LeBron James, Mike Brown, and the "Superstar Treatment"

I didn't want to get involved. I'm a LeBron fan. I like the way he plays, and even his superstar treatment from the refs doesn't bother me too much, mostly because he's never beaten my team in anything important.

But this is the last straw. After last night's loss, Cavs coach Mike Brown seems to have caught the whining bug.

Get over it, Mike Brown, things happen. Things like, say, and even worse call 0.4 seconds before on Danny Granger when he fouled LeBron James.

Or didn't foul.

I urge you to look at the highlights. I watched it, and the foul on Granger was a much easier foul to call than the previous one.

But what really irked me was this, from Mike Brown:

"That last call, on the run, is the worst call that I have ever been a part of," Brown said. "I cannot imagine another worse call than that. It was an awful call and for him to take away a basketball game from a team with .4 seconds on the clock is irresponsible."

You know what? Pacers coach Jim O'Brien could have said the same thing from the play before.

You cannot imagine another worse call than that? LeBron clearly used his body to move Granger while the ball was in the air. The play before, on the other hand, was nothing more than Bron Bron getting the superstar treatment.

You know what bothered me even more than stupid Mike Brown's comments? The comments from the AP recap.

The lines in italics are direct quotes:

"LeBron James grudgingly lived with the NBA's non-star treatment Tuesday night."

Oh, we're sorry LeBron has to live with the way rules are played out. Isn't the so-called "Star Treatment" the same thing that drives fans away in droves?

"After James scored 47 points and almost single-handedly rallied the Cavaliers to force overtime, the unthinkable happened. James, the NBA's No. 2 scorer, drew a foul with 0.2 seconds left."

Yeah, that's the unthinkable. LeBron James getting called for a foul he committed is completely unthinkable, just because he's a star, and stars shouldn't get called on fouls they actually commit.

"NBA stars, especially those in the realm of James, aren't supposed to be treated this way—especially in a game they've dominated."

What does that even mean? That after a star scores a certain amount of points (in James' case, 47) that he becomes immune to foul calls? Whatever happened to enforcing the rules?

"Yet somehow, perhaps with a little help from the officials, the short-handed Pacers absorbed the body blows and survived."

Did they even mention that James was the beneficiary of an even more dubious call that put the game in that situation? Of course not.

"The last call against me was not questionable at all," James contended. "No contact was made. The pass was short. You couldn't go to the rim. I was able to get a hand on it."

Really LBJ? Just like you didn't travel against the Wiz? Watch your own replay, and you can clearly see that your body made contact with Granger.

Or do superstars get the benefit for changing reality also?

As is becoming the trend these days, sometimes you have to look past mainstream media sources and look at the blogs to find a reasonable take.

The following is from the TrueHoop Network's Cavs blog, Cavs: The Blog:

The foul LeBron [drew on Danny Granger] was VERY questionable. Very very very questionable. Granger went pretty close to straight up and LeBron hadn’t touched the ball. I give LeBron props for draining those free throws, but if we had won we might be seeing a fresh round of “LeBron cheats to win” stories in the morning. I don’t think LeBron should have been called for a foul either, but his jump had more slant than Granger’s and with .4 seconds left, we should be able to defend well enough to take the game out of the refs’ hands. I’m not going to blame this one on the refs when there are so many people allegedly on our side screwing us out of the game.

Wow. Sounds perfectly reasonable. I guess you can't expect that from the AP.

Like I said at the beginning, I love to watch James play, but I'm starting to get sick of every highlight of any Cavs game being nothing but LeBron, and I'm starting to get sick of this so-called "Superstar treatment" that happens when someone like LeBron makes a mistake to cost his team the game.

You fouled him, and just because you can pick your team in a year, doesn't mean you're not going to get called on it.

If the Cavs make it to the Finals this year, I expect James' "superstar treatment" will make D-Wade in the '06 Finals look like a picnic.