Wednesday, May 12, 2010

More on LeBron Last Night: Boo!

They weren't saying "Boo!" They were saying "LeBooooron!"

Apologies to the Simpsons ("Boourns!"), but as the rest of the internet battles over whether LeBron is despicable or merely had a bad game, I'm left wondering about a specific angle:

The Cavs fans' booing.

In a visceral way, the jeering was totally appropriate -- this was the most humiliating moment in franchise history.

But the conventional wisdom is that booing LeBron is the fastest way to get him to think twice about staying in Cleveland, rather than going to, say, New York.

My question is this:

What is worse: Booing your superstar in an emotional (but immature) way, or repressing your disappointment by cynically not booing him, specifically so you don't potentially piss him off.

I could make the argument that not booing when you really want to boo, because you're afraid he might get pissy, take his ball and leave town, is more of an affront than booing itself.

On the other hand, whatever visceral value fans (or owners) derive from getting pissy in the moment can't possibly compare with the value of getting to cheer for LeBron over the long-term.

In other words: It's pretty pathetic to cynically not boo -- it's tantamount to begging -- but I'm comfortable with that level of cynicism. Let's just be ready to embrace it AS cynical.

-- D.S.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

BTW, Dan.. I await your condemning this act of stealing the other team's signals and using them against them.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5183621