LeBron James' decision to join the Heat has been ripped from coast to coast (except in Miami). Here's why it was both rational and gutsy.
By Dan LeBatard
dlebatard@MiamiHerald.com
Maybe you didn't hear it above the poison and passion. Maybe you couldn't see it amid the fame and flashbulbs. Maybe the ego excess and general overindulgence made clarity impossible no matter how many hundreds of TV hours of droning dissection were devoted to the cause. But both LeBron James and Dwyane Wade said something interesting and identical when trying to explain the decision they made in joining forces with the Miami Heat. They both volunteered, out of nowhere, that the choice they made was not at all emotional.
Head over heart, in other words. That's not often where sports reside. James and Wade were being clinical, practical, reasoned. But every hostility that engulfed James after his choice was the opposite of that -- not only soaked in emotion but overwhelmed by it. Hatred. Fury. Envy. And name-calling from coast to coast. One NBA coach referred to James as a ``fraud.'' Cleveland's crazed owner called him a coward traitor in a raging public letter. These are visceral reflexes, and reflexes are rarely logical. One is not thinking clearly when setting fire to an expensive jersey, but the first word in ``fanatical'' is always ``fan,'' and fanatical is not a logical state of mind. So James went from one of the country's most beloved athletes to one of its most reviled in a single hour of flatulent television, a fall from grace faster than that of Tiger Woods, and for a crime I'm having some difficulty identifying.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/11/1725091/lebron-james-loved-hated-misunderstood.html?asset_id=Miami%20Heat%20Welcome%20Party&asset_type=html_module#ixzz0tNrVW45e
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