As a lifelong fan of my hometown Cleveland Cavaliers, the second half of the NBA season has left me feeling lost.
It’s not because my hometown Cavs have been on a losing skid lately or because Kyrie Irving, the city’s latest athletic infatuation, is once again sitting out with an injury.
It’s because the most notorious, talented star to come out of Ohio in the past decade, LeBron James, has been absolutely tearing up the league and all of the competition that it has had to throw at him, and he’s making it look like child’s play.
But anyone with the most basic understanding of the current state of sports could have told you this, so I won’t waste this space to pollute the media with yet another complaint about why he should have never left or to discredit his work.
Instead, it’s a meditation on why it just doesn’t make sense for anybody who believes him or herself to be somebody who loves the game for what it is to hate the things LeBron’s been doing.
Oscar Robinson is the only player to ever average a triple-double in a season.
So far through the 2012-13 season, LeBron has averaged 26.7 points, 8.2 rebounds, and 7.2 assists per game — he’s very close to earning the distinction as the first to match “The Big O” in more than half a century.
If you’re like me and have idolized countless players of all shapes, sizes and styles that have come out of the NBA over the years, that last statistic deserves reconsideration.
I’m not suggesting that James is better than the likes of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, or Wilt Chamberlain, nor am I endorsing or inviting any comparisons between him and any members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
The fact of the matter is that the numbers he’s putting up are huge and he’s doing this with A LOT of talent around him. Don’t forget that he’s only 28, either, meaning that there is still plenty of time for him to get even better.
By no means am I thrilled with the way that the guy conducts himself on the court or in the media. The constant flip-flopping between the tough guy, “league’s most wanted” image and that of the lovable goofball is getting a little stale.
I’m sure that fans of other NBA franchises are sick of us bitter Cleveland fans still saying this three years later, but “The Decision” — LeBron’s televised announcement of his intent to head to the Miami Heat that felt more like a slap on the wrist than a respectable farewell — especially stung.
At the end of the day, the stuff that this guy has been doing on the court exceeds what I ever imagined he could do when I saw him as a start-up nearly a decade ago, firmly making a case for the best athlete I have ever seen in my lifetime.
I just hope that my father still lets me back into the house after he reads this tomorrow morning.
Jake DeSmit is a junior studying journalism at Ohio University. Email him your sentiments about Cleveland’s former hero at jd202409@ohiou.edu.
