Look, I take the report that LeBron James is "100%" leaving Cleveland with a grain of salt. I think there is a extremely high likelihood that the most hard-to-please superstar in basketball is less than a year away from taking his talents to LA, but nothing in professional sports - not even NBA collusion - is set in stone 11 months ahead of time. If I absolutely had to put a number on it I would probably say there's about a 95% chance that 'King James' crop dusts Dan Gilbert on his way out the door next July, and that is what makes these conflicting reports so hilarious. LeBron isn't upset that someone is making proclamations about his future...he's upset that they are doing so in an exaggerated manner. You ever been put in a situation where someone is telling an embarrassing story about you to a group that includes you, and you step in to argue the mild liberties they are taking to make you look just a littttttle bit worse? LeBron's camp claiming that the forever-unnamed source is "totally off" is like interjecting in a story about you getting far too drunk and projectile vomiting on four strangers by angrily pounding your fist on the table and saying "it was only three strangers!". It's obviously self preservation, but it's self preservation in its pettiest form. Combatting this report wasn't an attempt to make him look committed to Cleveland. It was an attempt at combatting ever-so-slight hyperbole. That outright denial of a blatantly dysfunctional relationship with the billionaire buffoon in the Cavaliers' front office? Nothing more than a little white lie to salvage some good will with a fanbase that shouldn't exactly be betting the house on the 1:20 odds that LeBron James wants to stay in an organization whose championship aspirations were strangled by Dan Gilbert's purse strings. The two sides are basically bickering over a small discrepancy in percentage points for a sweepstakes that's a year away from taking place, and somehow that makes the perfect microcosm for the shamelessly frivolous reality show that is the NBA offseason. I say something is "100% happening" when - in actuality - it's closer to 85% happening just about every single day, and that same stupid concept has the best basketball player on the planet and the professional team that employs him arguing over the difference between "probably" and "definitely"... God, I love this game.
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