ME, ME, ME, MEEE....Is This Thing On?

LeBron's James has a real racket going, doesn't he? It's all about "ME" for this phony. Nothing else. Just "ME." Nobody but "ME." This preposterous landfill of ego-driven, obnoxious self promotion, narcissism and overhype has left a bad taste in everyone's mouth (other than Miami) and it's demonstrated quite clearly that LeBron JaMEs is Lady Gaga and A-Rod wrapped up in the New York Post and smothered with well-aged manure. Actually, in light of everything, that sounds almost complimentary.

As much as he and his lame-ass followers want to believe LeBron JaMEs is on a par with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, the truth is, he isn't, never was and has now guaranteed that he never will be. He could have been, but even before this summer he was lagging way behind them as well as a dozen other Hall of Famers at similar stages of their careers. JaMEs' post-season busts have shown that in even with his extraordinary physical talents, he is simply not capable of carrying a team in pressure situations. He doesn't have that it. You can talk all you want about "supporting casts" but when the chips are down, the man takes over and JaMEs ain't that man. He's proven to be strictly a regular season superstar and that just doesn't cut it compared to the greats.

Despite JaMEs' disgusting tease of New York and all the "unnamed sources" blathering for two years that JaMEs was a lock to come to the Apple, there was never a guarantee he'd wind up there. Besides, New York would have eaten him alive because with Knick fans beyond desperate for a winner and the media hanging on his every move, even the pregame warmups would have had a playoff edge. His constant yakking to the refs is a problem that will backfire on him (if it hasn't already) because if he doesn't shut up, the refs won't be there to protect him as they've done with other superstars. His classless reactions to his failures would have brought back memories of Bobby Bonilla. Chicago never had a chance because there was no way in hell that JaMEs was going to have Michael Jordan and his six championships hanging over his bandanna. All of which makes the New Jersey/Brooklyn, Jay-Z rappin', Russian-owned Netskys's acid trip of talking JaMEs into dropping into the swamps look pretty damned ridiculous from the start, which it was. Now that this sordid peep show is finally over the Yankees should threaten JaMEs with a lawsuit if he ever wears a Yankee cap in public again.

Maybe JaMEs secretly knows all this because why else would he slither off to Miami? He certainly won't score the off-the-court mint that New York would have drowned him in, especially now with the terrible publicity he's in for. The fact that he left $30 million on the table in Cleveland is misleading because Florida has no state income tax so he figures to net a lot more there (Imagine how happy Bosh is to switch from Canada's heavy tax burden). Furthermore, the Heat won't even be JaMEs' team; it's Dwyane Wade's team and it will always be Dwyane Wade's team, in the same way the Lakers are Kobe's team, the Bulls were Jordan's team, and the Celtics were Bill Russell's team. The Cavaliers were JaMEs' team, but he didn't have the stones to finish the job even once, and now he doesn't want to take on that load anymore so he's happily separating himself from immortality by taking the path of least resistance while still getting paid the max bucks. And if the Heat do win a title or two, JaMEs' will celebrate and his mentally-challenged followers will proclaim him as just as great as the others. Wonder what Wade will think of that? Because no matter how many titles JaMEs wins with Wade, Wade will always have one more.

JaMEs has said that he wants to be a billionaire, but have you ever heard him say he wanted to be one of the greatest players of all time? In fact, all this nauseating self-promotion allowed LeBron JaMEs to create the possible scenario of winning a championship and still coming out looking like a major-league loser. Winning a World Series erased a lot of the bad memories for Alex Rodriguez, and Reggie Jackson, but nothing will help JaMEs. He will be hated more than Barry Bonds ever was because it's not just the fans who are pissed off. Other players, sports figures, GMs, owners and celebrities are tearing into JaMEs and it only figures to get worse.

Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert ripped JaMEs, saying that he quit on the team in the playoffs this year and last year (An assessment virtually impossible to argue against), but then he did something that has often had a profound impact on teams: As part of an open letter to Cleveland, Gilbert placed a curse on JaMEs and Miami!

"...this heartless and callous action can only serve as the antidote to the so-called “curse” on Cleveland, Ohio. The self-declared former “King” will be taking the “curse” with him down south. And until he does “right” by Cleveland and Ohio, James (and the town where he plays) will unfortunately own this dreaded spell and bad karma."

Wow, that's heavy stuff. And bad news for the Heat and JaMEs. Curses like the Red Sox "Bambino" and the Cubs "Billy Goat" have shown to be quite effective, if one tends to believe in those things. However, the one this is most similar to is the Curse of Muldoon. In 1928 the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks had finished third in their division and team owner Major Frederic McLaughlin laid all the blame on coach Pete Muldoon. As the story goes, during a heated argument after the season Muldoon said to McLaughlin, "Fire me, Major, and you'll never finish first. I'll put a curse on this team that will hoodoo it until the end of time." McLaughlin swung the axe anyway and the Blackhawks went nearly 40 years before coming out out on top again in 1967. Jim Coleman, a Toronto sportswriter who first printed the story of the curse in 1943, admitted in 1967 after Chicago broke the hex that he made the story up to break a writer's block he had as a column deadline approached. Still, by then, the Curse of Muldoon had taken on a morbid life of it's own. So be careful, LeBron JaMEs. It's on your head now.

The James/Wade/Bosh plan is also the first case of players collusion in sports. Technically they did nothing wrong, but it still doesn't help anyone but themselves. It doesn't benefit the NBA because with three of the league's biggest names on one team, that's two separate drawing cards removed from every other team's home schedule and it will make it especially tough on the West Coast teams who host the East Coast teams only once a year. David Stern can't be liking that math.

Putting three superstars on the same team has proven to fail more often than not so this all guarantees nothing. Even if they do win, what it will accomplish is cement LeBron JaMEs' legacy as the most amazing example of walking fertilizer in sports history. But he'll have his money and his cheap title ride, so he won't care. More than anything, LeBron JaMEs has a major-league bulls-eye on his back. Everyone outside of Miami, especially the cities he jilted, will have him in their cross-hairs and the way some "fans" are these days, the torrid abuse heading his way in the coming years could be a potentially dangerous problem. And I just can't wait to see how Cleveland receives JaMEs upon his return to the ranch. As this picture shows, it's already begun on the streets. Congratulations, Art Modell, you've finally dropped from the top of Cleveland's (s)hit list.

About the only thing left to occur that will make this a truly unanimous nationwide hate-fest is if Pat Riley comes down from the front office to coach again. He did it last time after the Heat acquired Shaquille O'Neal when he shoved Stan van Gundy out the door just to go for the ride and take credit. Considering the type of people we're dealing with here, it would almost be surprising if it didn't happen.

So party hard, Miami because the storm clouds are already towering over Camp JaMEs and his team of leeches and hangers-on. You watch. When things start to go sour (and they will, you can count on it) and JaMEs shows once again that he can't handle the adversity on or off the court and starts throwing teammates and "team" mates under the bus, they will turn on him and devour him like a swarm of piranhas, the lawsuits and scandals will come out of the woodwork, and his sponsors will drop him faster than you can say, "ME." Why? The same thing happened to two other world-famous, misguided, egomaniacal, over-hyped, out-of-control sports megastars:

Tiger Woods and Mike Tyson.