LeBron James: One
Nation Under a Hoop
LeBron James was the number one male athlete coming out of
high school. He was widely recruited by colleges as well as NBA teams. It was
pretty clear he would choose the ladder route. My question is, did the media
hype James up to much?
I feel like the media hyped James up to much as a young
child. When James was a junior, he was on the front cover of Sports
Illustrated. It was very clear that he would not be going to college and would
enter the NBA Draft.
Before James even entered the NBA, whatever team drafted him
felt like James would automatically bring them a championship; in this case,
the Cleveland Cavilers drafted James. Now, I am not the biggest James fan but I
do feel like there was way to much pressure put on James.
People fail to realize that it takes more than one person to
bring a championship to a city. I feel like the General Manager of the Cavilers
did a poor job with surrounding quality players around James. This resulted in
James having to do most of the work, which is something that he didn’t want.
I also felt that James fed into the media attention as well.
As a young man who knew he was going to be a millionaire and was dubbed the "Chosen One", one can only image
the amount of pressure James put on himself to perform.
Granted, the way James left Cleveland was very
unprofessional. He knows as well as everyone else that the situation could have
been handled better. But, I feel like James had the right to leave Cleveland
and put himself in a better position to win championships. The owners and
general managers of the Cavilers should have did a better job with surrounding
James with quality players and maybe he would have stayed in Cleveland.
LeBron James has been one of the best basketball players in the last 15 years since he entered the NBA in 2003 as a high school student. Before 2010, LeBron had won 2 MVP’s, scoring champion and led the Cavs into the finals once (to be swept by the Spurs). After that, I think LeBron had been put under more pressure to win the championship for the Cavs than ever before. LeBron made it to the East Conference finals twice between 2008-2010, but was still one step away from the finals. The media was blaming LeBron’s leadership and attitude because the media believed that with LeBron’s ability, he should have won the championship already. Under tremendous pressure, LeBron brought his talent to South Beach. LeBron James said he is the “chosen one” like Michael Jordan, and he was wearing number “23” like him, but in my opinion, in order to be great, he has to be mentally tough. The way he made the “Decision” to move South Beach was terrible, but what was more terrible was his decision to team up with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh—along with LeBron James, they were top 3 players in the 2003 draft. While I think the media has put a lot of pressure on a young kid through out his career, LeBron doesn’t have the tough mentality needed in order to be the greatest player ever.
ReplyDelete--Haoyan Gu
Something that I really liked that you pointed out was that it takes more than one person to win. This is something many people fail to recognize. This can be intentional or unintentional. While Jordan was the star of the team, he cannot be expected to do it on his own, which is what many people thought could happen. He could manage to carry the team most of the time, but sometimes this wasn’t the case, and Jordan did not have much of a team to pick him up. I agree that people believed that Jordan equaled a championship. Once again, they thought that one person could pull this off. I think that it would have been possible if Jordan would have been surrounded by a little bit more talent on his team.
ReplyDeleteI also think James was hyped up a little bit too much by the media when he was younger. He may have been the most talented athlete that was seen for a while but I don’t think that is reason enough to hype a high school kid up that much. Local news stations were the only television crews that showed up to area high school games when I was younger, so I can’t even imagine what it’s like playing with ESPN cameras focused on you. As far as having too much pressure on him to win an NBA championship, I think the media definitely got to him. Obviously, he wanted to win a title for himself and his team but I think the media pressure eventually made him become desperate to win a ring in lieu of leaving for Miami.
ReplyDeleteKaleb Kuzma
I do not agree that James was to hyped up by the media when he was in high school. In high school I think he was considered a celebrity. He was an outstanding player and the media recognized that. Not that many professional players are viewed during their high school years. When Lebron James came along the media took full advantage of that and brought him out to the public as being a great player. The media was right, Lebron James did turn out to be a great player and one of the best in the NBA. I do think the media and Cleveland put a lot of pressure on him to win a championship. He was young and needed time to mature in the NBA. I don't agree with how James left Cleveland to go to Miami. I understand that it is his decision to go somewhere else and try and win a title I just don't like the way he did it. There could have been other ways he could have went about it to not make Cleveland fans so upset.
ReplyDelete-Gina Costanzo