I Gotta Get This off of my Chest...

I could write reams about the flapdoodle that basketball player LeBron James, his former boss, and their various satellites have put us through this week over where James will play basketball next NBA season, and that they continue even now to put us through.

I could go on and on about the vanity, narcissism and self-absorption of a twenty-five year old man who seems to think that the world is his own personal parquet floor, and all around him are acolytes who would come from near and far to kiss his ring, if he had one to kiss.

I could fill a book about Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, who brims with rage and volcanic rhetoric, to the point where he slashes prices on wall decals of LeBron James to $17.41, in reference to no less a personage than Benedict Arnold.

I could aim my dismay at ESPN, which, let's face it, made LeBron James a star and ought to have broken him, but instead fanned the flames of the whole controversy and poured tankers full of gasoline upon it.

I could be a little more nostalgic and wonder what Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and about sixty other players, players I grew up with and enjoyed, think of this odious mess, in which no one is the hero that they are.

But the truth is, I wasn't watching last night. I was home, listening to classical music and then to Miles Davis's album Nefertiti. I don't even have cable.

I wouldn't want to have watched anyway. The whole enterprise has been just disgraceful. Sports are about the guy at one side of the net or the other, hoping the ball bounces their way. The moment we forget that, why even watch?