Decisions

What sucks about the NBA Finals is that none of this stuff is Kevin Durant's (who I like to watch play) or James Harden's (whose beard I like to watch play) fault. And yet it's all true and plenty reason to root against OKC.

For non-NBA fans, as recently as 2008 the OKC Thunder were the Seattle Supersonics, a team of great tradition, flare, and fan support. They were Slick Watts’s headband, Jack Sikma’s perm, and Gary Payton’s scowl. They were a beloved team in a basketball town. Then the people of Seattle committed an unpardonable offense in the eyes of David Stern. They loved their team but refused to pay for a new taxpayer funded 300 million dollar arena. Seattle's citizens voted down referendums, organized meetings, and held rallies with the goal of keeping the team housed in a perfectly good building called the Key Arena. Despite a whirlwind of threats, the people of Seattle wouldn’t budge so Stern made an example of them. Along with Supersonics team owner and Starbucks founder Howard Schultz – who could have paid for his own new arena with latte profits alone - Stern recruited two Oklahoma City based billionaires, Clay Bennett and Aubrey McClendon, to buy the team and manipulate their forcible extraction from Seattle to OKC.

Stern is a political liberal who has sat on the board of the NAACP. Bennett and McLendon are big Republican moneymen who hobby is funding anti-Gay referendums. Yet these three men are united in their addiction to our tax dollars. In Oklahoma City, where rivers of corporate welfare awaited an NBA franchise, Stern, Bennett, and McClendon had found their Shangri-La.

Meanwhile LeBron James is vilified for playing in the city of his choice.   In principle, I am fine with that.  But I still think the ridiculous spectacle he made of THE DECISION was disgusting.  So while I agree that LeBron is in the right and David Stern and the owners of the Thunder are assholes, I still don't like LeBron very much.  Is it ok if I'm not rooting for him?

See also: America's sports talk radio personnel hate LeBron for taking advantage of free agency.  And yet, franchise free-agency, in which billionaire owners play municipal tax bases against one another, is alive and well in pro sports.