Monday, June 20, 2016

Nothin' from nothin' (which is my speciality), this is completely water under the bridge for Miami: James says "When I made my decision..." He had already made it when this person said this to him so this was not the reason he left Miami, he had already decided that. This was his extra motivation in Cleveland, so there is nothing for the sayer to regret. What the person said is also consistent with the horse having left the barn. "You are making the biggest mistake of your career," James has already made his decision and is informing the person, seemingly in person.

I don't know why this "hurt" LeBron James, I don't see anything hurtful in it but whaterver.

Nothin' from nothin' my instant reaction was "That was not Pat Riley." Pat Riley's the chalk. I don't know nothin' so the chalk is more likely to be correct, it was Riley, but I don't think so! Beat me, whip me, it just doesn't sound like Riley to me. I do know, we all know, what Riley said. He said, as he slapped his palms on the desk in front of him, "I'm pissed." That is Riley, Riley-centered. He was pissed that SOMEONE might be taking his talents elsewhere and depriving Riley of the satisfaction of having assembled a team that won "not two, not three, not four, not five..." championships.

Riley didn't say, in that mortifying post-2014 address, "If people leave they are making the biggest mistakes of their careers." He addressed people leaving with, "Free agency is not the issue, you stay, if you've got the guts, you don't run out the first door." Those comments are insensitive, insulting to the manhood of Those Who Would Leave but, don't you see really? Riley's comments were not what's-best-for-the-player-centered, there is no career advice in that pith, it was all Riley-centered bile. He, Riley, "was pissed," not "I think you're making a mistake." So it doesn't sound like it was Pat Riley to me.

It sounds like a fellow-player to me. Now, as all heads turn to Dwyane Wade...turn them back: "Some people that I trusted and built relationships with IN THOSE FOUR YEARS..." So it was not Wade. Their relationship antedated "those four years" and continues to this day. James is describing a past relationship. It was somebody he didn't know before coming to Miami, Chris Bosh? Bosh had some pointed things to say about James leaving, but clearly they knew each other before Miami also, albeit not as well as Wade and James did. The person who said this was unknown to James personally before 2010, and became someone who James "trusted" to the point where the person "HURT" James with his comments, I don't think Bosh could hurt James like that, he was a peer, this sounds like an authority figure-again back to Riley, I allow. But James also absolved Riley in his Sports Illustrated letter, he absolved Heat owner Micky Arison. Erik Spoelstra? James also absolved him, and I don't think Spoelstra could hurt James with his opinion of James' career choice.

This was someone who James did not know before, who James respected, respects to this day, who James looked up to as a quasi-boss, not The Boss, not Riley, but as a quasi-boss, a mentor, who he did not absolve in his letter for Sports Illustrated.

Nothin' from nothin', my first reaction-I CAN HEAR HIM SAY IT!-was Alonzo Mourning.