Miami Ice: LeBron James' Chilling Return to Cleveland

No matter what you do in life, there is always going to be someone who just doesn’t like you.

Maybe you met a friend of a friend for the first time and you had a bad night and you acted like an idiot. The person that just met you is probably not going to like you. You forget and move on, but every time that person hears your name they think, “Yea, I don’t like that guy.”

That doesn’t bother you because you’ll probably never have to see them again, but if you happen to, you can either ignore them, or say “Sorry I acted like a jerk before, but it’s nice to see you," give a fake smile and move on.

Lebron had that one bad night (The Decision), and millions of people turned on him. He made a few new fans that night but lost way more in the process. Sure he apologized for it, knew he made a mistake, but that wasn’t the end of it.

No matter what he does there are always going to be people that won’t like him. If he wins five championships, most people are going to forget it, but in Cleveland the hurt and dislike would only get worse, if that’s even possible.

The Miami Heat’s biggest problem is that for the first time these superstars are disliked. They always played with people rooting for them, with the exception of being on the road or in the playoffs.

This one bad day, that all changed.

Talk to anyone who is over the age of 50 and see how they feel about the Miami Heat.

Talk to anyone from Cleveland, and rather than root for their team last night, they’d prefer to root against LeBron.

Didn’t really work out well for the Cavs, but prior to this year has LeBron played in anything close to that atmosphere?

Sure, there are still a few of people that like these guys, but the number of dislikes compared to likes is overwhelming. They know it and it has shown in their performance, they’re just not used to playing this way.

I really thought the Cavs would come out blazing last night with the home crowd really fired up. I thought that LeBron would be even more tentative, and would struggle because of the negative energy.

Didn’t really turn out that way.

The home crowd was more into booing Lebron than cheering for a Cavs win.

Wouldn’t it have made been more effective for the fans to cheer for the Cavs and completely ignore James? 

When he was at the free throw line, wouldn’t it have been more chilling if the entire stadium went silent to where you could hear a pin drop than just have everyone booing him?

What was even worse for Cleveland fans was that the Cavaliers players actually looked like they were all happy to be on the same floor as LeBron again.

How much worse can Cavs fans feel? They are doing everything they can to make LeBron feel disliked, and their own team is hugging and welcoming him. They are basically saying to the fans “Look, we can’t win.” Not the kind of “We can’t win and everyone is counting us out” attitude that will fire us up, we are just terrible.

What (obviously) stood out last night was Lebron James’ performance.  We all wanted to see what he would do, would he throw the powder in the air? How would he respond to the crowd? How would he play? Or if he would even make it to the arena?

From high school, he was the chosen one; a hometown hero. Now he has enemies, and in his hometown. So far, he and the Heat haven’t performed well as the enemies, but last night we may have seen a change.

Last night James looked like he has finally embraced being a villain, and his teammates embraced that and rallied behind him. I even saw Joel Anthony hustling for loose balls. They were playing like it was the Heat against the world last night.

If LeBron and the Heat, play even 75 percent of what they gave last night, they should be able to contend for a title.

LeBron’s commercial, “What should I Do” is exactly why they are 10-8 right now…what should I do, ridiculous. He should’ve had a commercial saying “I don’t care” with the attitude he needs to be playing with, like the way he played last night. With a "who cares" attitude, they should play better, by playing better they will get more wins, by getting more wins more people will like them. All this by just not caring what people think of you.

Sounds cold, but it should work. 

After last night maybe he (us) can move can all move on.

Well except for the people in Cleveland.

What’s ahead for Miami? They still need to get a win against a good opponent in their conference, and they need to solve the Chris Bosh problem.

LeBron James and Dwayne Wade are two of the greatest players alive and can play with anyone. Chris Bosh is not.

The problem with Bosh is that since he was six years old, every team he has been on has been centered around him. Now for the first time in 20 years, not only is he not the second best player on his team, he is the third best.

Even that will be debatable when Mike Miller returns.

We really don’t know if Chris Bosh is any good. He played in Toronto for seven years, so no one has really seen him play, we just assumed he was a great player because he averaged 20 and nine on a team that couldn’t make the Eastern Conference playoffs last year.

Somebody had to average the most points, and looking at their roster from last year, there weren’t too many contenders for being the Raptors top scorer.

Whatever happens, this is all good for the NBA.

There was an NFL game on last night with playoff implications and the lead on ESPN this morning was an NBA game.

LeBron and the Heat cleared a big hurdle last night; they went into the place where they were the most hated and got past it.

LeBron even gave the fake smile and had nothing but good things to say about the Cleveland fans after it was over. 

Those people over 50 you talk to, who don’t even like the NBA, because “everyone travels,” “it’s a show,” or “everyone palms the ball now” are interested just to watch the Heat lose.

The best case scenario for the NBA is for the Heat to be just good enough to lose in the Eastern conference finals, just so we can watch the Lakers v. Celtics again.

Either way it feels like a big weight has been lifted off the NBA.  

TheSportsGospel.com