The Cleveland Plain Dealer has reported its sources said a special had been in the works for months.
– 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."