King James Ransom

I’m not sure if you heard, but LeBron James signed with the Miami Heat last night. Haha that was sarcastic of course. There is not a person in the world right now who doesn’t know that. People who couldn’t tell you the difference between Pau Gasol and Big Foot know (by the way, the key is that Gasol is hairier). I bet my friend back in Hawaii Little Chris knows this, and this is a guy who in November of 2008 was unaware that we were having a presidential election.

We of course can thank ESPN for this. ESPN has a subtle way of telling you what they think is important. That is, if you are the type of person who thinks getting hit by a speeding freight train is subtle. They barrage you with a constant 24/7 blanket of coverage on whatever happens to have their interest at the moment. If you did a push-up every time they said the word “LeBron” in the past two days by now you either look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or you would have died. Then of course, there was his decision to announce his decision on a one-hour show (called, creatively, “The Decision”), which I’m sure had executives at ESPN practically wetting themselves with glee wondering what kind deed they did to have a golden ratings egg fall into their laps.

But then again, can you really blame them? This story has a better plot line than 85% of Michael Bay’s movies (especially now that Megan Fox isn’t in Transformers 3). On one hand, you have his hometown of Cleveland, a good old-fashioned Midwest city full of bad luck, downtrodden citizens, and cold winters. On the other hand you have Miami, a city with great weather, fake boobs, and Cubans on yachts. When you think of South Beach, you think of Miami Vice and Don Johnson strutting around town flirting with beautiful women and driving convertibles. When you think of Cleveland you think of… the Drew Carey Show?

So I’m not that surprised that he chose Miami over Cleveland (plus I heard Paul the Octopus predicted it). I mean, I understand being loyal to where you were born, but I was born in Hawaii. It’s a lot easier to for me. If I were LeBron I would choose someplace with a beach over a landlocked state any day. And of course all of you are like “But Mitchell you chose to go to school in Colorado instead of Hawaii.” That is because I am a study in bad decisions, and that’s why nobody gave me a one-hour show to announce where I was going to school (although the cheers I got from my family when I said I was going far away were much louder than anything LeBron got).

Still, it was sort of endearing to watch the city of Cleveland try and get him to stay. And by “endearing” I mean “sort of sad.” Watching grown men fawn over him like tweens at a Twilight showing just made me wonder about the state of our society when one athlete can do that to entire cities. So it probably shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise when he had the nerve to have his own show, seeing as we’ve spent the last three weeks stroking ego like… okay better not to finish that sentence.

Anyway, I wanted to watch just to see how in the world he was going to fill an hour with a decision that basically took him five seconds to actually say. As it turns out, they did it by asking him every possible question that nobody in the world would have thought of asking him at that moment. It was like we had a show to finally uncover the JFK scandal and the host was asking the FBI what type of plants they decorate the office with.

Finally, after all of America yelled at their TV “Just ask him WHERE already!!” he announced that he was “taking his talents to South Beach.” I just hope that it ends up better than most of the aspiring models who say that before they end up at a strip club. But he should be happy because apparently he and Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh had some sort of three-some bromance going on for awhile now. Of course, money might be a problem, since at the moment the team has a total of four players signed and no money left. Maybe that’s why LeBron held his press conference at a Boys and Girls Club; he was recruiting.

The only question left is what the heck ESPN is supposed to talk about now. I presume football will be next. In fact if there is one positive about this whole situation, it is that I haven’t heard a thing about Brett Favre, who is normally ESPN’s favorite topic. The only problem is that you just know that somewhere Brett Favre is saying to himself “Hmm, a one hour show to announce a decision. Now why didn’t I think of that?” Of course, with as wishy-washy as Favre is he might have to have multiple shows. He could probably make an entire season’s worth: “Brett Favre: Indecision.”