,” the discussion was about LeBron. The names of other free agents came up but mostly within the context of who might fit best with LeBron and who LeBron might want to play with for the next five years.

The Apocalypse is seriously upon us in sports. Beginning yesterday team executives, coaches and owners flew TO Cleveland to be interviewed by King James. Basically they all came hats—and of course checkbooks—in hand. I’m pretty sure that whenever LeBron does make a decision puffs of white smoke will come out of the roof of the IMG building. What’s interesting is that they’re all going to pay James the same money; the maximum allowed by the NBA, so the decision comes down to where he believes he can accomplish what he wants to accomplish next in his life.

That’s really what this comes down to. The biggest stage is New York—not Brooklyn with the Nets—but Madison Square Garden with the Knicks. The best road to a championship is either Miami or Chicago. The right thing to do is to stay in Cleveland and finish what he started in his home state where he has iconic status rarely conferred on any athlete or any human being.

The latter clearly isn’t going to happen. Very few athletes are about doing the right thing—except in terms of what is right for THEM. LeBron and his “people,” clearly feel he’s outgrown Cleveland; that it is time for him to take the next step on the road to conquering the world and that means moving on—even without a championship ring. Remember, LeBron only played three bad games in seven years by his count, so what the heck does he owe Cleveland? When he became the invisible man during the series against Boston in game five he said he had let HIMSELF down. Forget about anyone else.

So Cleveland fans, welcome to the Byron Scott Era. Check E-Bay to see if there’s any old film of the Browns 1964 championship available because that’s as close as you are going to get to a title anytime soon. You deserve better—a LOT better—but LeBron isn’t concerned about that.

Of course everyone has a different theory about where he is going and why. Each of the four serious candidates (The Clippers, are you kidding?) has a different reason to believe it has a chance. To put it in one sentence: The Bulls have good young players; the Heat has Dwyane Wade; the Knicks have New York and The Nets have a Russian owner who is richer than most of the NBA owners combined and clearly has some serious Chutzpah.

We’ve all heard all the various reports citing sources—my guess is the one constant in all this is LeBron’s walk-around guy World Wide Wes being a constant leak in all directions—who KNOW he’s going to New York; know he’s going to New Jersey; know he’s going to Chicago or know he’s going to Miami. Maybe David Stern will pass a ‘LeBron Rule,’ and let him play 20 games apiece for four different teams and then pick and choose where and when he wants to participate in playoff games. Maybe he can go to the Lakers for the playoffs and let Kobe take the big shots down the stretch.

I haven’t a clue where he’s going. I talk to World Wide Wes about as much as I talked to Tiger Woods’ people. Here’s what I believe though: I think LeBron knows where he’s going and I think he may have known where he was going at the exact moment that he turned the ball over for the ninth time in game six against Boston. He probably knew even before then. (By the same token I never thought for one second that Phil Jackson wasn’t coming back to coach the Lakers. I know he’s had health problems but all that talk about MAYBE going to Cleveland or Chicago or the Knicks or MAYBE retiring was a negotiating position. Jackson is a shrewd guy who works the media as well as it has ever been worked).

This whole LeBron Over Cleveland interview process is nothing more than an exercise in ego and a way for LeBron to remind people that Kobe may have all the rings (five) but he still controls the basketball world. Certainly the continuing panting over this whole thing is evidence of that.

Let me make a confession here: I have never completely bought into the LeBron hype. The first time I ever saw him was in a summer camp in New Jersey and, because I’m not a complete idiot, it was clear he was a special talent. That’s when he and his people—yes folks he had them in high school—were floating the notion that he might leave high school after his junior year and challenge the NBA draft rules. Clearly he—and they—knew how to play the hype game even then.

My sense was that LeBron was really, really good but life in the NBA against men as opposed to life in high school against boys would be a little different. I was wrong—the guy was a star from day one and has gotten better. That why now, when I hear people say, ‘well, he’s not a winner, he hasn’t got any rings,’ I don’t jump on that bandwagon—even though I’d kind of like to do so.

