Cleveland Owner Dan Gilbert: The Real Dirt Bag in the LeBron James Saga

Dan Gilbert, you are an embarrassment to the NBA, the city of Cleveland and the Cavaliers' franchise.

I feel for the Cavalier fans, I really do. They have wanted a great sports team for so long, and had a genuine superstar in LeBron James for seven years; it must feel like their hearts have been ripped out.

Shame on you, LeBron James for making a fool out of the city by using a one hour TV special to publicly destroy a franchise (even though you made the right decision).

But Danny boy, you have almost guaranteed that the Cleveland Cavaliers will slip back into being one of the worst teams in the NBA, by taking the low road in all of this.

While the Knicks and Bulls issued classy statements about their disappointment and respect for James' decision, you posted hateful messages to the man who delivered the Cavs an East championship and unparalleled levels of success for the team.

You ungrateful idiot. You are an owner. You need to be the bigger man and show that you are a great business person, and one who any NBA player would want to play for. 

Now, you look like a petulant child. Instead of buckling down and hitting the phones to find free agents to bolster that fairly average team, you are busy posting hate-mail to James on the Cleveland Cavaliers' website. 

Instead of calling him "the former self-proclaimed king" and saying he quit on his team, lets think about what YOU have done to make him better.

You gave him aging and average stars to compete with. You overpaid players like Shaq, Varajao and Mo Williams, leaving you little to no room to move on great players.

You proclaimed him the King. You posted and created the "We are witnesses" shirts and posters that are now all going to be removed. 

You made no legitimate moves to try to bring him a kingdom. Now, when he leaves to join two of his best friends and Pat Riley (an owner you whose shoes you would be lucky to shine) in order to win a championship.

Now, people are ridiculous to say he took the easy way out.  If he joined Chicago, he joined a fairly stacked team. If he went to the Knicks, he would have Amare. Chris Bosh is good, but he isn't better then Pau Gasol. So basically, LeBron joined Wade. Now, the Heat have a master forward and a master guard. They still have work to do.

You should have sent a letter to the public thanking James for his years of service and commitment to the team. You should have apologized for not putting the pieces together to entice him to come back. 

I have no issues with Cleveland, and have really developed into a Cleveland fan of sorts.  The city is fascinating, and I am rooting for them to get a championship. However, from a basketball sense, why would he come back? What changes have been made to say, "Look LeBron! We will be better next year!"

I blame it on gross overconfidence. Mr. Gilbert feels as though he could sit back and watch his star just say "Cleveland is home". 

Don't give me that the GM and Coach should have been doing more. Owners are highly involved, and the reason James went to Miami was because of Pat Riley and his amazing coup.

Now, players are seeing Dan Gilbert post terrible things online. LeBron James has many world-wide fans who watch him work his tail off during games. He may have quit in the playoffs because he got tired of watching his team mates flail around like they have no sense, but James is an unselfish player. These "blog-flies" that love to post crap about the man's choice and call him "LeChoke", "LeBron" or "LeYawn" are really just proving how big of a star he is.

He also has many friends in the league in terms of players. Dwight Howard, Chris Paul and even Kobe Bryant really like the man. These players are going to talk about how an owner is calling out one of the best players in the world and talking trash. Why are they going to want to go play for you? So you can stab them in the back verbally when they leave? I don't think so... and if anything, this off season has proved that players do talk.

Here is the main issue:

"This shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown 'chosen one' sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn. And 'who' we would want them to grow-up to become" (Gilbert).

You just watched a man donate sponsorship, scholarships and partnerships to the Boys and Girls club, one of the premiere and hardest working charities in America.

You just watched a man give up millions and millions of dollars for the sake of winning. 

You just watched a man give up his ego (even though it was wildly stroked by that insane hour long special) and diminish his brand to find championships, which is the most pure and most forgotten goal in sports.

He has been classy throughout his life, and has never been in trouble. 

He left your crappy team. That's all. Everything else that he did was fine. The hour long special was ridiculous, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. 

As long as you are the owner, the Cleveland Cavaliers will never win a championship.  You can "bank on that".