No. 1 on this week’s list of stupid NBA basketball stuff: this guy. 

[original image via Evan Vucci, AP]

Second of all, nobody cares. [Wild guess: You, bro, are also a NY Jets fan.]

Third of all, the Heat won a championship recently. You might have heard about it through the Internets if you’ve been a fan of the team for long enough. So, why don’t you go suck on that for a spell. Should provide plenty of nourishment.

Fourth of all, even though your sign does not specifically outline such, you did not pay all that money for tickets to “see Lebron play.” Nope, you paid to see the Wizards of Washington play the Heat of Miami. Susan O’Malley is no longer around, so I’m pretty sure that LeBron wasn’t featured on the ticket that got you into the arena.

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[D.C. Council: setting the scene, rating the starters, assessing the subs, providing the analysis, and catching anything that you may have missed. Unlike the real DC Council, everything here is on the table. Game No. 32, Washington Wizards at Miami Heat; contributor: Kyle Weidie from his standing desk (Why, yes, this is quite late ... thank you for understanding).]

Smug LeBron. Read more »

More RGIII? Definitely more RGIII.

Third of all, if you didn’t know, Robert Griffin, III was at the Wizards-Heat game on Tuesday night.

Second of all, he and LeBron hugged. The above video comes courtesy of TAI’s John Converse Townsend, and it is LeBron talking about RGIII, not hugging him.

And first of all…

“Of course I seen him.” {giggles… chuckles… ‘this guy’} —LeBron

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[RGIII looks sad hugging LeBron James; Sam Cassell's head was there.]

Yep, he totally was. I know because I watched it on the T.V., and there he was, definitely in attendance. He just about sat in Randy Wittman’s lap thanks to courtside seats. Seats that Ted Leonsis sits in sometimes. But this time, RGIII was there. You’ve certainly heard about it via the Internets, via the Twitter, perhaps even via the Google.

Maybe RGIII saw a Wittman face (i.e., #WittmanFace). Maybe RGIII saw John Wall’s red pants. He definitely saw the Wizards beat the Heat, 105-101. That RGIII, what a guy.

RGIII also witnessed the below GIFery: a sweet block by Kevin Seraphin on LeBron James after some fancy dribbling. Did you know that RGIII was at the Wizards-Heat game?

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Sometimes I wonder if LeBron James’ spirit animal is Mitt Romney. I’m not quite sure what this means — and not to get all ‘political’ — but just bare with me. Romney was born into a rich family, and LeBron was born rich with physical gifts that the NBA has never seen before. Both, I’m sure, had to work hard to get to where they are. Both, I have seen, are capable of having emotional expressions on their face which appear obsessively calculated and robotic. (But who doesn’t have silly expressions on their face sometimes?)

What it boils down to is this: Can you see a young “Glove” Romney having all the fun in the world with a dollar bill, a fishing lure, and an inner city street near a homeless shelter? Certainly. And perhaps that’s the visual elicited from the below LeBron GIF-ery performed against the Wizards last night. Let’s watch…

Wait, what just happened? Let’s watch from another angle…

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The message of patience should not be lost from the big picture of this Washington Wizards rebuild. After all, John Wall is a nice piece the franchise is lucky to have. Still, this does not take away from smaller areas of function, or dysfunction, that create understandable impatience. After Miami’s win over Washington on Friday, both LeBron James and Dwayne Wade spoke with John Wall. In the locker rooms afterward the involved parties touched on what arose from that conversation.

“They take his leadership. Even though he’s a young guy, they take his leadership,” said LeBron James. Hopefully this is a concept Wall works on with leadership through body language, in addition to hustle.

Dwyane Wade encouraged Wall to learn from Sam Cassell. “All it takes is one player, and then another player, and then another player. D.C. is an unbelievable city, and obviously they have a young great player in John Wall,” Wade also said. “There’s some other pieces they can build on. So it’s just about being patient, it’s about getting the right opportunity, the right pieces, and it could change around,” said Wade, highlighting the fact that the Wizards franchise could suddenly have great potential fall in place just like it did recently for the Los Angeles Clippers.

