Cavs star LeBron James has been creating a frenzy on social media in the last week. He’s posted a series of cryptic and confusingly critical messages on his Twitter account with little explanation, leaving the media to speculate that there’s trouble within the Cavs organization and among his teammates.
WKSU commentator Terry Pluto offers three explanations for James’ recent string of strange tweets that went out to his 28.6 million followers:
1. “He’s playing with people.”
"He thinks it's cool. Think about it. Who buys LeBron’s tennis shoes and things like that? It’s mostly teenagers and young adults. They spend more time on their phones than any other device. So, LeBron knows that people are hooked into this."
2. It’s March
"It March; the playoffs aren’t here. But when you’re trying to bring a team together, as he is and trying to get these guys to understand what he calls the process or the long journey, I do think sometimes these tweets are aimed at other people.
"If LeBron James was playing poorly, it’d be different. But who has been the Eastern Conference of Player of the Month for February and for the first week of March? LeBron James. I wish some of the guys were tweeting the same thing and play at the same level."
3. It’s a diversion
"I think he knows sometimes this will take the attention off something he doesn’t particularly want attention on with the team."
“You don’t know who’s going to show up! Over the weekend, they played two tremendous games. [They] humiliated Washington. They were down by like 14 points to Boston and came back and wiped them out in the second half. Then on Monday, Memphis comes to town -- a decent team but they have a bunch of guys hurt. They only have eight guys in uniform. And the Cavs lose. And I’m watching this game going, ‘Tweet about that, buddy.’”
The big picture
“To me, it’s just noise. I just ignore it. But it’s become such an issue lately I thought from a big-picture thing, fans wonder why are they doing this?
I always look at even the bigger picture. How does LeBron act? How does he play? How does he lead his team? Does he win? And he gets pretty high marks on all of those."
"You compare it to so many athletes -- and they are the privileged, living-in-the-bubble class who just embarrass themselves monthly if not more often and – talk about a nightmare – are just a nightmare to coach. LeBron can be difficult; he’s got some diva in him. But he can tweet about whatever he wants, I don’t care."
Pluto adds that among the 15 people he follows on Twitter, James isn't one of them.
