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Miami Heat: This feels as wrong as a crooked county fair
Published: 5/27/2011 9:46 AM
Last Modified: 5/27/2011 9:46 AM

During a national radio show, a couple of voices tried to figure out why the Miami Heat is so disliked.

Aren’t these just a bunch of guys who want to win a championship?

Didn’t “The Decision” result in millions of bucks for the Boys and Girls Club?

How can Heat players possibly be villains?

This is the best answer I can come up with and it has to do with gardening:

Suppose someone went to the grocery store and shopped around for the best-looking vegetables. Suppose that someone purchased those vegetables, entered them in the county fair and won first prize.

That’s what it would feel like if the Heat won an NBA championship.

Are all the gardeners who grew their vegetables in the back yard competing for second place?

It’s not that simple. Every team has the ability to pursue free agents and make trades.

But, from a player standpoint, it seems more honorable to try to win a championship with the guys in your locker room than to bail out and superstar-up somewhere else.

Even at the high school level, I wish kids would see how many games they can win with friends in their hometowns rather than transferring to Big School X just to be guaranteed a chance at a trophy. Isn’t winning games with your longtime pals more meaningful than the other? I would rather play golf with my friends at the worst course than play golf with cretins at the best course.

Didn’t Karl Malone and Gary Payton do the same thing as Chris Bosh and LeBron James? Once upon a time, Malone and Payton switched uniforms and signed with the Los Angeles Lakers. But I give Malone and Payton a pass because they were at the end of their careers and it was their last chance to chase a ring. P.S., it didn't work out.

When young guys change teams to go ring-chasing, it just feels different somehow. It feels wrong.



Reader Comments 4 Total
Pete51 (last year)
Great analogy Jimmie, but I think there's more to it. The Heat getting Lebron to pair with Wade is no different than the Lakers getting Shaq to pair with Kobe 15 years ago, and there wasn't near the animosity leveled at the Lakers. I think it has more to do with the egocentric way Lebron went about it. I don't fault him for choosing to go to a better team with better talent. Countless players in every sport do it every year. But the weeks-long media circus he concocted makes he want to see him fall flat on his face.
Dr. Strangelove (last year)
GO MAVS
SoonerSkins (last year)
Good analogy.

Here's mine.

This is Miami's version of Michael & Scottie.

No one knows better than Pat Riley what those two did to his New York Knicks year after year in the playoffs.

He desperately needed & wanted this for his ego just as much as Lebron's.

Plus, Phil Jackson owned Pat Riley.

I believe it frustrated Riley to the point now he's trying to emulate those Bulls' teams that won championship after championship at the expense of the hated Knicks.
SoonerSkins (last year)
Of course, the Bulls did it to his Miami Heat teams too.
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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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