It’s always interesting how sports media works. The Cleveland Cavaliers beat up the Denver Nuggets and LeBron James had a triple double, but the most important thing seems to be yet another one of his weird social media moves, like unfollowing the team on Twitter.
Take Reddit for example, and especially it’s NBA subreddit. It’s not just a bulletin board or a place for people to trade jokes in the comment section. Some of the users generate excellent, deep, quality content that big sites like to borrow from, sometimes giving credit and on other times not at all. But two of the top three posts there right now are about Twitter-gate: One about James unfollowing the Cavaliers, one about James not wanting to answer a question about him un-following the Cavs on Twitter. In the comment section, people are complaining that this is major news. Yet a lot of them upvoted the James-Twitter issue straight to the top. It even got to r/all.
In terms of on court basketball, the Cavaliers put their rough loss in Miami behind them. They played badly. It wasn’t fatigue. And it’s not the first time they’ve looked this bad under Tyronn Lue. But they bounced back. James had a 33 points, 11 rebounds, 11 assists triple double. Their defense looked in place and coordinated, and once again, not having Kevin Love in the lineup (didn’t play at all due to illness) helped them out. Channing Frye started and scored 14 points. Kyrie Irving had another rough game, while J.R. Smith scored 15 points.
The win gives the Cavaliers the division title, something that comes along with having James on the team. They’ve already clinched the playoff spot, but while Lue has said he prefers resting players than burning them out while securing the top seed in the East, it’s hard to believe the Cavaliers aren’t worried about the Raptors being 1.5 games behind them. They’re 29-6 at home this season with 20 losses overall. They seem vulnerable. Having home court advantage helps hide that vulnerability.
But back to James, who followed his mysterious tweets by unfollowing the Cavaliers, not to mention looking maybe too friendly with some people on the Miami Heat. People close to James are saying it’s just him focusing on the approaching playoffs and wants less distractions. Others think it’s a way for him to get attention now that Stephen Curry is the poster boy of the league. And there is that constant risk of him leaving the Cavaliers this offseason, despite promising he won’t play for anyone else anymore. Is he suddenly regretting leaving the Heat, who missed the playoffs without him the first year, but look like an interesting pick to maybe upset the Cavaliers in year 2 without LeBron? And we thought James cared about what people thought about him. If he dislikes being hated in 2011…