Thankfully LeBron James has made his decision, has chosen Miami, and the world can move on. Before we do however, I have two LeBron related things I wanted to write about.
Yesterday (7/8) on Around the Horn, Jay Mariotti made perhaps the dumbest claim of his career (and that is saying something) when he argued that the NBA had surpassed Major League Baseball as the number 2 sport in the US. There are a number of reasonable and logical ways to measure such a thing, but his assessment was based solely on the fact that everyone was talking about LeBron James, DeWayne Wade, and Chris Bosh and not about baseball or even the quickly approaching NFL training camps. […]
I don’t know how else to put this, but that assessment is, in a word, stupid.
Here’s the reality, LeBron James and only LeBron James is a bigger NBA story than what is going on in baseball or even football right now. The other basketball free agency discussions were only a blip on the sports radar (outside of NBA circles of course) because of how those moves might impact LeBron’s destination. Heck, LeBron James’ impending free agency decision was a bigger story than this year’s NBA finals so what does that tell you?
I’m a baseball fan first, football fan second, and college basketball fan third. I’m not a fan of the NBA and am more likely to sit down and watch an NHL or MLS game than I am the NBA. I state all that for transparency. I am not the most objective person when it comes to evaluating how the major sports rank in America’s consciousness. To me, MLB trails only the NFL and the rest of the sports are far, far back in the rear view mirror, but that doesn’t matter here.
What matters is being able to recognize that there is a difference between being the biggest sports story and being the #1, #2, #3 or #4 sport in the public’s mind. LeBron James is the biggest story, no question. While I made sure to find something else to do when his farce of a decision was revealed on ESPN last night I have to admit that I did check online after the fact to see which team he chose to bless with his presence.
All we can conclude from all of this is that LeBron James is bigger than the NBA, he’s a bigger story than the middle of the baseball regular season, and he is bigger than the NFL offseason. However, that fact does not mean the NBA has moved up the charts or gained any ground on the NFL or MLB. Further, it does not mean that it helped the NBA pull away from the NHL or MLS. In fact, all the LeBron hype and the way things have played out may have actually cost the NBA some cache in the rankings.