ESPN Took LeBron ‘Get Over it’ Quote and Sensationalized it
Alright, so we recognize that LeBron James is hated by people since holding his “Decision” show. When he’s not holding ill-conceived shows, he’s doing other things to make people hate him. Still, that doesn’t mean powerful sports networks need to pile on when it’s unnecessary, which is exactly what some people at ESPN did Thursday night.
You may have seen on ESPN’s Web site or heard on their shows or like SportsCenter or read a tweet saying LeBron James told Cleveland fans to “get over it” regarding his decision to leave the Cavs for the Heat. If that’s all you heard, then you would probably think LeBron is a penis. Luckily there are other reporters around to inform us what really happened.
Ethan J. Skolnick of the Palm Beach Post explains the sequence of events: LeBron was asked pregame “if he felt that his Twitter experiment accomplished anything. James said it didn’t. [Skolnick] then followed up with a question asking whether it ever surprised James that people took sports so seriously. While [LeBron] does refer to fans being “betrayed,” the words “Cleveland” or “Cavaliers” were never mentioned.”
ESPN must have recognized the error because the story on their site now more accurately portrays LeBron’s thoughts, using the headline “LeBron sympathetic to fans.” That’s a huge difference from telling Cleveland fans to “get over it.” It’s fitting this sensationalism went down the same week ESPN was upset the way a story about their network telling the Monday Night Football coaches to call timeouts got out of control. Now that’s a little something we like to call Karma at work.
