The Sports Brewery

All Flashy Antics Aside, LeBron Is Quite Professional In This Instance

Posted on 13. Feb, 2010 at 5:21 am by 3D in NBA Basketball

ESPN has undoubtedly been the catalyst for the explosion of all sports over the last couple decade.  It has done more for sports than SNL has for comedy, pioneering sports broadcasting, news, radio shows, and talk shows.  And whether we like it or not, they get to do whatever the hell they want, get away with it scot free, and march on as the worldwide leader.  Let’s face it, they’ve done some pretty bad shows over the years – Playmakers, Dream Job, and Cheap Seats to name a few (gee, I wonder who will comment on this blast).  But First Take takes the cake.  It’s cheesy, littered with terrible interviews (every question begins with “what were the players saying about…”), talks about the NFL more than baseball DURING BASEBALL SEASON, and features “diabolical hater” Skip Bayless blasting LeBron James with every chance he gets.

Nobody in the history of sports talk shows has blasted anyone more than what Skip does to LeBron.  Skip hates LeBron the way half of America hated Dubya while he was in office, perhaps more.  Everyday he uses the show to scorch LeBron about how imperfect his game and personality are, including Friday morning when he went nuts on him even after a solid win and near triple double.  LeBron takes too many bad shots this, is too unprofessional that, horses around too much, can’t make a big shot, can’t play big in big games, can’t win a championship, yada, yada, freakin’ yada (most of it isn’t even true anyway).  This season Skip has taken it to another level because last year he jumped on the LeBron bandwagon and when the Cavs were outplayed by the Magic, he took it upon himself to crush LeBron even harder.

The truth is LeBron does show boat, just like every star of the last 20 years including the two guys he’s compared to most: MJ and Kobe.  LeBron also takes bad shots, just like those two.  But he doesn’t get credit for doing one thing: being grown up about the situation.  It comes to no surprise that he doesn’t give that show the light of day despite being public enemy #1.  But he continues to give the rest of The Mothership all the attention it wants.  As big of an icon as he is becoming, I would love to see him challenge that crummy ass show and get them to stop all this nonsense.  I wonder what the suits at ESPN would do if he stopped doing interviews with them and ABC.  He could easily stick it to that network by giving TNT, SI, and plenty of other media outlets all the stories, interviews, and reality shows they could dream of.  I guarantee the execs would make Skip put a sock in it, which is what I’d like to do.

PS – This was about as G-Rated as I could make it.  I usually drop tons of f bombs at the TV when listening to this guy.  And hate on me all you want for continuing to watch that wretched show, but the 100^th re-run of SportsCenter just doesn’t cut it, and how many times can you get weather and traffic updates on the local news?  There’s literally nothing else on at 7am.

Images courtesy of Skip getting ready to take it in the mouth.  And by that I mean I found them on Google.  Yee haw!

Tags: ESPN, First Take, LeBron James, Skip Bayless