text: Tomorrow is the day LeBron James becomes the most unlikable person in the NBA, and perhaps all of American sports. I used to think he was okay a year ago. No more. He's the villain now. 
   
   It doesn't matter where he opts to go. If he goes to Chicago, he's a cocksucker. If he goes to Miami, he's a cocksucker. Even if he goes back to Cleveland, he's a goddamn cocksucker. He's a self-aggrandizing sack of shit, and ESPN is a bunch of pussy-whipped enablers for giving him a free hour of airtime tomorrow night and inevitably using 55 minutes of it to let Stu Scott give him a rimjob. 
   
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   Look at what Kevin Durant did today. He signed an extension well before he could have filed for free agency, announced the signing, and then went back about his business. He didn't need all this dog-and-pony show bullshit. James does, and that means he's a dipshit. People have been kissing this man's ass SINCE FUCKING MIDDLE SCHOOL, and he still needs this hourlong AFI tribute special? Bullshit. BULLSHIT. 
   
   And I don't care that he asked ESPN to use the commercial airtime tomorrow night to go to charity. That's the most transparent use of charity for the sake of self-glorification I've seen since I saw some actor do it yesterday. "Hey ESPN, why don't you spend an hour kissing my ass? Oh, don't worry. We'll give the money to AIDS babies. That totally makes me selfless." No, it doesn't. 
   
   And FUCK YOU to ESPN for going along with this "Bonds on Bonds" redux. If an ESPN reporter found concrete proof tomorrow morning that James was going to Cleveland or somewhere else, do you think ESPN would let him run with it? FUCK AND NO. They'd stick him in a fucking Lucite box and throw him in the cellar until 10PM. They're the whoringest whores that have ever whored. I heard they offered LeBron's crew free blowjobs if he wins a title next year. Wilbon asked to blow him JUST A LITTLE BIT. Not much. Just a little bit. 
   
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   LeBron is now the guy you openly root against. If he leaves Cleveland tomorrow night, he'll have needlessly strung along an entire fanbase and given them the middle finger by making their breakup spectacularly public. If he stays, he'll have spent two years cockteasing the rest of the world about going somewhere else when he probably never wanted to leave Ohio to begin with. There's no end result tomorrow that makes LeBron a sympathetic figure. He's already gone past the point of no return. He's a cocksucker. Fitting that his most memorable career moment will come when he doesn't even take a fucking shot. He's a guy that cares more about the end result of playing basketball – massive, unending adulation – than he does actual basketball. 
   
   I don't begrudge him that attitude. I'd be the same way if I were a basketball player. All I'd give a shit about would be what I make and where I'm drinking tonight. And I don't begrudge him the right to play somewhere other than Cleveland. It's Cleveland. It blows. There's nothing to do in that town except masturbate and cry. But there's a normal way of doing things, and there's the dick way of doing things, and making your own free agency a two-year drama capped off with an infomercial directed by Senor Spielbergo falls squarely in the purview of FLAMING FUCKING DICK MOVES. James is trying to bullshit the world into believing this whole process is some great entertainment he's lavishing upon you. It's not. It's a con. Right now, a lot of people aren't buying the shit this man is selling. And really, that's all LeBron James is these days: a fucking salesman. ||||| Some scoff at LeBron James turning the formal announcement of which NBA franchise will pay him his millions next season into a one-hour prime-time ESPN special Thursday. Because he has yet to earn a championship ring, they say he has not earned center ring in this circus that he and the media created. 
   
   Like so much of the chatter fueling and fueled by the saga of James' free agency — a distraction of late for even marginal basketball fans — this is just wrong. 
   
   As was the case in Game 5 of his Cavaliers' ill-fated playoff series against the Celtics, James isn't doing enough. 
   
   "The Decision," as ESPN and James' LRMR Marketing outfit have branded this 8 p.m. extravaganza, should be bigger. And there's no injury to blame this time, just not enough media savvy from people who no doubt think they're geniuses for figuring out how to embellish this as much as they have. 
   
   "This is unique, but it's unique because I think there's an insatiable appetite for LeBron," Norby Williamson, ESPN's executive vice president of production, told reporters. "People want to know." 
   
   News of James' choice may well leak out first without a spoiler alert. But "The Decision" promises to resolve the cliffhanger of whether James is bound for Chicago, New York, New Jersey or Miami, or will stay in Cleveland or decide he will play minor league baseball. 
   
   ESPN vows to cover James' big reveal to hand-picked interviewer Jim Gray as a news event it will supplement with analysis, reports and its own interview of James by Michael Wilbon. 
   
   In terms of spin, the James gang likely wants to placate jersey-buyers in cities where hopes of him wearing their team's colors will be dashed. And ESPN has allowed James' LRMR to line up its own sponsors with proceeds earmarked for the Boys & Girls Club of America. 
   
   But James, his marketing team and perhaps even the Boys & Girls Club would have fared better if he and LRMR had seized control of the drama from the start. 
   
   It's as if no one in James' camp watches "The Bachelor" or "The Bachelorette," which wouldn't be much of a franchise if ABC and the producers left it to others to let people know what was going on among the competing suitors and build interest for the final rose ceremony. 
   
   That's where — see if this sounds familiar — much airtime is milked out of finishing the dirty work of kissing off everyone but that special someone. (That final breakup usually comes after the show. Finding true love on reality TV is even more elusive than an NBA title.) 
   
   If James and company had been on top of this, his Web site would have tracked his whole courtship process. He could have kept an ad-supported video diary, including behind-the-scenes video of meetings with franchises. 
   
   Of more importance from a business standpoint, fans would have been invited to register to vote for their team and receive updates through e-mail and Twitter, creating a valuable marketing database. 
   
   Just one problem: James has owned the domain LeBronJames.com since 2002 but hasn't done much with it until recently. Until Tuesday, James also had not used Twitter to address the public directly. So much for a New Media offensive. 
   
   The Cleveland Plain Dealer has reported its sources said a special had been in the works for months. But Williamson, who indicated he expected James' announcement early in the hour, said James' people approached ESPN only last week. 
   
   Let people complain this is all out of proportion to its actual importance. This whole story has been. But if news consumers are interested demonstrably in something, far be it for media hoping to remain viable to tell them to go look for it somewhere else. 
   
   Similarly, whenever Michael Jordan was given a golden opportunity to score, he rarely hesitated to take it. 
   
   This is something the player who hopes to become America's Next Michael Jordan is only starting to learn. 
   
   philrosenthal@tribune.com
target: – LeBron James is taking plenty of flak over tonight's big announcement in the who-does-this-guy-think-he-is vein. (Witness Drew Magary's rant at Deadspin, where he refers to James as a "self-aggrandizing sack of shit" and doesn't think much better of ESPN.) But Phil Rosenthal at the Chicago Tribune thinks James hasn't milked this enough. There's clearly a public appetite for this, he argues, but the James camp mobilized too late to truly capitalize on it. Haven't they ever watched The Bachelor? This is like showing only the final rose ceremony. "If James and company had been on top of this, his web site would have tracked his whole courtship process. He could have kept an ad-supported video diary, including behind-the-scenes video of meetings with franchises." Let people scoff. "If news consumers are interested demonstrably in something, far be it for media hoping to remain viable to tell them to go look for it somewhere else."