LeBron James Is Finalist for Time Magazine's Person of the Year

LeBron James is one of the 25 finalists for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. This may be the craziest LeBron James news of all, even in a year filled with him involved in a media circus and your 24/7 coverage of the Heat courtesy of ESPN.com’s Heat Index (by the way, they’re so nice for giving us that).

I never fully believed he was going to stay in Cleveland. It didn’t surprise me that he held a one hour special to tell us he was taking his talents to South Beach. As flashy as he and his new Heat teammates are, the rap concert-like introduction to the city shouldn’t have raised my eyebrow as much as it did.

But LeBron as a “Person of the Year” finalist. Seriously?

Just saying the two things in the same sentence makes me feel a bit dirty.

Other finalists include President Barack Obama (2008 winner), Lady Gaga and the trapped Chilean miners. Lady Gaga shouldn’t be on the list either, but even she makes more sense than LeBron James.

Let’s face it, James is now a villain to about 90 percent of sports fans. So, why is a villain a Time’s Person of the Year finalist you may ask?

According to Time Person of the Year’s Wikipedia page, here is how the winner of the award is determined.

“Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year) is an annual issue of the United States news magazine Time that features and profiles a person, couple, group, idea, place or machine that “for better or for worse has done the most to influence the events of the year.”

Oh, "for better or worse." Now it all makes sense. LeBron did have a huge, mostly negative, influence on the events of the year, but only on his events. I don’t think his issues actually influenced anything that actually mattered in the world.

Even James doesn’t think he deserves the award. ”I am who I am and I think I’m in a position of my life where I’m going to get better every day,” James said Monday. “But it’s too much.”

When told that about being a finalist alongside the Chilean miners, James said, “That’s just crazy. What those guys did, the courage and what they stood for, I should be nowhere near that list. Nowhere near it.”

Before you comment stating that I’m just hating on LBJ again, which all of us here at SPORTSorGTFO.com have done our fair share of, this is in no way a bashing of James. He doesn’t pick the finalists and even he’ll admit he shouldn’t be on the list. If anything, I’ll give him a little praise for responding in the way he did.

What are your thoughts on James being a finalist?