On Hate
2011-06-10
Hating things is fine. I have built myself a summer home of hate—mortared together with antipathy for Malcolm Gladwell books, Aronofsky films, and Shakespearian comedies—into which I intermittently retreat like a small mammal in winter. Cleveland threw a tent over its skyline and became the world’s largest hate-fort for a few days following LeBron’s departure for Miami, and then again when he returned to the Q in early December. These explosions of loathing were understandable, even healthy. When misfortune befalls a person, anger is often the primary reaction; in the case of LeBron’s decision to leave Cleveland for South Beach, the unfortunate masses had a target upon which to unleash this anger. So for a few nights, a couple in July and one in December, the whole city drank too much whiskey and whipped the empty bottle in the direction of the bastard who spurned them.
If you have lived until the age of five, you have probably experienced disappointment so acidic and unacceptable that it caused your face to blush red, and you felt as if your skin might sprout porcupine barbs. We have all thrown temper tantrums is what I mean. Cleveland had a grown-up version of that, and though my reaction to The Decision was more of a complicated sadness than a desire to set flame to Bron’s jersey, I empathized with angry fans. But the way that anger has fermented over the past few months is something I find ugly.
To the guy tweeting piss-takes while LeBron sleepwalks his way through the NBA Finals: I don’t understand you. Emanating from various corners of the internet (and not just Cavalier-related ones, mind) is a vicious schadenfreude that smacks of insecurity. Skip Bayless has been doing this for years, and it seems a small army has jumped aboard as he careens his hate-bus into whatever helps him ignore the fact that every lurid thought that comes out of his head exits through a mouse’s mouth. A well-placed barb has its merits, but when one decides to plop down on the couch with their laptop open, prepared to invest their happiness in someone else’s failure for two and a half hours, they cease to exist as a human being. They’re more like the insane supercomputer from a Patton Oswalt bit than something with feelings and an opinion I should respect.
The most irksome element of this hatefest is the smugness that clings to it like months of soap scum on a bathtub. Basketball is a sport, and in sports, there is no moral high ground. Jason Kidd almost definitely abused his ex-wife at various points of their marriage. LeBron’s contract expired, and he made an ass out of himself while electing to move on to another team. Those transgressions are miles apart in terms of heinousness. I’m rooting for the Mavericks specifically because I would like to see a team of title-starved veterans—Jason Kidd among them—capture a championship, but I would never delude myself into thinking the Mavs represent The Good and the Heat The Bad. Creating false binaries is foolish.
Hate is fine. Hate can be fun. But it is impossible to stand in front of someone’s house and throw eggs forever. One eventually has to let their anger wash away like so much chalk dust, to toss their empty carton in the bushes and go home. For Cavaliers fans, this will be easier later this month, as the additions of Kyrie Irving and Building Block X will provide us with a suitable home to which we can return. But, Irrationally Angry Cavs Fan: come home now anyway. We’ve got some Dortmunder Gold in the fridge, and you might find that when you stop focusing so much on Number 6, you’ll fall in love with this German guy’s high-post game. It’s pretty breathtaking.
Hate is all we have left.. Let us have some hate. Dallas wins!!!!
So what prompted this post Colin?
I mean can you really blame anyone for hating this guy? Especially after his fake coughing display. I mean it basically is good vs evil. A group of veterans who have paid their dues over the years to make it to this point compared to the young, arrogant guys who said oh lets take the easy route and sell out for a championship (other sell outs include windhorst and broussard). The jason kidd thing is ridiculously off base here and is your argument for saying the mavs aren’t good people too. I do not know if jason kidd ever slapped… Read more »
Colin, great article. The very fact that people’s hate for Lebron is translating into hate for one of the least biased blogs on the truehoop network, which ran an unbiased article, speaks volumes more about the vitriolic people commenting on the internet than anything else. Colin, you are a great writer. Please keep doing. Krolik, your image only takes blows in the eyes of people I would presume you could care less about. In mine, I admire your use of this platform to get a voice on larger and larger websites. Hope your career goes well, and if you continue… Read more »
Krolik, we loved this blog last year because of you. As good as Colin is, the atmosphere here is changing. Fans of your writing deserve an hour out of your day for you to contribute and share your view on this. The longer you delay writing, the more we believe what earlier posts said, that you aren’t a cavs fan at all and your allegience is as fairweather as lebron’s. Your image is taking a blow. Write a quality post and save the blog.
