Saturday, July 10, 2010

Weasel of the Week: Maverick Carter

This one's the mother of all slam dunk picks. In case you missed it, Carter is the poor man's Don King wannabe who's hitched his wagon to NBA superstar LeBron James, and orchestrated the glorified infomercial on ESPN Thursday night, in which James declared he was leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat.

Until recently, few had even heard of Carter, whom for all we know might have been little more than a used car salesman in Cleveland before signing on as James' "business manager". He is, however, part of James' growing inner circle of friends, hangers-on, bandwagon jumpers, and assorted other leeches feeding the ego of the former high school phenom, convincing James that after 7 years, it was time to "leave the nest", if you will, and take his business elsewhere, to someplace where he conceivably could stand a better chance of winning an NBA title.

ESPN suits, more than willing to do anything on behalf of the NBA, played along with this dog & pony show, knowing, as I said the other day, that it would generate huge off-season ratings numbers, or at least that was the thought. I'm not sure what the final figures were, nor do I really give a rat's butt about it.

Carter attaching himself to James is, in this writer's opinion, on a par with Don King signing Mike Tyson away from his original promoter, Jim Jacobs, in the late 80's. We all know what happened to Tyson's career in the 20-odd years since. Do we really want James going down the same primrose path? Of course not, but for right now, he's still naive enough to buy into the con job Carter has sold him. A triad of James, Dwyane Wade, & Chris Bosh is now under enormous pressure to deliver a NBA title to Miami immediately, but I don't see it happening.

And if the Heat don't win during the course of James' contract with the team, who gets blamed? James will ultimately pass the buck to Carter and finally bum-rush the bum outta town. You don't believe me? Just wait. It will happen.

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