You Can’t Tear Down Lebron

By: Tom Alexander

Sometimes things can be tough to deal with, even if you’re not an 18-year-old under intense media scrutiny. But so far it looks like LeBron James can handle any camel clutch we want to put on him. and present day CHICAGO - As a child, I was big into wrestling. By child, I mean from the age of six through the age of 24, and by “big” I mean “way, way, way too into wrestling.”

I ardently believed that wrestling was real and I participated as a spectator so voraciously that I actually cried when the “Macho Man” Randy Savage flew off the top rope (today, it’s a “high risk maneuver”) with the Intercontinental Belt in hand and nearly made Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat swallow his tongue.

The reason I mentioned that I cried is two-fold. In part, it’s to show you how involved I was with professional wrestling; how I would watch it with all the emotion and fervor I could muster. The other part, however, is to demonstrate that, when faced with a pressure situation, I crumbled internally.

The best part about wrestling in the late 1980s and early 1990s was the Saturday Night Main Event that they’d put on once in a while instead of Saturday Night Live. It’d be like a mini-Pay-per-View; I remember one in particular where the Ultimate Warrior teamed up with the Legion of Doom to take on Demolition. (For those of you who are idiots, Demolition was a three-man tag team and this was a six-man tag match).

One of the members of Demolition, Axe (if you can name the other two, email me and I’ll send you a personal note of congratulations) was going to work on one of the guys from Legion of Doom. I think it was Hawk, but it may have been Animal. It is of no import for this discussion. Anyway, he’s wailing on Hawk/Animal and there’s nothing that the Warrior can do about it. Until Hawk/Animal tagged in the Warrior, and he came into the ring and cleaned house. He kicked Axe in the stomach like twenty times, and Jesse “The Body” Ventura uttered a line (as the announcer) that I will never forget.


As the Warrior was going off on Axe, he said, “Axe is gonna crumble like the Berlin Wall!”

Now, Jesse “The Body”’s nickname is not “The Simile” for a reason, but in late 1989/early 1990, this was a decent simile. Not anything profound, but decent. But for one reason or another, like some of the weirder events of all of our childhoods, this stuck in my mind, indelibly. To this day, when I watch someone crumble, I occasionally think, “He’s crumbling like the Berlin Wall.”

So, I found myself in a pressure situation two days ago. It was a car-related pressure situation, and that’s all I really wanna say about the nature of the situation. The point is that I found myself in a place where a lot of attention was being levied in my direction from a variety of different groups, with one person directly asking me repeatedly “What’s wrong with you?”

And I crumbled. Like the Berlin Wall, like an eight-year-old after watching Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat swallow his tongue, I was in pieces. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I did not cry. Outwardly I remained very calm. But I was shaking and my heart was racing and I tried to be strong outside but inside I was a mess. And this is all due to two minutes of pressure, which quickly passed and life went on.

Why am I telling you all of this? Lebron James.

See, there’s been an awful lot of talk about young Lebron here at the offices of Scores-Daily-dot-com - a lot of talk. I myself am a huge fan of his, while some of my colleagues think he might be receiving too much attention or that he might be a bit overblown.

The Hummer controversy (the SUV, you dirty minded fool!) and his comments over John Lucas have particularly drawn a tremendous response - both positive and negative - from the people with whom I talk about sports.

In particular, his comments about the Cavs letting go John Lucas and his ensuing lack of desire to play for them have drawn a considerable backlash. As well they should - it was a stupid thing to say and before you’ve even been drafted, it’s wrong to say that you will or won’t play for a team, JohnElway/JeffGeorge/SteveFrancis/EricLindros/J.D.Drew be damned.

There are some who will turn on Lebron even before he steps foot on an NBA court due to the fact that he has a $50,000 car that was bought on the credit of his fame. There are those who will hate him for making comments like the ones he made about the Cleveland Cavaliers. These people, however, are selling this kid extremely short.


Lebron James has known that he was going to be the number one pick in the NBA draft, come hell or high water, for about two years now. I can think of only one other player who came out with this sort of assurance, and that was Alex Rodriguez, and he just might be the best baseball player ever by the time he is done. But for Lebron, he’s facing a lot more media attention than A-Rod did. He’s not going to get to go and play in the minors for a year. A-Rod, good as he was, was never billed as the next Michael Jordan when he was 17 years old. I never saw A-Rod play high school baseball on national
television. A sportsbook never posted a prop on how many RBI he’d have in an otherwise meaningless high school game.

Lebron has faced all of these challenges, and he’s handled them with aplomb. If you factor youth against expectations and notoriety, he has the potential to be the most famous basketball player of all time. He is well-spoken and calm, and handles himself with aplomb in many, if not all situations. But he’s 18, and just that by a few weeks.

He’s going to make mistakes and he’s going to say stupid things, and that’s a part of it. His sense of blind loyalty to a guy that he likes, like John Lucas, might get the better of his professional judgment, if only for a moment. And people will talk, and they’ll chastise him for every mistake, just as we chastise everyone for making human mistakes on a national scale.

However, no matter what people will say about Lebron James, the one thing he is not doing is crumbling. Definitely not crumbling like the Berlin Wall. Each and every day we sit here and find our days filled with excitement and trauma, an emotional roller-coaster, and there’s at least one time every day where I’m sure you feel threatened. And you’re not on the cover of ESPN Magazine, or on SportsCenter every night. Chances are you haven’t even talked to a reporter this week, let alone had one at your house.

LJ has risen to the challenges that his immense talent and personality have provided him, and it’s my hope that he continues to do so. But I also hope that our sports-loving society cuts the kid a little bit of slack as he goes through his career, that we give him a chance to grow up and fill out his oversized body and well-rounded game.

Some people won’t want to, and that’s cool. Just don’t be emailing me when the Macho Man drops the Intercontinental Belt on your neck from the top rope, and you swallow your tongue.

Tom Alexander founded the Chicago Sports Review in 2003, and currently serves the publication as its co-publisher. Alexander's media career has spanned a variety of interests, including newspaper reporting with the Times of Northwest Indiana, online reporting with ePrairie.com, and a two-plus year stint as a professor in Columbia College Chicago's journalism department. Outside of journalism, Alexander works to redevelop communities that have been struck by natural disasters. Alexander, a 2000 graduate of the University of Chicago, currently lives with his wife Tiffany and their black lab mix, Johnny Cash, in Arlington, Va.

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  1. Great article. I found some more information here

    Comment by Ben Thompson on December 26, 2008

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