Good article. Well said. Unfortunately, it’s one of those columns where a lot of your intended audience will completely ignore it or complain about it, but I’m sure you knew that when you wrote it.
Just stop making articles about how people should feel and stick to draft and NBA news articles. Spouting armchair psychology about Cavs fans being insecure for hating, about how you “can’t understand” why some people would say certain things etc etc is not only annoying but equally as foolish as the exact hatred against which you are complaining and just cheapens the blog and makes it seem like a shill for ESPN and LeBron to our angry fan base (note I said “seems like” not “definitely is”). Get back to being a Cavs blog, not a psych 101 blog about… Read more »
I absolutely hate LeBron, the basketball player. And I have absolutely every right to do so…
After everything he ever said(meaning bringing rings to Cleveland, loyalty, respect blah blah blah) he did way he did and we are now supposed to like/welcome him???
I dont wish bad on him outside the court, but I definitely wish nothing but the worse during those 48min.!
I’ve always found the whole “He/she didn’t break any laws” argument to be a red herring. It’s comparable to describing food by saying, “Well, it doesn’t taste like poo.”
This is really good…I’m always amazed at the vitriol LeBron James receives when the guy has really never been in any serious trouble off the court. People act like he’s some sort of awful person when other players (Jason Kidd, Kobe Bryant among them) have done far far far worse.
So tired of articles like these telling Cavs fans they can’t hate Lebron or the Heat. For the .5 percent of fans who take their hatred from the basketball court to actually hoping Lebron dies, fine, great article to them. But for the other 99.5 percent of fans this is moronic. Sorry, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with hating Lebron the basketball player or the Heat and actively rooting for them to fail. Rooting against the Heat has made these playoffs immensely fun for me, despite my team not being in it. Get off your moral high horse and… Read more »
Interesting article – I especially liked the insane supercomputer reference. Thought the thing about Jason Kidd’s ex-wife and Lebron seemed a little out of place and random though – not sure what this has to with the Finals. But, enjoyed the read overall.
Just want to point out that telling the “irrationally angry cavs fan” that he cannot both have a particular focus of hatred for number six and fall in love with a German’s high post game is a false binary. I guess then, this post is foolish (according to Colin’s own admission that creating false binaries is foolish) as it essentially grounds itself on the false binary that you cannot both engender hatred while simultaneously admiring a separate entity. I don’t mean to be a crazed-fan apologist. I’m against fanatiscism as much as the next guy. However, these posts that attempt… Read more »
Hang on a tick. You can hate LeBron all you want. That’s cool. Knock yourself out. Just don’t let that hate spill into other areas, let alone one of the best blogs in the business that is undeniably dedicated to our team through thick and thin. Honestly there is a lot of venom in the comments above. Why? Because someone expressed a view that while hate is okay, he is more excited now about seeing the mavs win than the heat lose? What is this Lord of the Flies? Get a grip! This blog rocks and if you don’t like… Read more »
I don’t know why I am surprised and angry about this, but I still am. This is an ESPN blog and we know ESPN was happy to get Lebron out of Cleveland. They assigned this blog to a teenage warriors fan in California who has probably never been to Cleveland. He writes fawning articles about Lebron on the Heat Index. Then this Colin guy (who does nice draft profiles and links) tells Cleveland fans to stop hating Lebron. What a joke. I’m glad you took your name off the blog Krolik. Now please go away and think about giving the… Read more »
All of this–like most everything in life–could have been summed up with a Nietzsche aphorism: “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.” Except the problem is, what if some people want to be monstrous? Forget the moral high ground or the murky cesspool; some people enjoy embracing the monster within themselves, and sports offers the perfect opportunity to do so because they’re not actually hurting someone in the process, unless you believe the collective hatred aimed toward LeBron James has some sort of negative effect on cosmogenesis. I would say the real issue… Read more »
Colin,
Similar to you, any dislike for Lebron has morphed into “complicated sadness”. Watching the last two games of the Bulls’ series was hard.
