Be Honest, LeBron

So, LeBron James has announced that he will be changing his uniform number from #23 to #6 following this season (however, he did not elaborate on which team's uniform he will be wearing that number on). He says that he wants it to be an homage to Michael Jordan and that he hopes to start a trend in which no one wears #23, essentially retiring it across the league. I'm sure that would go over huge in a place like Detroit. Ok, first off, let's ease back on the Jordan worship. Was he a great player? Absolutely, he brought the game to an entire new level. But, he simply took it from an 8 to a 10. It was Larry Bird and Magic Johnson who saved the league in the 80's after a disastrous decade of too many players on drugs and TV ratings that were in the toilet. It was their rivalry that brought the league to the point that someone like MJ could even be made into a star, yet I don't hear LeBron chirping about retiring #33 and #32 on every team. For that matter, he's switching to #6, which is Bill Russell's number and there is the number that should be retired league-wide. James says it is because Dr. J. was his hero and he wants to honor him. I have no idea why it is that you can honor one guy by wearing his number, yet honor another by stopping wearing his.

I think the real reason that LeBron is changing his number is the same reason that Kobe Bryant switched from #8 to #24 - jersey sales. They can make up any excuse they want to tell us, but I would respect them more if they would just be honest about it. At this point LeBron has been around long enough that every one has his home, away, alternate, 2nd alternate and 3rd alternate jerseys and he's started to slip down the ranking of annual jersey sales. I get it, he's a prideful guy who wants to be #1 in everything. Without a title to his credit (Russell had 11, yet another reason that #6 should be retired. Russell also did more socially than MJ.) he needs something he can point to to prove he's popular. The sad part for James is that if Yao Ming changed his jersey number he would blow everyone out of the water without even trying.

Seriously, between this, the issue where made Nike confiscate the video of him getting dunked on and not having the class to shake the hands of the Orlando Magic after their playoff series last June, LeBron is sliding down in my book. Before this year, I never thought of him as one of those players who had this huge of an ego, but now I am starting to see cracks in the well-formed LeBron public image. Up until now, I never seriously considered that he would leave Cleveland for the Knicks, but maybe playing in front of that huge a TV market really is important to him. If he does make the leap I hope he enjoys being on TV 20 times a year... and winning 4 of those games.

-This happened a while ago, but I just found out about the story. You know about the butterfly effect, which says one butterfly flapping it's wings here can cause a tsunami across the world? Well, perhaps they should pay closer attention to that theory and stop housing so many of them together, because the clearly bad things happen (check out the important notice) when those little buggers get to flapping all at once.