LeBron James: How Much Longer Will the Hate for Miami Heat Star Continue?

Where does all of this admiration and obsession of the sporting world stem from? For the non-gamblers out there, sports is nothing more than a release and an escape from all of the real world problems that engulf us day in and day out in lives that are getting more complicated than they ever should have become.

In an age where obsession and technology have run rampant and taken over the world, it has even spread over to the sporting world as we now see ourselves delving deeper and deeper into the lives of the professional athletes that we have now come to look at as idols, role models, and even social pariahs.

As the social media craze gives us outlets to observe these athletes, and other celebrities, we develop new opinions and find new ways to judge a particular person by whatever move they make and whatever statements they make.

This has taken the world by storm. Prying into the lives of people that we used to care less about has now taken over our lives as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs all across the internet have given us a view into the lives of these formerly unknown superstars.

As we find out more about them, we develop these opinions on what they say and how they should have done this or what they could have said to make this happen.

The NBA has seemed to be at the forefront of this with redeemed popularity stemming from the renewed Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics rivalry and the emergence of young superstars.

The recent coup involving the Miami Heat where they managed to team up LeBron James and Chris Bosh to play alongside Dwyane Wade in South Beach can be included here as well.

The latest big three to be formed in Miami took the NBA world by storm last season as the media became obsessed with this once forgotten franchise.

Prior to last years' off-season, the Miami Heat were nothing more than a one-man team that was first round fodder for the higher seeds. Only once LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined the squad, the Heat then became at the focus of the national spectrum for the first time since the Shaquille O'Neal era.

Creating this team was a gutsy move by the Heat, but it also gave a huge portion of the population a sense of anger and jealousy at the roster with LeBron James receiving the brunt of it.

Many looked at these three joining together in the primes of their career as the easy way out to winning games rather than working harder by being the focus of their respective team and leading a quality roster to the Finals.

The only problem with that was all three players had inefficient rosters that had little to no chance of taking their team to the championship. Bosh was locked up in Toronto on a less than stellar roster that had no defensive threats, Wade was playing with aging veterans and raw, young players in Miami, and James played with a squad that seemed to disappear by the time the post season came around.

Could you call it the easy way out? Possibly. But since when is winning something to look down upon? In a time where players are jetting teams for contracts worth over $100 million and making over $20 million in a single season, it just doesn't seem right to look down upon three players that want to win as opposed to owners that are offering the standard All-Star over $20 million a season.

Despite all three players joining together, no one received the worst of it more than James who dealt with more criticism and analysis than any other player. Unlike Bosh who gave some inclination that he was going to depart Toronto, James gave the Cleveland Cavaliers absolutely no idea until the day he announced it on ESPN a little after 8pm on his own hour block worth of television.

It did raise money for charity, but it was one of the most ill-constructed ways to depart from a team that the world had ever seen and it was absolutely embarrassing.

That gives a reason to show some disdain to James. It wasn't fair to the Cavaliers organization that had no time to build up a sufficient roster in time for the 2010-'11 season and it wasn't fair to those fans in Cleveland that had grown to love the player that had saved their franchise and made them relevant for the first time since the Mark Price era.

After flirting with a championship for the past four seasons, the team was right back where they were with a dismal roster and without an identity.

For the casual fan outside of Miami, this was looked at as James taking the easy way out by not continuing to lead the Cavaliers deep into the post season and instead heading to Miami to play with Wade and Bosh. The only problem with this theory was that it made no sense considering that James leaving Cleveland and joining Miami was the smartest move he could have made.

Unlike Cleveland which gave no inclination to James that they were going to sign a quality All-Star to play alongside James, the Heat offered two proven superstars, a competent head office, and the ultimate goal of winning a title.

So we hated. We continued to hate for reasons that not many of us understood. The decision was painful, but why should it matter to anyone outside of Cleveland? What gives the fans in Memphis or Minnesota a reason to boo and jeer James other than the fact that everyone else was doing it?

The main reason that James was receiving so much criticism from the fans in every other stadium outside of the American Airlines Arena was mainly because it was the popular thing to do.

Another argument dealing with the hatred for James would have to be his ego that has been characterized as this gargantuan monster that goes around pillaging cities and robbing banks. It is easy to call James an egotistical player considering that he has danced during blowout wins and has said some of the most quotable statements ever to be heard.

What should we expect out of a superstar that had an entire city in his back pocket, has had no proper guidance from a veteran or suitable figure, had the entire NBA praising his name, and saying that he might be better than Michael Jordan by the end of his career?

Is LeBron James an arrogant and egotistical athlete? Of course he is, but are we also going to say that these other athletes aren't? Kobe Bryant has gone on record blasting his own teammates, Paul Pierce said that he was the best player in the world, and Vince Carter quit on his own team.

Singling out James as this egotistical and self-obsessed athlete is just another tactic created by his critics as to find another way to offer some sort of criticism.

It's tough to argue that he has an ego as well considering that he just gave up an enormous amount of spotlight in Cleveland in order to share it with three other players. Not to mention that one of those players already had the spotlight in Miami and that player continues to be recognized as the true leader.

It makes it really hard to argue that James has more of an ego than other players when he gives up being the big fish in a small pond in Cleveland to become the little fish in an ocean in Miami.

James should be used to this though, considering he's been the center of attention of the NBA since he was drafted in 2003. Even before that time, he was receiving press after reportedly taking benefits and leading his high school team to three consecutive championships.

James was one of the most highly touted rookies since Michael Jordan and received more national attention than any other player including Dwyane Wade who had just led his Heat to the second round of the post season.

He loves being at the center of attention. He's too used to it. He's in his mid-twenties, at the prime of his career, with more athletic prowess than any other NBA player and is on one of the greatest teams to ever be assembled.

Is it right to hate a guy and criticize every single thing he posts on Twitter just because he enjoys being at the center of attention?

Lately, James has become the new punchline to every NBA joke ever created. The rings joke, the 'LeBron traveled joke that's never going to seem to die on every YouTube video, and the always popular Delonte West and Gloria James rumors have only added fuel to this fire of ganging up on the 26 year old and two-time MVP.

They only started to arise again once James flamed out in the championship because the blogosphere had actually calmed down during the Conference playoffs.

It was a strange sight to see people actually praising James for his accomplishments rather than looking only at his failures. James was earning the respect and admiration he had built up in Cleveland because he had started winning and was the main reason as to why his team was winning.

He was coming up clutch, hitting huge shots in pressure situations, and was dispelling all those rumors of him being this player that only showed up for three quarters.

Suddenly, LeBron James had become a hero again and it was because he was winning.

Once the NBA Finals came around however, the hatred, criticism, and constant scathing analysis had reared its ugly head once again and was now more prevalent than ever. James had only averaged 17 points per in the Finals and was extremely detrimental to the team's cause of winning a second title.

He wasn't hitting shots in the clutch anymore, and wasn't making shots at all, to put it into perspective.

So we continue to hate James and it's pretty obvious how all this can end, isn't it? If James happened to win the title, the criticism would have at least died down.

There still would have been plenty of people out there to say that he only won it because of Wade and Bosh, but it wouldn't have mattered because James would have had the ring to solidify his legacy and proven to his doubters that this experiment was the right move to make.

Hating James has become a popular activity among the masses and it's only a result of James' failures to come away with a title. What we need to realize is that he'll only be 27 years old next year, will have a healthy and more complete roster and has a better understanding of his new team. He is set to be in that environment for at least the next four seasons.

James has become hated for what he has become perceived to be. To be respected once again, he'll have to follow through on his promises and become the player that's nothing like the center of the universe player he was in Cleveland.