Bron Gone Mild

LeBron's Farewell Game In Cleveland?
By Chris Sheridan/ESPN.com

CLEVELAND -- It was exactly 11:43 p.m. ET when LeBron James, wearing a cream-colored sweater and sneakers, walked through the exit door next to the loading dock and strode to his car for what may have been his final drive home from the place he has called home for seven years.

What you couldn't get a reading on was how James was feeling in his soul, the soul that he tried to claim had not been damaged by the ringing in his ears caused by the boos during Cleveland's 120-88 drubbing at the hands of the Boston Celtics -- boos unlike anything James had ever heard before in Cleveland.

If this was his last home game here, that's what they sent him off with.

"I spoil a lot of people with my play," James said in one of the few borderline candid comments he made in his postgame interview. "When you have a bad game here or there, you've had three bad games in a seven-year career, then it's easy to point that out. So you got to be better.

"I put a lot of pressure on myself to be out there and be the best player on the court, and when I'm not I feel bad for myself because I'm not going out there and doing the things I can do. But I don't hang my head low or make any excuses about anything that may be going on, because that's not the type of player or person I am."

He wasn't making excuses, but he also wasn't providing much in the way of an insightful explanation for a 3-for-14 shooting night on which he seemed tentative, hesitant, de-energized, confused and oh, so human.

As this game started getting away from the Cavs late in the first half and early in the third quarter, you kept waiting for the moment when James would begin to assert himself and start playing like not only the MVP, but like the man who supposedly is on a far broader mission to bring a title to this snakebitten city that hasn't won a championship in any major professional sport since 1964.

But every time James brought the ball over the midcourt line, two defenders started to converge on him and he gave it up.

When someone else brought the ball upcourt, James was too often sitting idle in the corner, or fighting to get a clear line of sight between himself and the ball without having Paul Pierce block the view.

James didn't make a single shot in the first half, didn't get his first field goal until the third quarter was nearly halfway done, and had almost zero impact in the area in which the Cavs failed most as a team -- on the defensive end.

When he went to the line early in the fourth quarter with the home team having turned a six-point halftime deficit into a 22-point hole it wasn't going to climb out of, there was no mistaking whom the boos were being directed at as James missed the first of two free throws.

"It's not a big thing," James said. "We played awful, and they've got every right to boo us if they want to. No disrespect to the fans. They've seen us at our highest level and our lowest level. If they felt it was right to boo, so be it."

Only about 4,000 witnesses remained in their seats by the time the final horn sounded, James having spent the final 3:58 on the bench chewing his fingernails.

When it was over, before he even made it from the bench to the door of the locker room, James was stripping off his white home Cavaliers jersey -- a jersey, it must now be said, he may never wear again.

I think we all may be jumping to conclusions here with Lebron and that's a dangerous step to take. If Tom Smykowski's Jump To Conclusions mat taught us anything it's to not be too rash. I have said that I think if the Cavs don't win the title or at least get close to winning it then he's probably leaving town. The truth of the matter is that the Knicks have more money to put other superstars around him. And no, Mo Williams and an aging Shaq aren't superstars. But I'm not sure if this game changes anything. I was sure Cleveland was in trouble after the Game 2 blowout to Boston but the Cavs came back and rolled in Beantown in Game 3. Let's see what happens in Game 6 before we start packing Lebron's bags for Kennedy or La Guardia.

P.S. - What's with the "he quit" conspiracy when players have bad games? I always thought Kobe just got this because NBA fans hate him but its pretty obvious that we must just be a distrustful, mean group of people in America.