You Would Do It Too!

If you could make $2.5 million for the charity of your choice just for announcing where you wanted to live, would you do it? If you could bless five kids with fully paid, college scholarships by making a decision on where you wanted to work, would you do it? If you had to decide on whether to live in cold and dreary Cleveland, Ohio or hot and sunny Miami, Florida, where would you live? I don’t know about you, but these are “No Brainer” questions for me. These were three of the questions Lebron James had to ask himself when he sat down to decide his NBA future. Thinking back to when I was twenty-five years old it was easy for me to understand why Lebron left for South Beach, so I was not heartbroken when he made his decision to join D Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami. However, I did not anticipate the anger that ensued with his decision.

Thanks to the media, whom by the way magnified his free agency a year in advance, Lebron’s decision became that song we all hate, but the radio stations play it to death. So when it came time for him to make his decision he capitalized on all the hoopla, but in a charitable way. Along with his professional team, he came up with the most brilliant fundraising opportunity ever. In one hour he was able to make the Boys & Girls Club of America $2.5 million as well as have the University of Phoenix contribute five full scholarships to five underprivileged kids by donating all of the proceeds from advertising sponsors. He accomplished all of that in one hour. It takes Jerry Lewis a whole day to raise that much money in an hour. But needless to say, no one recognized the positive that came out of his decision. It was the selfish, envious individuals who had nothing but odoriferous comments and actions that made me question my patriotism. Fortunately, I was moved by the gracious gesture of Lebron’s donation to the BGC that I was able to ignore the ignorance of the disgruntled Cavalier fans.

But what I haven’t been able to understand is why are people upset with Lebron having a show to announce his decision? No one was upset when Tiger Woods was on television apologizing to the world for his infidelities. I didn’t hear a peep out of the media saying why is he having a press conference to talk about his personal life, when it has nothing to do with golf? Of course not, because we love to see our man-made idols fall from grace. But Brett Favre for some reason can hold us all hostages every year on whether he’s going to play or retire and we eat it up like our favorite meal. The sports writers and analysts laugh and joke about his indecisiveness, but never will they make irate comments about him.

Overall, neither Lebron’s nor Favre’s decision to decide where they will or won’t play isn’t as big a deal as we make it. The big problem is our connection to sports figures and how we feel they owe us something. They owe us nothing, but to perform at their best on game day. And if they choose to relocate their families to another part of the country to work, then God Bless them. Remember this is their job and if they want to go live in the warm sun and drink margaritas on the beach, I ain’t mad at them! I know I would.