perfidy

No easy way to excerpt, so I'll just quote the whole damn thing:

Let me start by saying I have no problem with LeBron James leaving Cleveland for a bigger city, for a team with more talent, for more money, or for any other reason to his liking. It’s his talent. His body. He’s free to market his skills as he pleases. But like just about everyone else outside of Miami, I thought his decision to schedule a 1-hour prime time special on ESPN to make the announcement was tacky and gratuitous. (And shame on ESPN for playing along.)

So I don’t blame Cleveland for hating him.

When LaBron and the Heat visit Cleveland for the first time next season, the game will almost certainly be nationally televised. Cleveland fans could go ahead and boo and hiss when James takes the floor as expected. But that would really be no different than the reaction of every other city who lost a hometown hero to a bigger market. As these things go, what James did to Cleveland was uniquely insulting. So when James comes back to town, Cleveland needs to come up with an appropriately unique collective middle finger to let James know just how his home city feels about him. It needs to be special.

Here’s my idea: Make him play before an empty arena.

Go ahead and buy your tickets to that game. Sell the place out. In fact, for this idea to work you may need to sell the game out way ahead of time. There’s no sense in punishing the Cavs organization for all of this. If you want, have a city pep rally or two the afternoon before the game to let current Cavs players know it’s nothing personal.

But come game time, don’t step foot in the arena. Do go downtown. Patronize the local bars and restaurants. Watch the game from a sports bar. Do some shopping. But keep your tickets in your pocket. Set a goal: See if Cleveland can set an all-time record for lowest attendance at an NBA game. Put so few people in the stands that LeBron’s first dribble actually casts an echo through Quicken Loans Arena. And on national TV to boot.

Any crowd can boo. This would show some civic commitment. It would take some coordination. Some advance planning. It would demonstrate a lingering anger still potent enough to compel an entire stadium of fans to eat the price of a couple tickets. And if it works, it would be a pretty awesome spectacle to behold.

Even better: There’s a pretty good chance that the first Miami/Cleveland game in Cleveland will be on . . . ESPN.

As a native of Cleveland, I was horrified. Well, not really. But Radley has the right of it - the way James went about this was just classless. Or, to put it another way, exactly how you'd expect a player in the NBA to behave. At least we still have the rest of the team, which isn't always the case.