Letters

The Cavs may or may not be better off with LeBron James ["Let Him Go," June 2, 2010]. They've had him for how long, and added some serious players to support him in the meantime, and he dropped the playoffs this year almost singlehandedly. Now he's gotten the coach fired, and Danny Ferry is out. You know this is all a setup to create a LeBron Kingdom, and it's us who will be owned by him. I want no part of it.

I hope LeBron and his ego are out of here in July, and we can build a team that wants to be here, as opposed to local boys who walk into Cleveland-New York baseball games in Yankees hats.

Elizabeth Gloger

Beachwood

It's understood that there are pathetic elements to the "Please Stay, LeBron!" movement, and you do a nice job highlighting that. But there's a difference between pathetic groveling and an honest effort to define what's at stake here.

On one hand, you want to chalk the hand-wringing over LeBron to our own "abandonment issues." On the other, you want to write off all of humanity — including LeBron — as mindless, selfish robots, and write all meaning out of the LeBron narrative in the process.

Agreed that LeBron probably made a mistake in carrying on with this narcissistic charade, and that we're all suffering for it. But it's easy to understand why LeBron might have gone wrong with such little precedent for his situation. To write him off as nothing more than a "spoiled millionaire punk athlete" paints with too broad a brush.

Despite the ugliness of this chapter, and the fact we would certainly move on if LeBron left, there's still a great story that can be written here. It's not that anyone necessarily "needs a stamp of approval" for dreaming of seeing that story play out, but if it does, it certainly will validate Cleveland, Clevelanders, and anyone else who shares this dream.

Peter Pattakos

Akron

"Let Him Go" seems to be about sports, but it's really about love. I agree that the LeBron story is, for many people, a love story. But where Vince Grzegorek and I part ways is that he seems to feel that he has the wisdom to comment on whether or not this particular love is "misplaced." You gonna chastise people for what they feel? Boo! If fans love LeBron, that's their business. If LeBron loves them back, that's his business.

And so what if the fans' love goes unrequited? Some pretty powerful things have happened because love went unrequited. Works of art. Beautiful buildings. If you scratched the soul of most powerful people, you'd find an unrequited love there. So let Clevelanders love their guy. Let them have their love story, no matter the ending. After all, "'Tis better to have loved and lost...," yeah?

Karen Gocsik

Sharon, Vermont