LeBron shows he still has no character

I've written here several times that I'm tired of talking about LeBron James ... but I just can't seem to help myself. He's on the cover of the next issue of GQ, which sent a writer to hang around him for several weeks, leading up to his infamous auto-fellating announcement special on ESPN. Here's a direct quote from LeBron himself:

"If there was an opportunity for me to return (to the Cavaliers), and those fans welcome me back, that would be a great story."

Some people might be tempted to look at that quote and dream about LeBron coming back here in a few years. I am not one of those people. First of all, if he plays out his contract in Miami and comes back to Cleveland, he'll be 31. Not an old man, by any means, but probably past his career peak. Second of all, it would have been a great story if he'd stayed in Cleveland in the first place — a much better story than him leaving — and he certainly should have known that.

Third of all, and most importantly, LeBron shows more than he realizes about his character, or lack thereof, in that quote. He just became a member of the Miami Heat, and he's already talking about what team he's going to play for next. I obviously don't give a rat's petoot about the Miami Heat — in fact, I want them to go down in flames, no pun intended — but if I owned the Heat, I'd want the players I've got under contract to be committed to winning in Miami for as long as they can imagine. I sure as shootin' wouldn't want my star max-contract signee talking about going somewhere else.

Whatever regrets LeBron might have about turning his back on Northeast Ohio, he's under contract to the Heat now. His job is to try to win basketball games for them, not to worry about going anywhere else afterward — whether it's the same place he came from or not. That's the same character he showed in mailing it in against Boston in the playoffs last year, knowing he wanted to get out of Cleveland, not caring that he was still, at that time, getting paid an obscene amount of money to help the Cavaliers win basketball games.

Here's an excerpt from an interview with the author of the GQ piece, J.R. Moehringer:

Q: Now that we've all had a chance to digest the decision, what's the biggest story going into the season?

A: I think it's LeBron being booed wherever he goes. This is not just a Cleveland problem. This is a guy who had a Tiger Woods-esque fall from grace, even though he didn't really commit any sins—cardinal or venal or otherwise. His sin was that he made a marketing gaffe. He presented himself in an unflattering light. That's not much of a sin on the scale of public sins. And yet he's become a villain. I don't think we've had anything like this in sports history. We haven't had a beloved sports icon become a villain for something so aesthetic. He's despised, absolutely despised, because of a TV special. He didn't cheat on his wife, he didn't drive drunk, he didn't take drugs, he didn't test positive for PEDs, and almost overnight he went from being a loved guy to being hated. That day-in-day-out condemnation is the story.

All of that is true. And I don't know about anybody else, but I will probably never forgive him.