LeBron James’ ‘The Decision’: A review

I went to sleep last night not sure if I should write anything about “The Decision,” the bizarre, excruciating one-hour special that ESPN carried last night so LeBron James could announce that he was leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers to sign with the Miami Heat. This isn’t a sports blog (though I did, on rare occasions, write about the Yankees and Giants at the old blog) and actual sportswriters like Joe Posnanski and Will Leitch have already offered up more thoughtful takes than anything I’ve got. Plus, as a Knicks fan, I worried that I’d just come across as someone bitter about being jilted.

But this is a TV story, in the end, as LeBron was involved in one of the lamest, most obnoxious hours I’ve ever had to witness (and remember, I watch “American Idol” weekly). And while I’m disappointed (and have already moved on to hoping the David Lee/Anthony Randolph trade turns out to be the opposite of all the moves Isiah Thomas made during his nightmarish tenure), I had reached a place by Wednesday afternoon (i.e., before the Miami reports came in and it looked like LeBron was either staying home or coming to New York) where I began to wonder if I wanted this guy on my team.

Okay, let’s be real: I really, really wanted him. He’s the most talented player on the planet, the entire Knicks roster was constructed as a bunch of complementary pieces to the King (and desperately needs a point guard without him), etc., etc., etc. But he had come across so badly in the way he handled free agency – not helped by a sports news media(*) that treated every rumor as gospel, setting the concept of the reliable source back several decades and making LeBron look even more indecisive than he was – that I would have felt like my team and its fans were making a deal with the devil by this point. I’d have taken him, obviously, but not with nearly the enthusiasm as I would have before this process began.

(*) One of the few exceptions to this was Alan Hahn, the outstanding Knicks beat writer for New York Newsday, who stayed out of the fray and didn’t report every stray piece of gossip he had heard as if it was wisdom from the mountaintop. So when he became the first to report that LeBron had chosen Miami, I felt confident it was true. The work of Hahn and a handful of other reporters (like Brian Windhorst from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, who knew LeBron since high school and put out this telling tweet earlier in the week) on this story was in stark contrast to the likes of ESPN’s Chris Broussard, who changed LeBron’s destination every five seconds, and who, after also ultimately staking his claim to Miami as the pick, looked miserable and terrified at the start of “The Decision,” knowing that if LeBron’s people had been playing him, he’d look like even more of a clown than he had over the previous week. Just a bad period all around for the media.