King James vs Sir Charles: Sticks, Stones & Broken Windows
Ho-Ho-HOOOOLD ME BAAACK!
Alrighty, who ordered the well-done side of beef on an NBA platter? After apparently copping one too many jabs on the chin from a certain Charles Barkley, LeBron James has fired back with unexpected ferocity at ol’ Chuck.
LeBron James to Dave McMenamin/ESPN: “He's a hater. What makes what he says credible? Because he's on TV? I'm not going to let him disrespect my legacy like that. I'm not the one who threw somebody through a window. I never spit on a kid. I never had unpaid debt in Las Vegas. I never said, 'I'm not a role model.' I never showed up to All-Star Weekend on Sunday because I was in Vegas all weekend partying. All I've done for my entire career is represent the NBA the right way. Fourteen years, never got in trouble. Respected the game. Print that.”
As he’s made clear in the past about chasing ghosts and all that, LeBron really does care about his legacy. Enough to spit some hot fire to the mics after a defeat against the 18-30 Dallas Mavericks.
Here was the straw that broke the camel’s back, a pretty entertaining block of TNT telly in which Barkley calls LeBron “whiny” and complains that he “doesn’t want to compete” based on his squad demands for his team. Chuck and Shaq get quite pumped here, it’s a good laugh:
Now, Barkley has some valid points. Hater that he may be, it’s no secret that LeBron is a bit of a whiner. He’s always had that thing about him where refs picked on him and other teams targeted him. Guess what? They do. He’s the best player in the world and any team that doesn’t have a plan for him is a team that he will beat. Sometimes that means pushing the boundaries of legality – you can’t beat him for talent so that’s what you’ve gotta do sometimes. Of course LeBron is gonna take that personally.
And he’s not alone either. Pretty much every star player in history that didn’t play for the San Antonio Spurs has had that same tendency. It kinda comes with the territory of being so good.
Plus, yeah of course LeBron is making some hefty demands on his upper management. They’ve done heaps for him, Chuck is right. They gave J.R. Smith and Tristan Thompson a huge contract each, they traded for Kevin Love, they brought in a bunch of Bron’s veteran buddies to fill out the roster. Last year when they needed a little extra kick, they traded for Channing Frye. This year they somehow managed to trade a retired (it’s complicated) Mo Williams and the irrelevant Mike Dunleavy for Kyle Korver. The Cavs have the biggest payroll in NBA history ($127m) and are paying $27 in luxury tax after coughing up an astonishing $54m last season.
Yet… LeBron James is right too. At the moment he’s looking at a team that lost Timofey Mozgov and Matthew Dellavedova in free agency and wouldn’t you know it, they’re struggling for depth in those very same positions. The centre spot they can work around by chucking LeBron at power forward (you have to convince him, granted) but their backup point guard is currently Kay Felder. 21 years old in his first season and averaging 4.7 points and 1.5 assists shooting at 40.8%... yeah that’s not really enough. Oh, and they’ve been losing games, which always exaggerates any dramas.
This all started with reported frustration between LeBron and Cavs GM Dan Gilbert over money spending. Gilbert had promised to spend unconditionally in convincing LBJ to return home and up until recently he had, but there’d been a tightening of purse strings lately at a time when LeBron was trying to pressure them into signing a playmaker for their bench unit. Easier said than done though.
From Brian Windhorst/ESPN: “If the Cavs were to add a player, it would cost them the new salary plus an additional $2.50 per dollar in tax for roughly the next $600,000 they would spend. After that, the penalty would increase to $3.25 in tax per new dollar spent.”
There are a couple trade exceptions that they can use but with that salary log there really isn’t a lot of flexibility. They don’t have a good enough roster right now, they also don’t have much room left to spend. Both sides have their point of views here, both are fair. Hence why it became a bit of a public drama as LeBron leveraged his view with some classic subtweeting…
The happy medium? The Cavs are working out some free agent jokers midseason, specifically Mario Chalmers, Kirk Hinrich, Jordan Farmar and Lance Stephenson. Yes, this same Lance Stephenson.
Haha, this is bound to be fun.
As to Barkley’s accusation of wanting every great player on his team, ordinarily that’d be a valid one too. Except that the Golden State Warriors signed Kevin Durant and are actually doing that so the Cavs, who already own the Eastern Conference and want to build their team in straight opposition to the Warriors, are falling behind. The Dubs have improved, the Cavs have regressed. What’s more is that 32 year old LeBron is having to play close to 38 minutes per game which is notably more than in either of his other two seasons since coming back to the Cavs and in their last six games that number is over 40 minutes. This a dude who took a two week break to recharge the batteries last year.
Typically the Barkley-James beef is being thoroughly regurgitated all over, discussed and debated and churned into fresh perspectives. What’s funny about the whole thing is how personal LeBron took it. Barkley’s denied the All Star game thing but throwing the fella through a window is on the public record, he can’t deny that. Seriously, that happened.
Orlando Sentinel, October 1997: “Houston Rockets power forward Charles Barkley offered no apologies about charges he wrestled a man from an officer's grasp Sunday morning and hurled him through a glass window at Phineas Phoggs, a bar in Church Street Station.”
LeBron did his research, that’s for sure. He went deep diving through the hidden internet for all that, this had to have been a pre-planned assault. Bear in mind that Barkley played up his bad boy image as a player and that pretty much led him into his media career, where he’s valued for his tendency to SPEAK HIS MIND and all that kinda bollocks. Basically, he’s encouraged to troll the likes of LeBron, which means that LeBron is entitled to snap back and everybody keeps on yapping.
It’s just that in this case, everybody’s sorta got a point.