| The Media's Bias On LeBron Authored by Louis Roxin - July 9, 2009 - 5:52 pm
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To be fair, this is not really an issue with ESPN exclusively. The New England-based Worldwide Leader is just the leading indicator of the prevailing media point of view (a sort of vast sports news conspiracy) that is heavily biased in favor of LeBron remaining in his hometown when his current contract runs out. Motive? I have to guess that this is equal parts (a) sentimentality for the fairy tale of the great high-schooler-turned-superstar playing ball in his hometown, (b) disdain for the Knicks (their poorly spent riches and their rabid fan base), and (c) a raw empathy for the long suffering of a basketball city whose de facto team logo is Craig Ehlo passing out head first on the scorer’s table. Keep in mind that this is a suffering that would reach almost unimaginable depths of sports grief, playing out like the most heartbreaking Greek tragedy ever to hit Broadway, should LeBron jump ship for the big city. The tragic subtext might be mitigated if LeBron won the Cavs a title on his way out but that, in turn, would be more than a little outweighed by the personal feeling of violation and sheer outrage if LeBron were to skip town immediately after bringing the city its first NBA championship. Either way, there is nothing resembling a graceful Cleveland exit for number 23. Not anytime soon.
These dynamics played out in amusing fashion this week when a source with access to Trevor Ariza told Chris Broussard of ESPN that LeBron told Ariza he will be in Cleveland past 2010 while LeBron was recruiting the free-agent forward to sign with the Cavs. Broussard had to come back moments later and report that multiple sources close to LeBron told him that LeBron had made no such promise to Ariza. It seemed LeBron had specifically and rather immediately sent his people out to rebut the assertion in Broussard’s initial report.
Broussard has been at the center of ESPN’s reporting on the LeBron 2010 Watch. An episode of “Outside the Lines” aired in May of this year in which LeBron was interviewed about 2010 and what he means to the city of Cleveland. He said that he was comfortable playing with the Cavs, happy with the team’s direction, and that “somebody must be looking out the wrong box” if they thought he had made any statements indicating an intention to depart Cleveland. (As a simple matter of logic, the premise of LeBron’s comment was sound. One can look ahead to July 1, 2010 as “a very, very big day” without having any preference one way or the other, as of yet, as to what direction to go when that day comes around. What LeBron’ critics were aggravated by is not what he’s saying so much as what he is not saying: They prefer him to close off even the possibility of exploring his options next summer.)
Broussard then came on the air after the interview with LeBron and spoke with the show’s host Bob Ley. But Broussard spoke as if LeBron’ decision was far from final, revealing that LeBron didn’t know whether he would be more or less likely to leave Cleveland if the Cavs won a championship. Despite Ley insisting that LeBron had all but put the issue to rest in the interview, Broussard didn’t quite play along. So Ley followed it up by saying that the quality of the Knick roster might dissuade LeBron from signing with the Knicks. Broussard began to respond with half agreement, talking about adding that second max piece, but Ley cut him off and ended the segment before Broussard could give a full answer. Ley had already cut Broussard off once when the latter began to give his opinion that it would be better for the NBA for LeBron to go to New York and turn the Knick franchise into a winner.
After the “Outside the Lines” show, Broussard seemed contrite and sheepish in subsequent appearances. He was now ready to issue his prediction that there was a 65% chance that LeBron stays in Cleveland (probably still quite a bit less likely than most Cavs fans or ESPN higher-ups are comfortable with). Most recently, Broussard has pronounced the Knicks more or less out of the running for LeBron because they may not have room for that second max free-agent with the league projecting the salary cap to decline next year. Lost in the analysis was the fact that the lower cap would also tie the Cavs’ hands in their hope to add a second max player next to LeBron in 2010, and missed was the eminently supportable proposition that the Cavs’ regular season success was driven by a dominant MVP season from LeBron rather than a very strong supporting cast. This proposition was of course bolstered by the fact that the Cavs were unable to get by the Magic in the playoffs, which demands clear secondary scoring options.
On the other end of the spectrum, anybody who follows the Knicks, or follows the media following the Knicks, knows that the team takes its most severe battering from the hometown beat writers themselves. Marc Berman of the New York Post, Frank Isola of the New York Daily News, and even occasionally Howard Beck of the dignified New York Times, will dance on the steep grave that was dug during Isiah Thomas’ tenure. Berman, though, has limited time and resources to spend on such petty things. Word is that Stephon has the regrettable habit of keeping every new cell he ever purchased after moving to a new area code. Minnesota, New Jersey, Phoenix, New York, Boston ... we’re talking five different handheld devices, at least 18 times a week per number. That’s no less than 90 Berman-to-Marbury calls each week. (Berman’s editor at the Post already put him on notice that Murdoch is not reimbursing peak calls from Woodside to Madrid.)
It’s great copy – and terrific ammunition to hold back the fire of the blogosphere – to perpetuate the agony that gripped the Knicks over the past several years. Things started to change when Donnie Walsh came aboard, began shedding bad contracts and put a defined red circle around July 1, 2010 on the calendar of every Knick fan. Still, changing tone or topics – letting the good story that has been the disaster of the Knicks get away from them that easily – would not be too much fun. Hope is a corny angle and doesn’t really sell in the media capital of the world, one brimming with ingrained cynicism for its sports, its politics and its public figures.
This generalized New York negativity is not something that other sports cities know much about. All you have to do is turn on a League Pass game from another market and you’ll hear the play-by-play guy shamelessly cheering, sneering and making sure the audience knows exactly who “we” is. All of this is culture shock for a New Yorker. The same non-New York optimism is evident with the beat writers too.
