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LeBron-Sampson duo would turn world upside down
I’ve been waiting for today
for quite some time.
Today is the beginning
of NBA free agency, and
it’s all that has been discussed
by ESPN since mid-May.
As a basketball fan, I’m interested
to see how everything
plays out. Who will change
teams? Who will stay? The entire
landscape of the league
could change in a matter of
hours, and it’s very exciting.
Still, I’m a bit torn now as a
result of a recent rumor
I heard. I had
previously been
rooting for LeBron
James to stay in our
fellow Midwestern
city, Cleveland.
But once Kelvin
Sampson’s
name was
ment ione d ,
it forced my
thinking into a
180.
Surely you remember
Sampson – the current
Milwaukee Bucks assistant
coach whose teenager-like addiction
to cell phone usage and
lack of player discipline quickly
tarnished the Indiana University
men’s basketball program.
After he left the Hoosiers, I
wrote a column stating IU fans
needed to find him another job
so he’d stop texting his former
players. I just didn’t expect that
job to eventually be better than
the one he had.
Last week, I read on ESPN
that Sampson is being considered
for multiple head coaching
positions in the NBA – including
one with the Cleveland
Cavaliers. Had I been drinking
orange juice at the time, I surely
would have spit pulp across my
computer screen after reading
that. “No, no, no,” I thought.
“That can’t be right. For the
sake of all that’s good, I hope
that’s merely a rumor.”
If Sampson gets the Cavaliers
job and James stays with
the team, the rest of us
may as well give
up, and the people
striving to be good
and do their jobs
well would have
no motivation
to continue doing
so.
At some
point, James will
likely win an NBA
championship; if
Sampson is involved
in that
in any way, it
automatically
brings us into
Bizarro World in which good
work is ignored and the opposite’s
rewarded. No matter what
you think of the IU basketball
program, coaching an NBA
team with perhaps the league’s
best player is an upgrade, and
this would mean Sampson buried
one team while using it as a
stepping stone to another.
Although it would be interesting
to see James go to another
team, perhaps paired with one
or two more NBA superstars, I
had been rooting for him to stay
in Cleveland because, without
him, the Cavaliers would be the
same as the Pacers – a terrible
Midwest team for which no
good player wants to play.
There are more top-tier free
agents available this summer
than ever before, but the biggest
coup for the Pacers will probably
be Steve Blake. Never heard
of him? Exactly. Without a great
team, star athletes don’t want to
come to Indiana…or Cleveland.
If the Cavs lose James, they’ll
have to hope to strike gold in
the draft for a second time if
they hope to ever replace him.
But now I don’t care about
any of that. Forget the Midwest
unity. I’m now rooting for the
Cavs to fail. Sampson might not
be a frontrunner for their job,
but he was at least mentioned
in their coaching conversation.
As a result, I can only wish the
worst for that team.
But I guess this situation does
have the potential to work out
more favorably than I’d previously
realized. There’s one scenario
that would prove order in
the world is still intact. It would
surely be a shame if Sampson
got the job only to have James
bolt hours later. He’d be left
with players like Jamario Moon
and Zydrunas Ilgauskas – and
a 90-percent chance of a quick
termination.
We know he’s good at turning
good teams into garbage. I’d like
to see if he can
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