OK, I Lied : LEBRON May Come up Again

Should have known this was a promise I couldn't keep. Like it or not it will be hard to ever talk about Cleveland again without a potential follow up or mentioning his name.

Good luck, Cleveland. Take it for what it was, a relationship with a mortal athlete, with at the least some big problems being sensitive. The issue really is why did you have this much at stake here?

This is the deal, Pittsburgh keeps quiet about King James and Cleveland keeps quiet if the Ben disaster gets any worse. Let's get back to making our cities great.

FYI, I did not see his show but no doubt I will be forced to.

First and Last LEBRON JAMES Post

Warning--if you are looking for an inside dope post about pro basketball and LeBron James's (correct spelling all in caps, in flashing lights) relative merits, stats, as a player, which team should go after him and how much should they pay, this is not it. The bottom line is he's real, real, good at what he does and lots of teams want him. It's also not, a prediction about where he might choose to go--although the safe bet now is that he stays in Cleveland.

This is more a comment on what looks to be the humiliation of an entire city/ region by one person looking to swell his ego.

Just look at the #Lebron James twitter talk

A great Sports Illustrated take.

"But Jordan had a different kind of ego. LeBron needs the adoration. Jordan needed to dominate. When Jordan ended his baseball career and returned to the NBA, he did not go on Larry King or feed speculation for months. He put out a two-word press release: "I'm back." He knew that was enough. He knew that what the world really wanted was Jordan on a basketball court, not Jordan in an hour-long TV special.

In so many ways, LeBron James should be a better player than Michael Jordan -- he is two inches taller and 35 pounds heavier, just about as explosive, a better shooter at this age and with better court vision. But if you could somehow suspend the laws of time and space and get the 25-year-old Jordan and the 25-year-old James on the same court, you would have to go with M.J., because he wouldn't worry about pregame theatrics or postgame speculation. He would spend every minute trying to rip James' heart out."

Others aren't so nice. The word Asshole is coming up a lot, even from some Cleveland fans. LeBron James Is A Cocksucker expresses some things that have come into my head.

It doesn't matter where he opts to go. If he goes to Chicago, he's a cocksucker. If he goes to Miami, he's a cocksucker. Even if he goes back to Cleveland, he's a goddamn cocksucker. He's a self-aggrandizing sack of shit, and ESPN is a bunch of pussy-whipped enablers for giving him a free hour of airtime tomorrow night and inevitably using 55 minutes of it to let Stu Scott give him a rimjob.

Look at what Kevin Durant did today. He signed an extension well before he could have filed for free agency, announced the signing, and then went back about his business. He didn't need all this dog-and-pony show bullshit. James does, and that means he's a dipshit. People have been kissing this man's ass SINCE FUCKING MIDDLE SCHOOL, and he still needs this hourlong AFI tribute special? Bullshit. BULLSHIT.

Without going to far into the metaphor, we know what is meant. The anger is so great because this type of sports star behavior is now so common. Pittsburgh, so far has been lucky until Ben showed up, to have avoided a lot of it.

King James indeed.

But the rational question to ask is how could a whole city respect itself so little, to feel like something like this matters. Perhaps if we paid more attention to the real citizens, businesses and and assets we have and knew more about them and supported them we wouldn't be in these kinds of spots and groveling to these so called kings.

Really, really do you think nobody would want to visit, work or live in your city without LeBron or a tiny number of other teams, or mega asset attractions? If that's true, something has gone terribly wrong.

Great Talk About Personal and City Brands @ Urbanophile

The subject of who should or could control an urban brand, has been filtering around in my head for awhile and now Urbanophile has a post about it.

Readers of the blog, know I'm pretty sceptical about major taxpayer investments in sports teams (or any other private business). Mostly, this is about risk VS. potential reward. In terms of land use, stadiums are hard to fill most of the time and require huge parking footprints, but all of this I've brought up before.

Another, risk is the way concentrated investments like this tie a local brand to so few people or entities any of which could quickly turn toxic or choose to leave town.

Pittsburgh hit a brand lemon with Ben Roethlisberger but we seem to be surviving. Even worse, is watching the way so much of Cleveland's brand has now been tied to LeBron James, a sports figure honestly so huge and bankable that Cleveland has little chance of retaining him if money alone is the only factor. He holds all the cards and now they have to hope he stays.

LeBron's impact on the local advertising market is so great that some people wonder if The Cleveland Plain Dealer can even survive without it. It really seems to have been the plan of every major Cleveland institution, from the sports teams to The Symphony, to the Cleveland Museum, to The Cleveland Clinic to The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to reach a scale and importance that might enable it to be called "too big to fail". Not many places have gambled so much on so few and so far it hasn't worked out.

Even worse, is that many of the other talented, hardworking "players", in the region see this kind of thing and have to secretly resent it.

Urbanophile's suggested strategy is likely a lot wiser.

"It strikes me that as with corporate brands, cities should do a market scan of their town and build an inventory people there like Fischer who are doing really cool stuff. Then you try your best to promote them, following the principle of “first do no harm” of course, and also encourage them to associate themselves with the city in some way, so that people at least know where they are from. Then if something cool like these maps goes viral, the city can pick up a bit of cred along the way. Most cities have lists of all the famous people who are originally from there. Wouldn’t it be nice if they were equally or more so focused on those who are still around that are doing cool stuff today? Done right, and in a non-heavy handed way, this could potentially be a win-win."

What interesting emerging innovators, talents and small business folks do you think carry the Pittsburgh brand? Same with Cleveland? What new ones are you watching?