Veteran Shane Battier might’ve put it most succinctly, “Take every advantage now of learning, and keep the young core of this team positive. Nothing wrecks a team quicker than bad attitudes.” And presumably the team is working on that as well.

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In early mid-April (the 12th to be exact), when asked as part of an ESPN.com 5-on-5 roundtable which NBA star would have his legacy enhanced the most in the 2011 Playoffs, I wrote:

“The health of Andrew Bynum won’t affect Dirk Nowitzki’s hunger, but Nowitzki’s stomach did just growl. One could argue that Dirk’s legacy has the deepest hole from which to climb. Since blowing a 2-0 series lead on Miami in the 2006 Finals, the Mavericks have been bounced in the first round of the playoffs in three of the past four seasons. A championship isn’t wholly necessary to repair Dirk’s playoff legacy, but if Dallas fails to make the Finals, he may have to live with the label of a regular-season MVP who can’t come through in the postseason.”

Now, I’m not here to exactly toot my own horn as a prognosticator of all things basketball — seeing as I predicted last year’s Wizards to achieve 34 wins (only off by 11 wins), and the bastardly 2009-10 Wizards to achieve 55 wins (yes, I was off by a whole 29 wins here… like I said, “bastardly”) — however, in the same ESPN poll, in reponse to a query on the most surprising thing that would happen in the Western Conference playoffs, I wrote: Read more »

[Editor's Note: Before we all complain about the inundation with all that is LeBron -- with coverage good, bad, overall, and everything in between -- consider the fact of how such a unique character provides an opportunity to relish in how influential sports figures have become. That is to say, at least all of this is not boring. Ben Standig (Twitter: @BenStandig) writes about DMV sports all over the web, CSNWashington.com amongst them. In a TAI guess piece below, Ben breaks down a commonality between LeBron and Mike Tyson, who, by chance, is being inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame today. -Kyle W.]

Once upon a time, Mike Tyson was legitimately the baddest man on the planet and in that era he delivered one of the best quotes – both figuratively and in his case, literally – depicting the nature of intimidation in the world of sports. When told before a fight that his opponent had a plan to beat him, Tyson brashly countered that “everyone has a plan, until they get hit in the mouth.”

This quote is pertinent to the NBA Finals because up until a few days ago, most of the basketball world surely would have slotted one LeBron James into that role of baddest of the bad. Not that he would land an actual haymaker to an opponent’s cranium or was the one guy in the league you wouldn’t want to cross, but his physically imposing ways surely put fear into the hearts of opponents. That physicality certainly blinded the observing world.

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{image via Internet/Aaron Josefczyk – Reuters}

The Miami Heat may very well win the 2011 NBA Finals, but regardless of triumph or defeat, LeBron will still be the villain. It’s OK.

Washington Wizards fans almost like to gloat that they were amongst the first to whom LeBron exposed himself to — the epitome of privilege that always asks for more and will resort to less-than-savory tactics to get what it wants. So what.

LeBron is a villain, and I’ve spent a lot of pixels communicating this. And I will continue to do so. LeBron is a fact of life.

Of course he’s making you love him as a basketball player, passing exuberantly, rebounding above all, defending with no restraint, astounding with power that compresses rim paint to the point of cracking. He’s no basketball dummy. The only thing that really dwarfs his instinct for the game is what he can do with that freak of a Karl Malone-sized body that he’s in.

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When LeBron James complains about fouls, it’s not about his size, as he would gladly have you believe. Neither is it about there being a presumed double-standard from imposing basketball specimens like himself and Dwight Howard. Sure, there are reasons to take notice, but let’s be honest, it’s about politicking through the gladly willing media.

Said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra after Wednesday night’s game versus the Wizards:

“He absorbs a lot more contact than people realize. He’s big and tough enough that he shrugs it off. But you go in there and see him in the locker room, and he’s got ice on pretty much every part of his body.”

So do 5’11″ guards who live in the lane. So do a lot of NBA players. It’s a tough game. And when someone like LeBron, who has the sixth highest usage rate in the NBA at 31.4-percent, gladly uses his abnormal physique to gain an advantage, it certainly is going to feel like he’s being handled more physically, at least to him. But it’s all relative.

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