Michael Jordan won his first title in his seventh season. Kobe won his first when Shaq came to Los Angeles. Bill Russell is the only guy who came into a non-championship team as a rookie, won a title and kept on going from there. My guess is LeBron is going to win titles wherever he lands. It will happen faster in Miami or Chicago but it will probably happen in Manhattan or Brooklyn at some point in the future too if he goes there. Good players will want to play with him.

That said, it is tough to embrace the guy. He never cops to not playing well (three bad games in seven years, remember?); his ego is very tough to swallow especially since at this moment he does not yet have a ring and the people around him are, well, World Wide Wes.

So let’s hope he sticks to his word and announces his decision very soon (one that, as I said I think he’s already made). Then we can get back to baseball and ESPN can start updating us hourly on Brett Favre throwing passes to high school kids.


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John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:



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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

Larry King interview accomplishes LeBron’s goal of diverted attention, what I’d ask; French Open

LeBron James has come out of hiding—sort of. He taped an interview earlier this week with Larry King on CNN in which he apparently tells King that Cleveland has, “the edge,” in terms of signing him once the free agent period begins on July 1.

If you believe that statement has any meaning at all, I would suggest you start baking Santa’s cookies right now because you can never start too early on a task like that.

Let’s start with the venue James chose for his re-coming out party after he absolutely spit the bit in the NBA playoffs against The Boston Celtics. King still has a huge audience—LeBron likes that. King reaches a non-sports audience—LeBron, man of the world, likes that too. King isn’t likely to ask too many tough questions—LeBron likes that most of all.

Now, without benefit of seeing the interview, here are some of the questions I would have asked had I been guest-hosting for King (I actually DID guest host his old radio show years ago but for some reason have never gotten the call from the TV people) on the night LeBron showed up.

1. What the hell happened in the Boston series—especially games five and six and double-especially game five when you were so bad there were people who actually suggested you were tanking?(Follow up if he starts rubbing his elbow: Then what happened in game three when you went off for 38 points? Did you re-injure it? And then: Do you understand why people would be skeptical if this is the best you’ve got as an excuse?).

2. If you’re leaning towards Cleveland, why all the theatrics? You know they will pay you max money, why not just say Cleveland is where you want to be, that you still have unfinished business there?

3. Do you understand how reviled you will be in the state of Ohio if you leave without ever having delivered anything other than boatloads of cash for yourself?

4. If a championship is really your first priority in life (as he will no doubt claim) how about taking a break from peddling products until you produce one? (fat chance but the question might get an interesting answer).

5. Do you understand why people are saying right now that Kobe is a lot better than you as he plays in The Finals for a seventh time and the third straight year without Shaq? By the way, is it sheer coincidence that you scheduled this interview in the middle of The Finals? Is there a little bit of A-Rod (see World Series, game 4, 2007) involved in the timing?

6. What did you mean after game five when you said you had played three bad games in seven years? Three, really? And, to follow up, did you really mean you only disappoint yourself when you play poorly? Those folks paying for tickets and buying all of your products, you aren’t concerned about them?

7. You do understand that no one buys into your numbers in game six? You had nine turnovers and were invisible when the game was on the line.

The one question I would not ask that people might find relevant is the one about his mom and Delonte West. That comes from the wild rumor category and I’d only go there if HE brought it up and somehow decided to confirm it—which I would think is extremely unlikely. My guess is that the tone of the King interview is somewhat different than mine—which may be one of many reasons why King is who he is. He may not be as soft a landing spot as, say, almost anyone on ESPN, but he’s pretty close.

It’s my personal opinion that James isn’t going back to Cleveland. This is not based on any inside information at all, only on my observations of him through the years. To be as great a player as he is—and he IS great even if he hasn’t been able to close the deal in the playoffs yet—you have to have a massive ego. To be surrounded by enablers every day who are no doubt telling him that Michael Jordan should sit at his right hand, probably makes keeping any sort of perspective pretty close to impossible.

