Miami Heat: Why We Hate LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and the Boys of South Beach
I’ve tried to understand just why we hate the Miami Heat so much. Now, I’m going to clear the deck here for just a second and admit that I was born and raised a Bulls fan.
I was there for every single moment of the Jordan Era and live in Chicago, where Jordan is and always will be king.
But I never hated the Heat before this past summer, and the rest of the country(minus the Heat faithful and indiscriminate bandwagon jumpers) agrees with the hatred.
Considering they are playing Chicago there has been an enormous groundswell of Chicago hatred, which if you know anything about this city, you know it can be pretty intense.
But the Heat’s villainous identity isn’t just felt in the Chi. It’s felt all over the country and is as powerful as anything I’ve ever seen. At first I thought I figured it out. We hated the Heat because they were doing something we couldn’t do.
They had signed three of the biggest free agents and were assembling a unit that could dominate the hard court for years to come.
Those franchises win so much that there was no reason to feel threatened by a team who, even if they won the next five straight, wouldn’t come close to equaling the collective success of those two proud franchises.
Even I, in Chicago, shouldn’t have hated them for that reason. I was privy to the greatest for 15 years and saw six NBA championships.
What I saw in those days will never be surpassed by Dwyane Wade and LeBron James.
Still we hate. Why?
I searched it out on Facebook and Twitter, clearly the most authoritative voice on the world wide web, to come to some conclusion.
I was looking for this sort of abstract thought like the Heat had exemplified something from our past that made us hate. But I found the answer to be so much simpler than that.
It was the celebration.
Every comment I received, everyone I texted for answers came back to that glorified celebration. The one where Wade, James and Chris Bosh rose up like giants to clouds of smoke and strobe lights and a legion of fans caught up in the moment.
The celebration where LeBron said he wanted to win seven NBA championships, but at the same time always looked a little overwhelmed in that moment.
We, the public of sports fans found this to be the straw that broke the camels back. Still, I wondered if we had all been a little too rash. After all, they were excited, were they not allowed to be?
The answer was “no.” No, they were not allowed to be so brash so soon. No, they were not allowed to trumpet their arrival when their arrival had promised nothing more than improved chances. No, they were not allowed to exclaim to the masses that they deserved praise.
Both Bosh and James had failed to get their team a ring so to be praised then, in that moment seemed stupid to the country.
We have a fondness for our athletes. We, though understanding they really aren’t, expect them to be like us. We expect them to understand the value of hard work, the commitment to excellence and the true reward of the journey it took to get there.
Most of us live average lives with struggle. What we earn we truly earn. We aren’t expected praise or shown it prematurely. Imagine that kind of fanfare in our own lives.
Imagine waking up and going to your new job to a lavish celebration when you’ve accomplished nothing. Imagine you’re the co-worker who’s been working to build a name for themselves at this company and you watch someone waltz in to strobe lights and smoke proclaiming that something big has happened before it’s happened.
How would you feel?
The Heat, in fairness, attempted to curb such expectations shortly after it happened. But you can’t have a victory parade and then claim you feel like you haven’t won a thing. Sends kind of a mixed message doesn’t it?
Even Kobe, who is a villain in his own right, has never been hated this much. At the end of the day we respect his ability to work. We have this notion, right or wrong, that the Heat have intended to buy their way to the NBA Finals.
Sports fans can accept anything except the easy road (except when it’s their team that’s traveling down it).
The Heat may win the NBA Championship but they are fooling themselves if they think it’s revenge against the haters or redemption for past failures. It will be about validation for the grotesque celebration that occurred less than a year ago.
The Heat violated the three tenets of the American sports hero. They asked for praise before results. They bought and paid for their success and they have shown no remorse.
The worst part of it all is that they turned it around to make it them versus the world.
The Heat might be great, and America loves greatness, but the Miami Heat were arrogant. Everyone hates that.
