LeBron James Should Ignore the Haters and Enjoy Historic Season

The LeBron James hate has now officially "jumped the shark" after he turned the ball over in the closing seconds of the All-Star Game. It was probably over the top before that, but now it has gone beyond the level of ridiculous to the point where you just have to turn off the criticism.

Yes, he passed the ball instead of taking a shot. Two players were closing on him, and instead of forcing up a bad shot, he passed it off and, yes, it ended up in a turnover. If any other player in the league does that, we move on. 

I know this because no one seems to care that Dwyane Wade turned the ball only moments before that, on a pass from LeBron James I might add, and no one seems to care about that. 

LeBron James is only having what is literally the most efficient season in the history of the NBA—yet to some, it's irrelevant because of what he does in the last 10 seconds of the game. 

There's a point where it becomes just criticizing for the sake of criticizing. When you take the single reason there's a close game and criticize him for "losing" it, it crosses that point. You're not just finding a flaw in the diamond, you're calling the diamond a flaw. 

Every player has imperfections. Even Michael Jordan had them. LeBron James is the only player I've seen in my 34 years of watching basketball (and that's actually watching basketball) who is entirely defined by his flaws. 

Allow me a brief digression. The term "jump the shark" comes from the 70's TV series Happy Days. Failing in the ratings, they scripted the family trip to Hawaii where Fonzie jumped a shark on water skis. It was ploy to try and recapture viewers and utterly failed. 

It backfired. People stopped watching the show because the script had just gotten so silly no one paid attention to it anymore. 

The critics jumped the shark on the LeBron James story after the All-Star scenario. We no longer have to argue the facts, such as the reality that  LeBron James has made more shots (44) and at a higher percentage in the last two minutes of games than any other player on the Heat since he joined.  

Who cares that James has made more game-winning shots and scored them at a higher career percentage than Dwyane Wade? 

The shark jumping is a testament to one thing. The haters don't care about the reality. 

So now the Heat fans—or just plain basketball fans—that are tired of the pointless criticism can move on. For crying out loud, I'm a Bulls fan and I see the ridiculousness of the criticism.

There's a point where some people (if anyone knows Skip Bayless, please send him a link to this) have established they are really nothing more than closed-minded haters. 

If you're not appreciating the season that LeBron is having, you're at that point. If you really think that James passing the ball at the All-Star Game is evidence of some larger psychological issue, there's proof of that. 

In a strange way, James, who does want to make everyone happy, is now off the hook because of the nonsense. 

Now he knows he can't. After you score 36 points against the best players in the world, hit a record number of points, make six three-point shots and nearly lead one of the greatest comebacks in All-Star game history, and some people only want to focus on one play, you know—they are only going to see what they want to see and nothing else matters. 

James will never make those people happy. Even if he wins a trophy, they'll complain that he left Cleveland to do it, and try and parse the difference between Kobe Bryant getting Pau Gasol to "come" to L.A. and play with him and LeBron "leaving" Cleveland to play in Miami. 

They'll use semantics as though they are scoring some real point because they've already made a conclusion. 

So now LeBron can just say forget it and just enjoy the ride. Truthfully, he's probably already done it, but now he has license to do it. The majority of people are now going to be tuning out the critics. The LeBron hate has just become white noise. 

Maybe the only thing that comes out of this is that the rest of us can just enjoy his historic season as well.