I’m definitely rooting for the Mavericks and think the “good guy – bad guy” theme adds to the intrigue of the series. The Heat are going to win some championships; Cavs fans won’t be able to avoid that. For the time being, I will pull really hard for the “good guys” and “old men” of Nowitzki, Terry, Kidd, and Marion to come out on top this year.
great piece, agree on what you said about moral high grounds in this sport. while i believe that the heat are not exactly making it hard for people to hate them, it’s crazy how the hate has consumed 80% of the discussion in these finals. the personalities of players seem to overshadow the actual basketball, it’s crazy. the hate has to let up some time, the mavericks are putting up a great fight anyway, aren’t they?
I don’t disagree with what’s being said in Colin’s piece, but I will say that I’ve emailed Tom Pestak, who held Colin’s job and was amazing at it before his real life got in the way and is always welcome to post whatever he wants here, and asked him to put up a guest post relating to this subject, because I know he has different views on LeBron. It’s the same reason I asked Scott Raab to contribute a guest post (which he did) after my rant on the Baron trade — as much as I like this site having… Read more »
You very carefully avoided mentioning who you were talking about, so my assumption that you’re referring to the @cavsformavs guy could be wrong, though I don’t think it is. To me, Twitter fulfills several functions: breaking news, instant commentary, linking to deeper analysis, and most especially comedy. Cavsformavs fits in under comedy for me, and his (or her) content makes me smile. You’re talking about the account as though the person is lobbing eggs constantly and eternally, when his (or her) tweets have been limited to the 2011 Finals and basically 2.5 hours every couple of days. At the moment,… Read more »
Apologies. Yet it is on your site, and you don’t seem to be disagreeing with what’s being said. Perhaps a preface or intro from you would help clear up your opinion on all this. You’ve always had an unbiased view on things, so I’m curious to know your point of view on the matter.
If we loved him for 7 years, why can’t we hate him for the next 5?
Now, maybe I’m off base here, but is it possible that Krolik write stuff for the heat index because he has inside knowledge of the basketball side of Mr. LeBron James? Maybe, just maybe, this expertise can serve that section of ESPN’s site well. At a certain point, the world will let this go. Cleveland, at least on the whole, will not. Some bizarre combination of rust belt angst and just outright phoniness from all parties involved (not the least of whom is ESPN) has let this mess smoldering for a lot longer than it should have. I see us… Read more »
Love how the writer who openly shills for the Heat Index is trying to lecture Cavs fans.
Please read bylines. I did not write this. Colin McGowan wrote this. We are different people.
Figures you would write this, seeing as you are apart of The Heat Index. Seeing Dwyane Wade and LeBron James mock Dirk Nowitzki’s sickness is all I needed to keep the hate flowing. And as long as those clowns want to keep doing stuff like that, and being smug and arrogant as can be, I don’t see that changing one bit. Plus, isn’t this still the same season? Isn’t it understandable that Cleveland fans would still be vested in this as much as they were December 2nd? Funny how much alike you and Brian Windhorst are thinking now-a-days. What a… Read more »
I’m rooting for the Mavs, as I did in 2006. I enjoy how little they jump
Really though, Lebron’s so-so Finals has left me disappointed, like this is what we all stressed over losing? I know he’s better than this, but tight now I feel like the past hree years have been a farce; basically post-2008 series with the Celtics every LeBron out-series seems to not even be close (I know he was legendary against Magic but Cavs never had a real chance after game 1.)
You cannot preach to people to stop having emotions towards a certain thing, Something about the Miami heat team and Lebron James evokes a negative reaction to a majority of the public. You cannot tell people these reactions are wrong and they need to stop. It has to run its course. Preaching only creates backlash for the messenger.
I don’t hate whatsoever. I just want the Heat to sweat at least one year before winning it all. I don’t want to read bunches of articles saying how the Heat winning the title “justifies” the Decision. Next year no one will care anymore.
One thing to note is the effect that this polarizing hatred has had on the league outside of Cleveland. We are not the only ones who consider Miami villains, and no series has drawn more attention from around the country. What’s wrong with considering Miami the bad guys and the Mavs the good guys? These roles have been set up all season. Miami decided to make themselves the enemy, with the hoopla surrounding The Decision. Why not root for the Mavericks (or the Cavericks as I have seen cleverly coined) while we regard them as the good guys? I disagree… Read more »