Jay-Z Is Mad At LeBron, and the Media Is Just Plain Mad
Since when did we care so much about Cleveland and the Nets?
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NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 06: Hip Hop artist Jay-Z shakes hands with LeBron James #23 of the Cleveland Cavaliers after defeating the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden November 6, 2009 in New York City. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this Photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Rap mogul and minority New Jersey Nets owner Jay-Z is upset with LeBron James, according to the New York Daily News, which means our hair is now seconds from either being ripped out by our own hands, or falling out in clumps.
Not that we expected America to instantly get over how LBJ slapped each of Ohio's little children right in the face that one dark night in Connecticut, but how about a little perspective in this ongoing LeBron word-stoning: Since when did we care about Ohio, anyway?
But back to Jay, and more on that in a second.
"The Internet is popping" with a report from MediaTakeout.com, reads the Daily News article, that Jay is "upset that James kept him out of the loop on his decision to join the Miami team."
"Jay-Z felt disrespected that King James did not consult with him during the free agency process," the story quotes MTO, that tower of truth and journalism currently bringing you the following headline:
Rutina Wesley...AKA The Black Chick From HBOs TRUE BLOOD...Takes Out Her BRAIDS...And She Looks CUTER WITHOUT THEM!!! (Plus Pics Of Her HUSBAND)
Entertaining? Yes. Necessary? Like oxygen. Bastion of truth and respectability? Not so much, perhaps, though Rutina Wesley does look totally cute.
"He didn't even take his calls," MTO's "EXTREMELY CREDIBLE insider" reported. "It made [Jay-Z] look like he couldn't deliver to the Nets management. [If Jay-Z could have landed a star player], he could have been seen as a legitimate asset to the team. Now they see him as just dead weight."
Yeah, it must really be a drag for the crappy Nets to lug around the dead weight of the world's best living rapper, who will show courtside with his world-famous pop star wife, when about to move the team to hip-hop-obsessed Brooklyn and the teeny tiny nature of his investment means he stays out of business affairs always. This story totally makes sense!
That's sarcasm, of course (we'll trade them Fergie!), but it's not to say Jay-Z isn't mad at LeBron. That could easily be true -- Jay has an ego, the pair were friends, and LeBron, by all accounts, went radio silent before declaring his intent to join the Heat.
Feelings: they feel, and get hurt. It happens.
But the point is this: we have lost our damn minds over this LeBron thing. He drives a nice car, an AP writer hates him for it. He attends a friend's wedding, the same guy makes a crack about loyalty. A Vegas nightclub bakes a cake for him at an appearance, it becomes the death of common decency.
(And if a cake can kill our common decency, imagine what we would allow a brookie to ruin.)
Even the once-sane best NBA writer in the business, who went over the edge some weeks ago, is going on now about how Chris Paul entered the league with "pureness of purpose," "values and character," only to fall into the "wrong clutches" of LeBron, who "wants to take down Chris Paul with him too" by "polluting onto others...his own warped value system."
And that's presented as fact, even though it's impossible to know. Such is our state over LeBron. As radio host Bomani Jones later dryly observed, "If the price of loyalty is being stuck somewhere forever, I'm never being nice to anyone again."
He's right. There are rapists in sports, but a man makes a decision to leave a team he was only playing for because they were bad enough to get the chance to draft him, and all of a sudden it rips apart the very fabric of American sports and lightly wounds its beloved rap stars?
Look, LeBron may have gone about his announcement in the worst possible way, but we as a public are responding in kind. And in the "how much longer can we listen to grown men whine about chemistry and greatness in terms that mean absolutely nothing while every supposed infraction is repeated endlessly without ripping our hair out" category, we're taking the under.
Janie Campbell is a Florida native who believes in the pro-set and ballpark hot dogs. Her work has appeared in irreverent sports sites around the internet.
Posted Wednesday, Jul 28, 2010 - 10:20 AM EST
