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LeBron James, On Night Cavs Lose By 55, Gloats Via Twitter

What else is there left to say about LeBron James‘ public image? Just when the Heat are clicking on the court, when they’re winning enough that The Decision and the team’s early struggles are becoming a slightly more distant memory, we get a tweet like last night’s. The background: last night, the Cleveland Cavaliers put forth one of the worst performances in their franchise’s history, losing to the Lakers by an astounding 112-57 score. Right around the time that game ended, here’s what LeBron had to say:

Okay. First off: on the slight, slight off chance that this tweet was in no way related to the Cavs disaster, LeBron still should’ve known better than to send it at that time. In the much more likely case that the two events were directly related…well, plenty of people had something to say. You had this. You had this. You had this, and you even had writer Scott Raab, mastermind of so much of the angriest anti-LeBron rhetoric, sounding more reflective than angry:

Bow before @KingJames: God loves him. Stern loves him. ESPN loves him. Nike loves him. He is pure self-parody now, and the NBA is his WWE.

Okay, so yes, provided his original tweet was about the Cavs, it was almost certainly a reference to owner Dan Gilbert…who yes, did go over the top when LeBron left town. But certainly, one would think, LeBron must have realized that every Cavs fan would take it as a personal affront to them as well. Is it possible he wouldn’t have realized this?

Well…yes. If The Decision proved anything, it’s that LeBron and his handlers are spectacularly poor judges of what people will and won’t find distasteful. (They are, however, seemingly much better judges of what people will pay attention to.) And another possibility, raised in the Slam post we also linked earlier, is that Lebron did realize what everyone would think of the tweet, and simply doesn’t care anymore:

LeBron James clearly no longer cares about what any of us think; he’s going to say — and tweet — what’s on his mind.

It’s frankly refreshing to see such a high-profile athlete reveal his emotions and opinions so nakedly, no matter how clumsily he goes about doing so.

And hey, if that’s case…good. It’s hard to disagree with the above – the situation is what it is. LeBron will say what he’s thinking, and more often than not he’ll get ripped for it (sometimes worse than others). That’s the, ahem, decision he made. Maybe he doesn’t realize how much a tweet like last night’s exemplifies that “villain” role he’s been talking about lately. But maybe he does. And if so – and if he sent that tweet with his his villain role in mind in the slightest – then he’s going to be a very fun villain.

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