LeBron James caused a bit of a fuss this week when, after losing to the Orlando Magic in the Eastern Conference Finals, he stormed off the court and refused to shake hands with the Magic players. Later, he sat on the team bus and skipped the post-game press conference.
On the surface, I’m tempted to say “Who gives a damn?” I didn’t know they shook hands in the NBA anyway, and I spent two years working for a team in the league.
And the press conference…what’s he going to do? Show up and deliver all the cliches the losing side throws out there?
“Better team.”
“Work hard and come back next year.”
“Proud of our guys.”
The quotes have value some of the time, but mostly they’re just necessary to fill voids in a reporter’s text.
They’re trite rituals. I get that.
Buuuuuuttttt…
They have meaning. They mean facing what’s happened.
The handshake is an acknowledgment of the opponent’s superiority and the fact they beat you fair and square. It’s telling someone who was better than you that they were, in fact, better than you. If you win, it’s a chance to smile or smirk while your opponent holds back tears.
Same with the press conference. The winners get to go in and talk about how excited they are, how well the team played, how the fans helped out, etc. The losers get to go out and make excuses.
Say what you want about the media and their role in sports, and how you don’t think players are obligated to address these fat slackers (I can say this, I’m a sportswriter) who never stepped foot on a competitive playing field. You may be right. But the media, and therefore these press conferences, exist because sportswriters give every fan out there access that the players would never give individually.Sports media talk to the fans about the team because players could never be bothered to actually deal with the puny fans.
Let me be more clear: In my time working in the NBA, I met maybe 10 players throughout the league that really, truly gave a damn what fans thought. Ask them to do anything – meet fans at a local event, walk around a hospital visiting sick kids, even to just sign a simple autograph after practice – and you get 20 minutes of whining and 15 minutes of trying to find a way out. It doesn’t make the players jerks (though plenty are), it’s just the nature of young, brash millionaires who have only been asked to do one thing their entire lives: hoop it up.
All any of them ever REALLY wanted to do was go home, play playstation and smoke weed. The ones in bigger cities maybe have more to do with their time, but by and large a players life consists of a couple hours of practice, a few minutes of team appearances or media responsibilities, Scarface on Blu-Ray and whatever weed the five cousins they live with can acquire.
Long story short is this.
When LeBron was winning, we saw lots of this:
LeBron and Teammates Showboat
When LeBron lost, we saw this:
…..
…..
Then the next day he said this:
It’s hard for me to congratulate somebody after you just lose to them,” James said Sunday after the team returned to Cleveland. “I’m a winner. It’s not being a poor sport or anything like that. If somebody beats you up, you’re not going to congratulate them. That doesn’t make sense to me. I’m a competitor.
Fine, if you get jumped by the Westside Hoovers of Little Rock, and actually get physically assaulted, don’t get up and shake their hands. But when you lose a damned basketball game to a better team, suck it up. There’s always tomorrow to play Halo and smoke your cousins’ weed.
Contrast LeBron to tennis star Rafael Nadal, who lost at the French Open for the first time ever:
“It’s not a tragedy,” Nadal said. “I had to lose one day. I must accept my defeats with the same level of calm that I accept my victories.”
Nadal is turning 23 today; that’s a year younger than LeBron.
Like I said in my last post, this isn’t about the kids. My kids isn’t going to learn about being a man and facing what you’ve done from LeBron.
My problem with it? It’s easy to be Billy Badass when you’re winning. It’s not easy to face the music when you’ve lost. No one goes through life without adversity. Husbands come home after being fired. Wives fight on after losing their babies. Criminals step in front of the judge when they get arrested. All of these are things people face each day, and the little stoner can’t shake someone’s hand after losing a basketball game?
Psssh.
