"king" James

Yeah, I think that's fitting. Because really, how is one truly a king if they have never fully made it to the mountain top? How is one truly a king if they quit on their team in the middle of a pivotal game in a series, and then not take their share of the blame after? To me, and to most people who have either watched sports or ever studied history, a king is a leader. Something that most people were always willing to say that Lebron James was, until recently.

After game 5, Lebron made a rather..., no an incredibly arrogant comment. "When you have 3 bad games in 7 years, it's easy to pick on them." No saying that he didn't play as hard as he needed to. No saying that it was on him for not picking his teammates up. No saying that he would work harder, and be better than anybody else for the rest of the year. Just saying, well what did you want me to do? Well, I bet most of your fans and the city of Cleveland wanted you to act like the leader that you think that you are, and play like you care more about winning a title than getting the highest bid in the offseason.

But there's the rub, that is the thing that he cares the most about. No, not the title, the being the most coveted free agent in his generation. Again, Yahoo Sports has been talking about this as well, and I have to agree with their take 110%. I watched clips of his post game interview, and a couple of times makes mention of approaching things with his "team", and implementing a game plan with his "team" over the summer. Now, to most people, they might think, "Oh, he's still planning to work things out with his team in Cleveland." But I don't think so. To him, his team is Team James. His agent and his "possee". This game plan regards free agency. If you even thought he cared about what happened in this game, just look at his body language during the post game interview. Questioned about the game and what happened, he almost deflects the questions. Little waves of the hand, as if to say the fact that they are now out of the playoffs is no big deal. But then quite serious when asked about his offseason plans. At one moment he says he hasn't really thought about it, but then makes a comment about how he and his "team" have a game plan that they want to execute. All of this paints the picture of a very different Lebron than most people are used to.

This Lebron is one that is, for lack of a better term, kind of a jerk. That kid from high school who has sort of had everything given to him on a silver platter, and knows that people will bow to his whims because he is capable of putting a ball in a basket. A prima donna who is more concerned about playing for the name on the back of the jersey, not the name on the front of the jersey. So, until he shows himself to be the kind of leader that made people call Wayne Gretzky The Great One, 4 time Stanley Cup Champion, that made people look up to Michael Jordan, 6 time NBA champion, and Magic Johnson, 5 time NBA champion, he'll always just be "king" James. Because the thing that all of those people have the Lebron doesn't, and that they all desperately wanted more than him, are championships. But only Lebron can decide what his priority is.

One of the Saddest Stories I've read

So, I was perusing the yahoo sports articles while at work the other day, during my prep period, and I came across an interesting story. You can take a look here. Apparently, down in Texas, there was a 22 year old man who was caught posing as a 16 year old high school student, and was playing for the basketball team. Now, you hear about this, and you read the article, and you look at the pictures, and the same thought really should come into everybody's head. How in the world can this happen?

Well, if you look at the guy's picture, which is provided from the same link above, you could say he looks young. But does he look 16? I guess that's hard to say. According to the articles I've read about this, they said that he presented adequate paper work, but I'm curious how hard they really looked. Or what all they actually looked at. One can forge a driver's license, or some form of state ID pretty easily, but how can one adequately forge a birth certificate (please don't anybody actually answer that). I think what they may have looked at the most is that the guy is 6'5", and was way bigger than everybody else there.

The next thing that comes to mind, or my mind anyways, is exactly how sad this is. I mean, I don't mean to rip on a guy that's going to go to jail for fraud and such, but come on! Is your real life really THAT bad, that you need to pretend to be a 16 year old so that you can relive your glory days in high school? I mean, things must really be going bad for you, as a person, to not just want to go back to high school, but to ACTUALLY go back to high school. I mean, I look back on my days in high school fondly, for the most part, but you couldn't pay me to go back and pretend to be a kid again. I mean, if he wasn't a dirty cheater who couldn't find anything better to do with himself than to try and reach for his glory days as a teenager, I'd almost feel bad for the guy.

The biggest kicker of all this is that, according to the first article I read on this, this is only the latest in a recent trend of 20 somethings pretending to be high schoolers so they can play on the sports teams. Seriously, this is just pathetic! I understand that it is hard for some people to grow up, but this is absolutely ridiculous. I guess some people literally do never fully escape high school.

A brief plug for another blog.

Hey all, as I've shared before, I'm a teacher, and I've come across a blog that is very interesting. It's quite young, but it is being written by another teacher that I know very well. So if you have an interest in seeing things through an educators eyes, take a look at this blog.

http://educatorseyes.blogspot.com/

Thanks!