Which is why I think his first concern will be the size of the stage and the size of his audience. That to me means New York or it means New Jersey/Brooklyn with the billionaire Russian telling him how he will help market him worldwide. I still don’t see Chicago because he’s going to want a bigger statue than Jordan someday and that’s not happening there. Miami is a dark horse because he might somehow think playing for Pat Riley—or even better, having Riley say he will come back one more time JUST to coach LeBron—makes him even bigger than he already is. Fitting those two egos into one locker room would be worth the price of admission.

In truth, it is all speculation, which is what LeBron wants. The more people talk about his free agency, the less they talk about his meltdown against the Celtics. The more they talk about him at all, the less they talk about Kobe.

So, the King interview does everything LeBron wants it to do. It diverts some attention from Kobe and from The Finals. It allows him to keep people in Cleveland at bay for a while longer with his coy, “Cleveland has the edge,” non-answer and it means he has come out in public without yet facing hard questions about what happened in the Boston series.

It’s too bad the interview was taped. It would have been pretty funny if King had taken questions and had started out with, “New York—you’re next!”

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Someone pointed out yesterday that in writing about the sports I was looking forward to paying attention to in the coming week I failed to mention The French Open. Wow, talk about a Freudian slip.

It isn’t that I’m completely un-interested in what goes on at Roland Garros. I have a lot of fond memories of covering the tournament in the 80s and early 90s. I mean, just being in Paris at this time of year, can’t possibly be anything other than a great assignment.

But tennis just doesn’t do it for me the way it once did. Some of it, no doubt, is because I don’t know the players anymore. I know the announcers, not the players. Some of it is, I’m sure, the American drought on the men’s side: no American man has won a major title since Andy Roddick won the U.S. Open in 2003 and there’s no sign that may change in the near future—unless Roddick can finally somehow win Wimbledon.

I may be the one guy on earth who doesn’t enjoy watching Maria Sharapova play. Healthy, she’s a superb player and she’s drop dead gorgeous but the screams on every single shot are just too much for me. She makes Monica Seles sound like a mute. And, fairly or unfairly, even though I recognize the brilliance of the Williams sisters, I have never been able to enjoy them as much as I should. Some of it may be their need to constantly call attention to everything BUT their tennis; some of it may be that they are never gracious in defeat—it’s always, “I gave her the match,”—and some of it is the respect I lost for Serena after her behavior at the Open last fall. (Not to mention her moron agent sticking her hand in front of the CBS camera afterwards).

So, I’ll probably watch at least for a while from the semifinals on—although my pal Mary Carillo won’t be there because she’s flying home for her daughter’s high school graduation this weekend—but the truth is I just won’t be as into it as I was once upon a time. I wish that wasn’t the case, especially since Nadal and Federer appear to be good guys, but that’s the way it is.


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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

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Reporting rumors, trial balloons and ‘back channel’ agendas --- Jackson-Bulls report is another

I had to be in the car very early this morning to go downtown to a TV interview promoting ‘Moment of Glory.’ I promise this isn’t going to be another rant on the quality of sports talk radio although I continued to be amazed by the hourly rate of commercials, sponsor-drop-ins and self-promos that go on in four letter land.

What got my attention was a ‘story,’ that Phil Jackson has been contacted—indirectly of course—by the Chicago Bulls about perhaps going back there to coach and bringing LeBron James along with him to try to rekindle the glory years of the 90s in Chicago.

Oh please.

Look, all of us in the news business know there are times when people are using us to get a message of some kind out. Most leaks are extremely intentional which is why they are often referred to as trial balloons. You throw an idea up in the air and see if it is allowed to float or if someone sticks a pin in it.

I frequently get phone calls from people which start with the words, “I hear.” My next question is usually, “who did you hear this from?” If I think a source is credible I will try to get him on the record—as in putting his name to the story—rather than allow him to hide behind the ‘I hear,’ anonymity.

