Of Fandom, Hate & Utter Douchebaggery

If you’re a friend, seen my personal Facebook page or have been to this site before, you know that I’m a big time LeBron hater. That kind of hateration truly became trendy and caught on like wildfire (or STD in the shady parts of Manila) during this year’s off season when LBJ took his talents (and yearly disappearing act) to Miami. But I’ve been hating longer than that. And the reason’s real simple. He’s a threat to the dude I’m rooting for. Unless you were born in the States and have a real territorial claim to a team or were born to a fanatic dad and raised to hate a team, here in the Philippines, I’m leaning toward the notion that it’s having your team threatened that breeds the hate. 

I should know about hate. Before RING-O Starr of The Heatles spammed everyone’s news feeds and timelines, well actually before there were Facebook news feeds and Twitter timelines in the first place, Kobe Bryant was the most hated athlete in the NBA. 

He made it easy. He made it so easy in fact, that he didn’t really even have to threaten anyone’s fandom before he elicited hate. From announcing his intentions to enter the NBA Draft as a 17 year old with his sunglasses on his forehead, to enjoying special treatment from the upper Lakers management, which the veterans greatly frowned upon, to being more concerned with hotdoggin’ than playing team ball, to shooing a Karl Malone pick away at the all-star game, to making that same game too much of a one on one battle with America’s favorite son Michael Jordan....the list is endless. But he was my guy and I stuck with it. I stuck through people saying he was nothing more than Shaq’s garnish during those championship years. I was with him through the whole ass-fucking the blonde adultery / rape case. I was rooting for him when he had Kwame fuckin Brown, Devean George and Smush Parker starting with him. And the hate did not relent. Through all of his accomplishments, the hate stayed. It was real and it was passionate. It was fandom at its best. Jesus, if you’re a threat to Michael “I haven’t done anything right since I left Chicago” Jordan, that’s gonna’ happen. I know some people will scoff at me calling him a threat. He’s never going to be Jordan, right? Correct. But six rings to five and the stunning similarities in game, mannerisms, oration and competitive drive will make him the closest one can get.

Well, that was until LeBron James came along. Everyone got so enamored from the get go with the kid who threatened to enter the NBA as a high school junior, who had “Chosen One” inked across  his back, who (outside of Shaq & Wilt) is the most physically impressive and dominating specimen the NBA has ever seen. He was the King and he was too good, too soon that it was inevitable not to crown him with greatness even before he proved anything on the NBA floors, right? The NBA was his, and after a few seasons, a number of media outlets already proclaimed him to be the best basketball player on the planet. 

I totally understand the hype and the promise. But the best wins, and that LeBron has yet to do. So being the Kobe fan boy that I was, I did what I could...hate. Hate with a passion. Hate with a purpose. I tried to debate, offered nuances of the game that found James still wanting compared to Kobe. “LeBron only has straight line drives. He has no midrange game. He has no post up game. He’s rapper name is 75cent.” But that wouldn’t do it. It was the earth shaking power of the King’s one handed tomahawks and combination of speed, power and elevation that awed the masses and eventually led to rudimentary arguments like: “Kobe’s getting old, he’s not what he used to be and he can’t take over like he once did. Kobe don’t scare us no more.” That was the chorus of the LBJ bandwagon and that would be more fuel for the hate. 

What began as technical analyses to prove points of Kobe’s superiority versus James enormous potential was waylaid. I resorted to anything to clown the King. Be it using constant barrage of play with words to overstate my witnessing of nothing, or the juvenile and foul quips like LeBron going south and his mom going West. I stopped at nothing. But that was before he made it easy. The Decision, the “Big 3” signing celebration, the “not four, not five, not six, not seven...” promise to Heat fans...LeBron made it too easy to hate him, it became the norm. He polarized. If you weren’t a James fan, you hated the fuck outta’ him. And he made it fun. The choking, the crying, the constant PR missteps, the preening, the choking, the disappearing. He made it so fun and easy, you started to not care about your own fandom anymore. It was schadenfreude at its most orgasmic.

Speaking of German...

Then T-Mac 2.0 keeps treating us haters with his yearly disappearing act. One time it was his mom getting banged on by a teammate that messed up with his play, next it was Rashard Lewis taking his talent’s into LeBron’s baby momma’, it really lifts my spirits when people resort to that kind of internet rubbish to make sense of why the Chosen One can’t seem to pull it all together. What makes this particular basketball player spawn such logical necessities? 

And then he has to say things like this gem:"At the end of the day, all the people that was rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. They can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal, but they have to get back to the real world at some point."

Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports put it best: "To hear James suggest that the world will have to return to its sad, little ordinary lives and he’ll still get to be LeBron James late Sunday night was a window into his warped, fragile psyche. It was sad, and portends to how disconnected to the world he truly is."

Stay Classy, LeBron!