Pat Riley Drops the Hammer on LeBron James

[cheguevara]

when Riley said "get in da damn plane" was Lebron taking notes?

[Jose Canseco]

when Riley said "get in da damn plane" was Lebron taking notes?

Should LeBron just disappear?

[TheManFromAcme]

Riles just making mental notes....

[Venti Quattro]

Should LeBron just disappear?

or should he just get on the plane?

[LoneStarState'sPride]

lol heat

[Jose Canseco]

Should he stop listening to his friends??? They're his friends!!!

[ogait]

I actually don't really understand why LeBron wouldn't want to change up some of the things he's been doing. He's in a new situation, a fresh start, and obviously whatever he was doing in Cleveland wasn't working. Why not do things differently?

He should, not necessarily because of his game but for the sake of his team. He's just so talented, he makes what he does look so effortless, things will happen for him even if he parties all the time.

But what about his team, if they see their best player working out every time they'll want to do the same. But no, they see him doing all those things and then come to night games and still perform better than anyone else.

Then comes the playoffs and we wonder why his team mates don't deliver.

[TheMACHINE]

Damn...OP has a nice sig and avatar

[Double-Up]

Damn...OP has a nice sig and avatar

quit instigating...

[Muser]

Great ing slave

[DMX7]

wow, so when it all falls apart we can say it started in the pre-season no less. LMAO

[lefty]

LeRiled

[LkrFan]

LeRiled

[dbestpro]

There may be hope for Lebron, yet. Thanks to Riley.

[pawe]

I always picture HBO's entourage whenever I hear Lebron and LRMR. I wonder who's the whipping boy Turtle in that group.

[Dex]

Lebron was able to live up to the hype initially. His basketball abilties immediately made him marketable, and his personality was easy enough to accept.

But the more and more you find out about this guy, the more you come to realize he is nothing but an over-talented spoiled brat.

[ElNono]

Pat Riley knows what's up. Spoelstra is next in line.

[monosylab1k]

He was gonna party with Chris Paul for the in kids

[Killakobe81]

He was gonna party with Chris Paul for the in kids

LOL i actually laughed on that one ...nice.

[ducks]

james always got what he wanted
he will not know how to act
what he needs is a spanking
heat stuggle
james might ask out
I could see the nets gutting their team to get james

james then could do what he wants

[Mr.Bottomtooth]

He was gonna party with Chris Paul for the in kids

[UV Ray]

BOSTON – When LeBron James(notes) was running roughshod over the Cleveland Cavaliers, it became common for him to respond to tough coaching and differing degrees of conflict with the sheer shutdown mode. There goes LeBron, stomping off to the locker room with a staff member in hot pursuit to talk him back into practice. Come on back, King. We need you.


James would mope back onto the floor, reluctant to be told that someone disagreed with his belief on a matter. The Cavaliers’ culture of enabling, letting things go and go, exacerbated these issues. James stayed in a cocoon of perpetual adolescence.


“His coping skills,” one perceptive ex-teammate said, “had been largely underdeveloped.”

The world is watching James in a different way now, with a far more critical eye. Everything changed in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals last May, when the private acting out spilled into the public for the first time. Without leaving the floor, LeBron walked out on the Cavaliers and so started a spiral that eventually led him on that private jet to Miami International and into the waiting arms of old man Riles and his boy wonder, Erik Spoelstra.

James had come to Miami to escape the cocoon of Cleveland, the so-so talent surrounding him, a management and ownership who never commanded his respect. He had come to find a way through the Orlando Magic and the Boston Celtics, yet suddenly it felt like old times on opening night at the Garden. Around LeBron James, Chris Bosh(notes) played the part of J.J. Hickson(notes), and Dwyane Wade(notes) had the playoff touch of Mo Williams(notes).

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” James declared.

He had 31 points and eight turnovers, a part-splashy, part-sloppy debut. This was no coronation for the Miami Heat but an affirmation of some hard truths: For the incredible strengths they’ll have this season, they’ll have severe flaws too: size, shooting and the bench. The Celtics exposed every one of those elements in an 88-80 victory on opening night. Miami will get its 58, 60 regular-season victories, but it won’t get through Boston or Orlando unless James understands that this Miami franchise under Pat Riley can have transformative powers.

There was a Finals-esque media crush at the Garden, a night that Celtics general manager Danny Ainge brought him “more ticket requests for any game ever.” This wasn’t because of the deepest Celtics roster since the 1980s, nor Wade and Bosh. Everyone comes for the Drama King, LeBron James.

“We know what’s going on,” Bosh said. “You turn on TV [and] you see what’s going on. We knew it was going to be like that. Dealing with it is another thing.”

Coping with it, he means. That’s James’ burden. He didn’t take well to the pressure a season ago and cracked before everyone’s eyes in that exit series to the Celtics. The Heat are James’ team, and that has nothing to do with who’ll score the most points or who’ll take the most shots, or even the big ones. For better and worse, James fills up the locker room, the team plane, the floor – fills up space – in a way that demands most of the room’s air. He stepped out of LRMR’s kiddy marketing pool this week into the big leagues with a Nike campaign that asks: What should I do?

The Heat are telling him simply: Stay in line. After a preseason game in New Orleans, a league source said, James was chatting with Chris Paul(notes) outside the locker room and decided that he wanted to hit the town with the Hornets star. The Heat’s charter planned to fly home that night, but James suggested to Wade that perhaps they ought to ask Spoelstra about leaving in the morning to return home.

James could always do this in Cleveland, but Wade wanted no part of seeking permission. James did, and the message the coach delivered was unmistakable: Get on the plane; we’re going home.

This is how the Riley regime will make James accountable in ways the Cavaliers never did. James isn’t holding them hostage the way he did in Cleveland. No more separate sections of the team plane that belong just to James and his guys. He signed his free-agent deal and shouldered a burden to win – and win now – unmatched in the history of American sport. There’s never been such a target in the NBA, and that includes the Jordan Bulls, the Showtime Lakers, no one. These Heat are the creation of the digital media age, the time of 24-7 viral assault on your senses. Bosh is right: It isn’t going away. So how do you deal with it all? Eventually, he isn’t going to like something Spoelstra tells him. Or one of Spoelstra’s assistants tells him. He won’t like the way he’s getting blame when the team’s struggling and Wade, the Miami icon, gets a pass.

Something will spur him because it always does, and then everyone will find out again about LeBron James’ coping mechanisms.
James never has been able to make fun of himself, and he needed a Nike campaign to do it for him. He’d better find a way to take a sobering look at his flaws, his failures and scrub away old stains with a new start on South Beach.

What should he do?

Take a look around, embrace Riley’s culture and understand that he needs the Heat as much as they need him.

What should he do?

No more running, LeBron. No more hiding. Finally, there’s someone to confront James. There’s someone who isn’t held hostage, who isn’t terrified of telling him, “No.” Opening night, a sluggish loss to the Celtics, and none of it mattered so much in late October. Cleveland is long gone, and so needs to be the perpetual adolescence of that cocoon. He’s under Old Man Riles’ watch now, and that could change everything for LeBron James. That could complete him.


http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slu...tceltics102710

His emotional IQ is not what it should be and his intellect is suspect. It may take more than Riley to change that, if it's possible at all.

[rickross]

dam this thread is a flagrant foul on bron .. sten need to step up his game, his boy is gettin to much heat

[Sisk]

It's a Cleveland based article, so I'll take it with a grain of salt. But I'm sure there is some validity to this.

[z0sa]

Waaay too much speculation and possible exaggeration.