A good example is Brian Windhorst who covers the Cavs for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a fine writer who sometimes doubles as a calming voice to soothe Cavalier fan anxieties. As the Ariza story was unraveling, Windhorst sent out the following message on Twitter, presumably to Cavs fans only and not the general reading public: “Source: LeBron didn't tell telling [sic] Ariza he is for sure staying with the Cavs past '10.Not that he won't, mind you, but not recruiting pitch”. It was important for Windhorst to remind Cavs fans that LeBron coming out to expressly refute that he promised to stay in Cleveland was not the end of the world; it didn’t mean that he wouldn’t re-sign in Cleveland, eventually. The contrast is stark. It would be a rare moment indeed for Isola to make sure Knick fans didn’t lose faith. And in the unlikely event that he did, it would only be to temporarily and slightly prop the reader up again so he could continue pummeling him into submission. A little hope goes a very long way, even when your audience are skeptics by nature.
Earlier than all of this, before LeBron’ purported revelation on “Outside the Lines,” it was also Windhorst who broke the news in December of last year that LeBron said he would consider signing an extension with the Cavs this summer. "I definitely want to keep an open mind, I will look at everything," LeBron told Windhorst. "[The extension] is a good point. I think me and my group have pretty much made good decisions so far and we'll look at the options and go from there." This ended up as the lead story on ESPN (and RealGM and others too) but curiously Windhorst has written several times since then that nobody should expect LeBron to sign an extension this summer and forgo free-agency. Windhorst is of the mind that LeBron (with no evident ill motives) simply wants to keep his options open just for the sake of keeping his options open. Then this begs the question why it was ever such a big story to begin with. In fact, if LeBron does give serious consideration to the Cavs’ offer of a new max contract this summer (which by salary cap rules will be a bigger dollar amount than what any other team can offer him) but then decides to reject the extension, doesn’t that say more about whether LeBron’s heart is in Cleveland than the fact that he said ‘I’ll think about it’ back around Christmas time? Ever considerate of Cavs’ fans’ feelings and trying to head off their disappointment, Windhorst tried to put the lid on extension talk almost as soon as he broke the news in the first place.
All the while the media seems to go on pretending that LeBron never said any of the following, just days after the Knicks cleared a maximum salary slot in 2010: "[Madison Square Garden] is the last building that's still alive. It's just a different feeling when you come into this building. You feel like, honestly, you're on stage and playing the game of basketball more than you're on the court, because of the fans and how the lighting is in here .... There's no way for me to ever think that this is just another road game." Or that in the same press conference, LeBron didn’t say: "Every time I come here, it's like a warm feeling just because you know the history.” Or that LeBron’ favorite apparel isn’t a Yankee hat, worn even while the city of Cleveland was holding its collective breath during LeBron’s first interview after the Cavs were eliminated from the playoffs this past season. (It was again Windhorst who solicited reassurance from LeBron by asking, ‘What do you say to the fans who are concerned that losing in the playoffs will affect your decision on free-agency?’ LeBron said it would not.) And what about the consensus view in the Yankees’ clubhouse, possibly tipped off by LeBron’s friend CC Sabathia, that LeBron will sign with the Knicks when he becomes a free-agent?
Some of this stuff is not so much any kind of indicator of which way the King is leaning as much as it is a ready willingness and even desire to hype up the topic from LeBron and his camp. He is after all an entertainer first and foremost. But apparently this is no joking matter for the forces and interests who have a stake in LeBron staying in Cleveland. Their tense tone concerning the topic, and the corresponding refusal to even consider the possibility that LeBron may not see himself finishing his career in Cleveland, implicitly confirms their own doubts. It’s a version of the truth hurts. Doubts hurt too, and so does unrequited love, even if it’s only just playful.
Witness the infamous puppet bird commercial from Nike. When a blue (some say purple) and orange bird waited outside the window for the MVPuppet while LeBron did curls and counted down (or up) to 2010, Cavs’ fans and their enablers in the media almost pretended like the bird was not there, or was perhaps just the whimsical throw-in from one of Nike’s intern puppet makers. The purposely ambiguous implication was blinding.
Other details seem to go conveniently unaddressed, though some of it could just as easily be filed under the usual sloppy sports reporting that is rampant in the ESPN age when stories are reduced to their most basic ingredients for the sake of quick consumption. It’s fast food sports reporting. Take for instance the relative lack of mention that Jay-Z and his Nets are close to breaking ground on the new arena in Brooklyn, as Rod Thorn once again does a masterful job of rebuilding his team’s nucleus of talent. If construction on the arena begins before the end of the year, LeBron could have a Brooklyn home waiting for him by 2012, which may coincide nicely with LeBron taking his $17 million player option for 2010-2011 to hold over in Cleveland one more season. The Nets have two first-round picks in 2010 while the Knicks currently have none. Similarly, with all the talk about the Knicks needing to stick a second superstar next to LeBron (with the Cavs mysteriously immune from this requirement), it is rarely mentioned that the last two albatross contracts the Knicks have in Eddy Curry and Jared Jeffries, together totaling about $18 million in cap room, will expire by the summer of 2011. Again, LeBron could take his player option in Cleveland and wait one more year to jump to the New York area and find a superstar like Carmelo Anthony waiting to join him.
None of this is likely to split the earth into lunar fragments. This is sports after all, certainly not life and death. (Or at least that’s what they are trained to say – the throngs of sports consumers who live and die emotional deaths with each buzzer beater, every 3-2 pitch in the 9th, all the 4th and goals, the same people who organize their lives around their favorite teams.) And since even hard news now facilely blurs the line between information and editorializing, and even re-packages reality entertainment as newsworthy, it is going to go largely unrecognized or deemed harmless when the major sports media drive their own agenda even when the public unwittingly expects it is getting a somewhat evenhanded report on what’s really going on.
Louis.Roxin@RealGM.com |