Of course there are times when a reporter has to grant a source anonymity. The most important news story ever broken was Watergate and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had to rely on anonymous sources because you just don’t go on the record and say, ‘The President is a crook,’ especially if you are still on that president’s payroll (okay, technically the government’s payroll).

Nowadays though, anonymous sources have become the norm. In fact, in the blogosphere, people will pretty much throw out any rumor they hear and see if anything happens to stick. It’s a different world than the one in which Woodward and Bernstein never wrote anything unless at least two sources had separately confirmed the information they had.

The so-called Jackson, ‘report,’ is a perfect example of what would loosely be called journalism in 2010. Everyone knows Jackson’s contract is up at the end of this season. Everyone knows he wants to stay with the Lakers but wants to be paid in the style--$12 million a year—to which he has become accustomed. Apparently, even though Jackson has been romantically involved with Jeanie Buss, daughter of Lakers owner Jerry Buss, for a number of years, Buss is balking at the $12 million price tag.

So Jackson is floating stories he might go elsewhere. Maybe he’ll go back to his roots in New York and coach the Knicks—forgetting the fact that the Knicks currently have a coach. Maybe he’ll got Cleveland and convince LeBron to stay. And now the Chicago rumor. If you were to lend credence to any of the ‘stories,’ being floated Jackson could wind up coaching about six teams next season.

So what do you do if you’re a reporter and someone anonymously whispers in your ear that someone from the Bulls has contacted Jackson through the infamous ‘back channels.’ What if that someone happens to be Jackson or someone really close to Jackson? Unfortunately, in today’s world, you go with it because if you don’t, someone else will. Plus, if it turns out to be wrong—as this almost surely will be—you just shrug and say, ‘well I had a source tell me it was true.’ Which no doubt you did.

Last week I had a source—one that I might have thought was in position to know—tell me that a prominent college basketball coach was about to retire. I grilled the guy, demanding to know what kind of evidence he had and he insisted that someone close to the coach had told him this was about to happen. When I asked how soon he said, “Forty-eight to a week—maximum.”

Trust me this would have been a big story. I could easily have put it out there and said I had a credible source who said it was about to happen. Fortunately, I know the coach pretty well so I picked up a phone and called him. To say that he denied the story would be a vast understatement. “Why don’t you tell this guy to show up the first day of practice and see if I’m there,” he said finally. “How does stuff like this get started?”

It usually gets started because someone has an agenda. Let’s look at Jackson for a moment. What’s his agenda? That’s pretty easy: He wants Buss to believe there are other teams willing to pay him the $12 million if Buss balks. No doubt there are teams willing to do that, especially if any of them believe that hiring him might entice James to sign on the dotted line.

Here’s the thing: Jackson isn’t going to spend a winter in Chicago, Cleveland or New York. He has enough difficulty getting his battered 65-year-old body on and off of airplanes and living in a cold weather environment isn’t going to make him feel any better. He’s got Kobe Bryant in LA; he’s got Jeanie Buss in LA and he’s got warm weather in LA. If he’s coaching next year—which he almost certainly will be—he’ll be coaching in LA.

That’s why all the talk this morning in response to the ‘report,’ that Chicago might be interested in him was such an incredible waste of time. It ranked right up there with actually reporting that the Cavaliers were ‘studying,’ Mike Brown’s coaching record the last two weeks. Here is what mattered about Brown’s coaching record: He didn’t win the NBA title the last two seasons. Period. He was getting fired unless James said he didn’t want him fired—which he wasn’t going to say.

I realize a lot of what we do these days is fill time and space but the Jackson ‘report,’ this morning was kind of a low water mark. But Jackson got what he wanted: word out in public someone else might want him and people—allegedly credible people—discussing it. Somewhere Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein must cringe on a regular basis.

Then again, they’re both too smart to pay much attention to any of this.


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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases


To listen to 'The Bob and Tom Show' interview about 'Moment of Glory', please click the play button below: