LeBron's "Decision," Did ESPN Get It Right?

Okay, so now the LeBron James sweepstakes is finally over.  James will join Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh in South Beach to try to become the new Celtics and bring another championship to Miami.  Many will ask a lot of other questions like: How will the players actually play together? Who will take the last second shot to win the game? How will the Heat build around the New Big Three with limited cap space?  But the questions that I want to ask is, did ESPN do it right?

The Worldwide Leader in Sports held an hour-long special called “The Decision” for James to announce his big move.  According to the SI article by Richard Deitsch, LeBron’s marketing folks approached ESPN holding such an event, picked the advertisers, and made the event’s ad revenue go to Boys and Girls Club of America.  Sounds like a novel proposition, to basically have a reality show set up to pay a charity.  But Deitsch brings up a good point in the article, does ESPN lose journalistic integrity in this type of forum?

I watched “The Decision” to see for myself, but not live because I had to work.  So I fired up the DVR when I got home.  I would have to say that the coverage felt more like the pre-game and post-game coverage than a league-bending event.  Since Stephen A. Smith “broke” the news earlier in the week and ESPN’s own Chris Broussard later confirmed reports that James was headed to Miami earlier in the day, the drama really was taken away from the event.  I’m not sure what LeBron’s people were looking for when they pitched this, as I was kind of bored by the end of the “event.”  Seeing a Cleveland fan’s burning LeBron jersey was funny to see though (not funny for the fan, but the fact that James caused people to burn his stuff).

The coverage itself though, seemed fair.  An average ESPN non-sporting event coverage.  It was like watching NBA Fastbreak, only it was all LeBron.  Jim Gray’s initial interview was what I expected and I like Mike Wilbon’s follow-up with LeBron after the announcement.  But did it really need to be an hour-long special?  The announcement itself and the interviews were probably enough to fill a 30-minute program (the “pre-game” part of the show with Stuart Scott tossing conversation around with Wilbon and Jon Berry was about 28 minutes with commercials).

So as far as ESPN is concerned, “The Decision” didn’t hurt them.  The journalism, although not in a conventional setting, was the usual ESPN fare – a decent mix of fact and interviewing and then follow-up opinion from their analysts.  I didn't feel that ESPN compromised itself by having the event brokered by James's people.

“The Decision” does hurt James.  His ego seems to have outgrown Cleveland and demanded the attention of not only ESPN but also America’s basketball-viewing public.  And although this is a unique situation that no other superstar athlete has gone through before, I don’t think you would see a Magic Johnson or a Michael Jordan having his marketing people contact ESPN to put together an hour special for something that’s not related to playing an actual game or getting inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Maybe I’m old school, but I would have preferred just an update on Sportscenter.  Or maybe in this new communication age, he could have done what Kevin Durant did earlier this week and just post about it on his brand-new Twitter account.  Of course I say this but I helped feed that ego of LeBron's by DVR-ing the program.

In any event, good luck to James and the New Big Three in Miami.  Though you lost a city that loved you so, you just gained a lot more Heat fans around the country.


the Meat Life