Liberal> Connie Schultz> Lighten Up On Lebron

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Lighten Up on LeBron

After two days of celebrating LeBron James' failure to win his championship ring, I woke up in Cleveland to a gut-punch of a revelation:

If he were my son, I'd be having an entirely different conversation about him.

Heart meets head, and the hangover ain't pretty.

I don't like what I've become on my way to cheering for LeBron's defeat. It's not like me, this dancing on the grave, and I no longer can draw comfort from knowing I'm just one of gazillions who currently loathe him. The crowd is turning into a mob.

This is not to excuse James' bad behavior. I'm a Clevelander. He already had worn on my last nerve by the time he sat down for Sunday's postgame news conference and lobbed this grenade:

"At the end of the day, all the people that was rooting on me to fail ... they got to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today," James said. "They got (the) same personal problems that they had today. ... I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live. ... But they got to get back to the real world at some point."

Nothing like a little class warfare to set my cheeks on fire. I looked at his face on that TV screen and said, "Oh, you did not just say that."

Trash-talking everyone who doesn't have his talent, his money, his fame. I never have shouted so long at someone who couldn't hear a word I was saying. I was pointing and doing that chicken-head thing, too, I was so upset.

"There you have it," I said to nobody in the house. "Another reminder that small people come in all sizes.

Or, to quote that wise sage Stephen Colbert: "Like they say, 'it's not whether you win or lose, but how you disparage the pathetic lives of the little people who make it possible for you to have a career bouncing an inflatable ball."

But now the LeBron jokes are getting mean and increasingly inappropriate. For me, the tipping point came earlier this week, when cynical friends began expressing concern over the vitriol and some of the sweetest people I know started sounding like cast members from "The Godfather Part II."

We've got to get hold of ourselves.

One could argue that at 26, James is old enough to know better than to flame on former fans.

On the other hand, a congressman twice his age was just caught tweeting crotch shots of himself from the House gym. Some guys take way too long to grow up, and if James had been any fuller of himself this season, his head would have rocketed into space. Unlike that congressman, though, LeBron James has harmed only himself, no matter how many Cleveland Cavaliers fans claim injury.

I'm tired of hearing about how James ditched us in Cleveland. There are worst places to be left behind. It'd be nice if we'd start telegraphing that to the world at large, instead of this yearlong hissy fit we've been throwing.

I've watched LeBron play basketball since he was in high school, which means, like millions of other fans, I saw him grow up. Sort of. I never hitched my dreams for happiness to his hoops, but I felt a maternal pride in Cleveland's son. I like that version of myself a lot better.

This unattributed quote reminds me of LeBron: Humility is the ability to be inconvenienced.

Sometimes it's good when things don't go our way. LeBron's had plenty of evidence lately that for all his talent, he's just as flawed as the rest of us. It's not too late for him to learn from his mistakes.

It's also way past time for us to move on. It would help, of course, if LeBron would apologize to his Cleveland fans for dumping us so badly. Like a jilted lover, we haven't really given him a reason to try.

I may be a former fan, but I'm an always mother. I'm older, and I'm supposed to be wiser. At the very least, I'm supposed to be a grown-up.

So I'm done complaining about LeBron James, and I wish for him the swift gift of humility.

For all his millions, pride is a luxury he no longer can afford.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and an essayist for Parade magazine. To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.